The Sunne in Splendour: A War of the Roses Timeline
- Thread starter pandizzy
- Start date
Oh damn poor Magdalena, though I think she's doing the right thing, at least for her...
Tho Richard was also POS brother towards Edward, he knew they're royals and they need to pay a price for privilege of not having to work all day and all night and for having power over others and that price is that they can't marry for love (usually), he knew his actions were hurtful towards his brother, who had no say in his marriage with Blanche and was OK with hurting him by sleeping with his wife, also he was OK with possibility of yet another civil war coming in the horizon, countless lives lost, and he lied to his brother without any shame, so while I can't say he deserved his death (he was 16 years old after all), Edward is not the worst person here.
Last edited:
This. A thousand times this. Threatening to draw the succession into chaos so soon after the Wars of the Roses has ended is reason enough to get your head chopped off. Clarence found that out otl.
And well, how commited he was to his plan to cuckold his brother, the fact he didn't have any doubts makes him POS also on personal level.
Yep. Richard and blanche clearly had no care that they would plunge england into yet another civil war
I still don't think they would have done, necessarily. No such thing as DNA in this era. As long as *both* brothers slept with Blanche, then no one would have known who'd fathered any child she had... The suspicions wouldn't have been great enough that it would have been worth tearing England apart again...
Still pretty idiotic of them. And richard taunting was the final straw
Tho whoever would next in line to the throne - Richard's own children with whoever would be his wife or Richard's and Edward's next eldest brother (if Richard didn't marry and have children) could use that to depose Edward's children and label them bastards.
I do feel bad for Edward in the sense that my first idea was that Blanche was fated to be a boring, unassuming queen, more worried about the welfare of her children than her mother's ambitions. Before I learned the proper spelling, I called her the 'milk and toast queen of england'. But then ideas came and Edward suffered for it.
Agreed. Richard pursued her and never stopped - always knowing it was wrong. In some ways, he got what was coming to him, because he eventually would have been killed for treason when he was caught. Thankfully this way, Blanche doesn't lose her head as well.
January 1485.
January 1485. Whitehall Palace, England.
When she heard of Richard, Blanche wanted to die. Her poor, beloved Richard. Her loving friend, who seemed to see her unlike anyone else, who saw only the Queen. The court was told that he’d been taken by a sudden fever, a disease that killed quickly, but the whispers ran about the violent end he received. Killed at the hand of his own kin. But did any of it matter, when he was gone and she was there, still living and breathing, meant to go on without him?
After she was told, Blanche tore at the clothes she was wearing, the fine garments offered to a queen that did not at all seem to fit what she felt deep in her heart, when all she wanted was the robes of mourning afforded to a widow. Even though she was not his widow, or his wife, she felt the pain in her heart, the agony that was likely to choke her as she wept. She had vomited in her terror, the strain of the news too much for her body and cried until there were no more tears left in her.
Why did this happen to her? The idea that she could continue in her station whilst Richard grew cold, and then started to rot, felt like the worst punishment. Why was she allowed to live? Why did God seek to treat her so? She had been the one to sin, to err against her husband and yet… the Lord that took David’s son had also taken her beloved Richard from her. Struck in the prime of his life, so young and so slight. It was certainly a punishment for her adultery, to prevent her from doing so again, but Blanche would’ve preferred to be the one to die, instead of him.
Richard was better than her. More well-loved. If anyone ought to have died, it was her, not him. Sometimes, she even thought of working to join him, if only she didn’t know her immortal soul would be condemned to Hell. If she had any hope of a reunion with Richard, she could not commit suicide, because he was in Heaven, at peace.
The celebrations for Christmas, which were already on its end, were quickly interrupted, as court entered into official mourning for the King’s brother. Blanche remained in her chambers for as long as she could, unable to look at the courtiers’ faces and wonder if they knew about the break in her heart, the part of her that had died with Richard.
But though she mourned, she was still a queen and it would be a great gaffe to fail an appearance at the mass for him. The final mass offered in the city before his funeral. They had brought Richard’s body to London so he might be buried next to his kingly ancestors and he had been lying in state at the great abbey of Westminster, though she had been too afraid to visit him. Too afraid to lay her eyes on him and see that it was truth, that he was dead and there was nothing she could do. Afraid to look at his handsome face and see only the expression of death, instead of his easy smile.
She looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair had lost its lustre, her eyes did not shine anymore and there were dark bags under them, a consequence of not sleeping. Her clothes were a simple black dress and a headdress that had begun to be called the gable hood, dark and sparsely decorated for the days of mourning that seemed to stretch ahead. Pyrrhus barked at her feet and Lady Richmond stood behind her, adjusting her train.
For a moment, they were quiet and then, Lady Richmond sighed and said, “I do not presume to know your heart, my lady.” She shook her head, the deeply religious woman having difficulty with what was to happen. “But I’m not wrong when I say your grief has been tremendous.” Lady Richmond sighed again. “Today, and at the Duke’s funeral, all will comfort his mother. He had no wife and no children to leave behind, so his mother is expected to be the most hurt over his passing.”
“I know,” said Blanche, tears burning her eyes.
“No one expects your heart to be broken over this, my lady,” said Lady Richmond. “You were the Duke’s sister-in-law. Nothing more.”
“Lady Richmond…” Blanche began. “Margaret, I--” She shook her head. “I will hide my feelings and will be a true queen. Of stone and ice.”
Lady Richmond smiled and cupped her cheek, touching her cheek to Blanche’s shoulder. She was standing in a small stool, towering over her old governess, but still. She could feel the woman’s warm embrace.
“If you must cry, do it here,” she said. “But out there, your grief must not be seen.”
--
Westminster Abbey, England.
They had washed him and prepared him in accordance with the Yorkist funeral rites. They shaved the remnants of a beard, trimmed his hair so as to make him look his very best, whilst he was dressed in a handsome suit of light blue and silver, the colours of his House. Magdalena felt her lower lip tremble at the sight of her child, the waxy making of his death mask staring at her as she approached the church's altar.
Her Richard, her poor son. Her baby, taken at the tender age of sixteen. She could remember the day he was born. It was the thirteenth day of October and there was snow falling on the land. The days were cold, had been for generations, and although the windows were closed, she could feel it. The snow falling all around them. It should have been a sign, for it also snowed on the day that he died. She ought to have seen it coming.
But she didn't. She allowed herself to believe he'd be different. That he'd live. Even from the very first time his eyes opened to reveal their murky blue colour, she thought he would live.
Magdalena laboured for hours until the baby came at the break of dawn, a handsome and blonde boy that brought great joy to all. He came crying and creating a scandal, wanting all to know that he had arrived, this red spindly mass of limbs with the right sex between his legs.
When he was born, they had Ned, Magdalene, and Ceci, but no spare, which left the succession on shaky grounds. If anything happened to Ned, his uncle George would be Edward's heir then, which no one wanted. The arrival of a second son, thus, had been cause for many celebrations.
Edward had arrived to see her just before noon and she remembered smiling as she watched him hold their son for the first time. He rocked him gently and expertly, as he had done a thousand times before. And then a large smile cut across his face and he said, "He'll be Richard. For my father, who was cowardly murdered by Marguerite d'Anjou."
"My son," she had said when he said it. "My prince."
Magdalena reached forward with a trembling hand, touching the stiff shoulder of her child. Richard, Dickon, had been dead for less than three days and yet, his body was already cold. His immortal soul had gone and ascended to a higher plane of existence, leaving her behind.
"Oh, my boy," she whispered. "How could they have taken you from me, my lion?" Tears bound freely down her cheeks and she twisted her fingers in the cloth of his clothing, with half a mind to shake him and beg him to move. To wake up and breathe. To live. "What right is there for a mother to outlive her son?"
She stroked his chest, his arms, as if trying to will life back into him. Magdalena felt a deep pain in her stomach, rising to her throat, like a scream clawing its way out of her. She laid her head slowly over his chest and though she longed for it, she did not hear the steady thumping of a beating heart. The rise and fall of his chest as working lungs filled up with air. There was nothing. No beating, no breathing. Just an empty shell that used to be her son.
Magdalena was a woman of one and forty years. She had lost a father, a mother. More siblings than she could count, the last of the fourteen children of King Charles and Queen Marie of Anjou. She outlived two husbands. Had lost children to the illnesses of infancy and to marriages in the continent. She endured her husband's wandering eye and strove to protect his legacy, the York dynasty. She was born a Daughter of France, became Princess of Viana and rose to be Queen of England. Now, she was the Queen Mother, a most respected woman and the epitome of female grace in the kingdom. She had endured and lived through so many things.
But this? This was too much. This broke her.
Well this was a damn gut punch of a chapter
Poor Queen Magdalene. So much grief and loss. I understand that she’s had enough and just wants to retire away in peace with her remaining children
Poor Blanche too, but Maggie B is absolutely right. It does no one any favors to act in a way that stirs rumors
Poor Queen Magdalene. So much grief and loss. I understand that she’s had enough and just wants to retire away in peace with her remaining children
Poor Blanche too, but Maggie B is absolutely right. It does no one any favors to act in a way that stirs rumors
I feel like Magdalena could've moved on if Richard had died of an illness. She lost Baby George, then Margaret and Anne already to illnesses so she knows what emotional tools to call upon. But Richard dying at the hands of his own brother is too much for her.
Yeah, that broke the poor woman. She knew of the Devil's brood but she couldnt have predicted this.