Inspiration - The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory

 Too many historical novels are like tapestries: detailed, finely wrought and colourful, but essentially static. Things happen to these needlework queens and kings, courtiers and common folk, but they remain lifeless figures. They put me to sleep.

Philippa Gregory’s fiction keeps me up. Her books resemble films, as accurate as any documentary but thrillingly intimate and eventful as well. A rich, consistently engrossing narrative voice is her preeminent tool, and in THE RED QUEEN, as in her other bestsellers, I felt that the protagonist was right in the room with me, whispering confidences — so close that I could see the perspiration on her upper lip, the cross around her neck, the gold embroidery on her gown.

This is Book Two of the series Gregory calls The Cousins’ War (the original name for the War of the Roses, which pitted Lancaster against York), and the starring role is played by Lady Margaret Beaufort. A Lancastrian descended from Edward III (and thus in line for the English throne), Margaret soon discovers that her family tree will determine her entire future. This pious and intense child doesn’t see why she can’t become Joan of Arc, or a nun (preferably an abbess), or at least marry for love. But to be strategically “wedded and bedded” is her lot. As her mother puts it in a chilly premarital advisory, “You are a girl: girls have no choice.”

As Margaret matures, she doesn’t lose her fanatical faith, but she transfers it from aspirations to a life of prayer to the more worldly vision of her son as king. Since Margaret’s first husband, Edmund Tudor, is also of royal lineage, their offspring could conceivably rule the land as Henry VII…were it not for the many other aristocratic heads that would have to roll before his was crowned.

That doesn’t deter Margaret. In the next couple of decades, she lies, cheats and conspires her way through two more loveless (and childless) marriages, pretending loyalty to the reigning Yorkist monarchs while fomenting rebellion — first against Edward IV and his wife, the beautiful commoner Elizabeth Woodville (the protagonist of Gregory’s THE WHITE QUEEN and Margaret’s greatest adversary), and then against his successor, Richard III.

Gregory sets up Elizabeth and Margaret like queens in a chess game, and their stratagems couldn’t be more fascinatingly intricate if they’d been invented out of whole cloth rather than based on the historical record. Elizabeth is blond, ravishing, rather greedy, and reputed to be a witch (in THE WHITE QUEEN she conjures male heirs and convenient storms). Margaret is dark, comely enough but no beauty, disciplined and passionately Catholic. Raging against her rival, Margaret calls Elizabeth’s pride, vanity and ambition “sinful,” while her own desires are “godly” and “righteous” (self-deceptive much?). She clings to her self-image as a latter-day Joan, a Machiavelli masquerading as Mother Teresa.

Any reader familiar with Henry VIII knows that Margaret Beaufort went on to forge one of England’s more enduring royal dynasties — although Henry VII, admittedly, isn’t as famous as his much-married son. Yet THE RED QUEEN still manages to be suspenseful because it hews so closely to Margaret’s point of view (to her, the outcome is in doubt until the very last page). There is a wicked pleasure in tracking her treasonous schemes while her son waits in safe exile on the continent. She even marries for his sake, taking for her third husband the most opportunistic of men: Thomas, Lord Stanley. He agrees to her offer of marriage as if it were a business proposition, which indeed it is.

And a smart one, since the two-faced Lord Stanley turns out to be the key to the novel’s denouement, when Margaret’s son faces Richard III on Bosworth Field. Gregory writes of the battle so grippingly that it unfolds like an action movie, cruel and exciting. It ends, the victor emerges, and I’m left hungry for a sequel. (Actually, the next book will be more of a prequel: It is about Elizabeth Woodville’s Circe-like mother, Jacquetta.)

Elizabeth, Margaret, Jacquetta — strong women, all. No surprise there, since Gregory’s agenda is clearly to rescue her gender from historical oblivion. As she said in a recent interview, the feminine side of life largely went unreported by the male historians of the time. Those few women who do emerge in contemporary documents are often ridiculed and condemned for their uppity attempts to wield power, even indirectly.

Margaret herself is a victim of the standard chauvinism of the 1400s. Although she’s not a sympathetic personality — Freud would have had a field day with this obsessive, repressed woman — the way she was raised would make anyone hard. Virtually raped by her husband at 12, a mother at 13 (“I have to say I am much less impressed by crucifixion now that I am in childbirth. It is really not possible that anything could hurt more than this”) and separated from her baby a year later so she can marry again, Margaret is, she muses, “a parcel — taken from one place to another, handed from one owner to another, unwrapped and bundled up at will. …”

THE RED QUEEN and THE WHITE QUEEN cover roughly the same period from different perspectives, and any Gregory enthusiast will want to immerse herself in both. Yet Margaret and Elizabeth, while appearing at first to be opposites, are actually more alike than different: intelligent, resourceful, manipulative, driven. In an age that treated women as a combination of servant and broodmare, they refused to be dismissed or defeated. In the modern world, they might have commanded corporations or countries. But I wouldn’t want to meet either one of them in a dark alley.

Inspiration - The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

The first in a stunning new series, The Cousins’ War, is set amid the tumult and intrigue of the Wars of the Roses. Internationally bestselling author Philippa Gregory brings this extraordinary family drama to vivid life through its women – beginning with Elizabeth Woodville, the White Queen.
Elizabeth Woodville, of the House of Lancaster, is widowed when her husband is killed in battle. Aided and abetted by the raw ambition and witchcraft skills of her mother Jacquetta, Elizabeth seduces and marries, in secret, reigning king Edward IV, of the family of the white rose, the House of York. As long as there are other claimants to Edward’s throne, the profound rivalries between the two families will never be laid to rest. Violent conflict, shocking betrayal and murder dominate Elizabeth’s life as Queen of England, passionate wife of Edward and devoted mother of their children.

In The White Queen Philippa Gregory brilliantly evokes the life of a common woman who ascends to royalty by virtue of her beauty, a woman who rises to the demands of her position and fights tenaciously for the survival of her family, a woman whose two sons become the central figures in a mystery that has confounded historians for centuries: the Princes in the Tower whose fate remains unknown to this day.

From her uniquely qualified perspective, she explores this most famous unsolved mystery, informed by impeccable research and framed by her inimitable storytelling skills. Philippa Gregory was an established historian and writer when she discovered her interest in the Tudor period and wrote the internationally bestselling novel The Other Boleyn Girl. Now she is looking at the family that preceded the Tudors: the magnificent Plantagenets, a family of complex rivalries, loves, and hatreds.

“Your house's emblem should not be the white rose but the old sign of eternity [...] the snake which eats itself. The sons of York will destroy each other, one brother destroying another, uncles devouring nephews, fathers beheading sons. They are a house which has to have blood and they will shed their own if they have no other enemy.”

It was interesting to read Philippa Gregory's The White Queen last week, in the run-up to the wedding of Prince William to Catherine Middleton. The White Queen also opens with a royal wedding between King Edward IV York, to Elizabeth Woodville, a beautiful young widow of the opposing house of Lancaster.

Not for Edward and Elizabeth is there a carriage ride watched by billions, months of hype, houses draped in flags and bunting and a Knit Your Own Royal Wedding book published especially for the occasion. Edward and Elizabeth's marriage takes place in haste and in secrecy before the latest battle in the War of the Roses, before a handful of witnesses. After the event, Elizabeth's brother casts doubt on the validity of the marriage, witnessed by three women and a young boy, and warns her that it would be easy for the King to claim that he had never been legally married and prove it all to be a ploy to get Elizabeth into his bed.

Ms Gregory demonstrates this marriage to be a whole-family affair. There is not just a new queen, but her whole family becomes embroiled in politics at a very turbulent time. Philippa Gregory shows a different side to the story from that of the history books, focusing on the role of the women behind the scenes. From the moment of her marriage, Elizabeth has to keep her wits about her at all times, as she gets mixed up in a world of scheming and treachery, obsessive ambition and murder, in a seemingly endless cycle of revenge. Elizabeth describes how her rival, Margaret of Anjou, "will not accept her defeat, she will plot and scheme for her son, just as Edward told me, that I must plot and scheme for ours. She will never stop until she is back in England and the battle is drawn up again. She will never stop until her husband is dead, her son is dead, and she has no one left to put on the throne. This is what it means to be Queen of England in this country today." But once Margaret of Anjou has ceased to be a threat, new claimants for the throne rise. As described in the quote at the top of the page, when there are no threats to Edward's rule from outside his house, his own brothers turn against him and each other, and with each betrayal, Elizabeth vows vengeance. The book paints a bitter picture of how unforgiveness destroys and is never satisfied.

The White Queen is set earlier than Gregory's usual era (The Tudors) and I confess I have little memory of my history lessons before the resolution of the war covered in this novel - see the first episode of Blackadder to see how that might or might not have turned out. I also found it a little confusing for the sheer number of people named Edward and Richard, and the different names and titles of other characters. But once I got my head around who was who, I was fascinated by the twists and turns, the to-and--fro of the houses' fortunes, culminating in the disappearance of Elizabeth's sons to King Edward, well-known as "the Princes in the Tower." Being a historical novel based upon real people, it is difficult to work out how much of the story is true and how much is speculation, although Gregory's note at the back explains some of her decisions for the direction of the plot. With conflicting theories and sources available to her, Gregory had to choose her own theories about the most likely truth, although she does not provide any definite answer.

Inspiration - The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory

:The Lady of the Rivers is #1 New York Times bestselling author Philippa Gregory’s remarkable story of Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, a woman who navigated a treacherous path through the battle lines in the Wars of the Roses.

Descended from Melusina, the river goddess, Jacquetta always has had the gift of second sight. As a child visiting her uncle, she met his prisoner, Joan of Arc, and saw her own power reflected in the young woman accused of witchcraft. They share the mystery of the tarot card of the wheel of fortune before Joan is taken to a horrific death at the hands of the English rulers of France. Jacquetta understands the danger for a woman who dares to dream.

Jacquetta is married to the Duke of Bedford, English regent of France, and he introduces her to a mysterious world of learning and alchemy. Her only friend in the great household is the duke’s squire Richard Woodville, who is at her side when the duke’s death leaves her a wealthy young widow. The two become lovers and marry in secret, returning to England to serve at the court of the young King Henry VI, where Jacquetta becomes a close and loyal friend to his new queen.

The Woodvilles soon achieve a place at the very heart of the Lancaster court, though Jacquetta can sense the growing threat from the people of England and the danger of royal rivals. Not even their courage and loyalty can keep the House of Lancaster on the throne. Henry the king slides into a mysterious sleep; Margaret the queen turns to untrustworthy favorites for help; and Richard, Duke of York, threatens to overturn the whole kingdom for his rival dynasty.

Jacquetta fights for her king, her queen, and for her daughter Elizabeth for whom Jacquetta can sense an extraordinary and unexpected future: a change of fortune, the throne of England, and the white rose of York.

A sweeping, powerful story rich in passion and legend and drawing on years of research, The Lady of the Rivers tells the story of the real-life mother of the white queen.

Review:

Philippa Gregory, the well-known Queen of historical fiction, returns with another wonderful journey into the fascinating, though at time treacherous, times of the Cousins' War. This time, Gregory takes on the fairly-unknown Jacquetta, the long-time friend of Lancaster queen Margaret of Anjou and mother of Elizabeth Woodville, the wife of York king Edward, and main subject of "The White Queen."

According to interviews and other conversations with Gregory I've read, her initial inspiration for the novel came during her research on Elizabeth Woodville, thus she decided to hold off on the previously planned third book, The White Princess, and make a small detour with Jacquetta's story. However, when Gregory went to research more thoroughly into Jacquetta's life, she found that virtually no research had been done, and that the only way for her to find the information she needed, was to conduct her own research into original source documents, which not only led to the creation of The Lady of the Rivers, but also to the creation of The Women of the Cousins' War, a non-fiction exploration of the three ladies Gregory has written on so far in the series.
Jacquetta is quite possibly the most fascinating woman Gregory has explored thus far. Born into a well-to-do family in Luxembourg, Jacquetta grew up knowing that she was descended from the water goddess Melusina and related to much of European nobility. Married off to the Duke of Bedford, the English regent of France, Jacquetta finds a scholarly intellectual of a husband, though the two share no bonds of love. After her husband's death, Jacquetta dares to fall in love with a lowly squire, Richard Wooville, and the pair marry in secret. Once the couple returns to England, Jacquetta carves out a place for herself at the court of Henry VI, and becomes a close friend to Queen of Anjou.

After The White Queen, I was somewhat tired of the constant discussion of Melusina and medieval witchcraft, and was honestly not too excited to see that Gregory chose to have this same discussion again in Lady of the Rivers. Thankfully, it was not as large of a piece of the book as in White Queen, but I was still a little tired of it. Despite this, reading about Jacquetta's life felt like I was opening up a door to an unknown and unexplored life of passion, triumph, love and politics. I was particularly intrigued by the opening (though it likely never happened), when, as a young woman, Jacquetta meets Joan of Arc while visiting her uncle. Spending time with Joan had a profound impact on Jacquetta, introduced her to the horrible realities of life, and somewhat foreshadows Jacquetta's own destiny.

Though it was a little sad to see Jacquetta becoming such close friends with the Lancasters, while knowing from The White Queen how she completely and somewhat shamelessly switches side later, Gregory weaves together another fascinating tale with her lovely, signature prose that's sure to please historical fiction fans.

The Dames Blanches

Melusine was susposely one of the "dames blanches" (white ladies). I did some research into who they were.

In French mythology or folklore, Dames Blanches (meaning literally white ladies) were female spirits or supenatural beings, comparable to the White Women of both Dutch and Germanic mythology. The Dames Blanches were reported in the region of Lorraine (Lotharingen) and Normandy. They appear (as Damas blancas, in Occitan), in the Pyrenees mountains, where they were supposed to appear near caves and caverns.

Thomas Keightley (1870) describes the Dames Blanches as a type of Fée known in Normandy "who are of a less benevolent character." They lurk in narrow places such as ravines, fords, and on bridges, and try to attract passerby attention. They may require one to join in her dance or assist her in order to pass. If assisted she "makes him many courtesies, and then vanishes." One such Dame was known as La Dame d'Apringy who appeared in a ravine at the Rue Quentin at Bayeux in Normandy, where one must dance with her a few rounds to pass. Those who refused were thrown into the thistles and briar, while those who danced were not harmed. Another Dame was known on a narrow bridge in the district of Falaise, named the Pont d'Angot. She only allowed people to pass if they went on their knees to her. Anyone who refused was tormented by the lutins, cats, owls, and other creatures who helped her.

Origins

J. A. MacCulloch believes Dames Blanches are one of the recharacterizations of pre-Christian female goddesses, and suggested their name Dame may have derived from the ancient guardian goddesses known as the Matres, by looking at old inscriptions to guardian goddesses, specifically inscriptions to "the Dominæ, who watched over the home, perhaps became the Dames of mediæval folk-lore."

The Dames Blanches have close counterparts in both name and characterization in neighboring northern countries: In Germany the Weisse Frauen and in the Dutch Low Countries the Witte Wieven.

Melusina - A Witch?

Melusina was considered by the people as a witch. They knew nothing about her, or why she was never seen on a saturday. She was a complete mystery to them. So did some research into witchcraft. Most of the information I found is not not relevant to the time, but was interesting to know for helping me writting my screenplay.

In French the word for a witch is sorcière, which gave us the English “sorcerer” and “sorceress”. Enchantress is also a French word, the female form of “enchanteur” which means magician. The French word comes from the latin “incantantre” (to sing), and implies the use of songs or chants for magic. Bordeaux is well known for its infamous judge Pierre de Lancre who conducted a massive witch hunt in Labourd in 1609. He turned Labourd upside down and in less than a year some 70 people were burnt at the stake. De Lancre wasn’t satisfied: he estimated that some 3,000 witches were still at large (10% of the population of Labourd in that time). However he was eventually dismissed him from office – much to the relief of the French countryside. France has had its fair share of witch hunts and in 1643-1645, the largest witch hunts in French history occurred. During those two years there were at least 650 arrests in Languedoc alone.

Around Halloween you will find various Festivals of the Witch in France (La Fête de la Sorcière) which hark back to the pagan festivals. Bonnu in Indre (Berry) holds a Fête de la Sorcière at the end of October and witchcraft is still practiced in Berry in the form of healing and Tarot reading. La Fête de la Sorcière in Chalindrey has been held for for nearly a century in remembrance of a 16th century witch hunt there.

Vestiges of witchcraft still hold on in the rural south of France where black cats are referred to as matagots, “magician cats” that bring good luck to owners who feed them well and treat them with the respect they deserve. The earliest known image of a witch flying on a broomstick comes from France and is in a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Martin Le Franc’s Le Champion de Dames dates to 1440, and shows two witches, one on a white stick (apparently a common mode of transport for French witches), and the other on the familiar broomstick.

One notorious witch trial in France implicated none other than the Madame de Montespan, one of the most celebrated mistresses of Louis XIV. She had 7 children with the King and is an ancestress of several royal houses in Europe such as Spain, Italy, Bulgaria and Portugal.

When Louis’s affections showed signs of cooling, Madame de Montespan is alleged to have resorted to Black Magic in order to get him back. The incident is known as the Affaire des Poisons and Madame de Montespan was accused of using poison and witchcraft to dispose of her rivals. She visited the so-called witch Catherine Monvoisin, known as La Voisin, in 1665. Initially, La Voisin reportedly just gave Madame de Montespan love potions concocted of repulsive ingredients for Louis XIV to take but in 1666, Madame de Montespan supposedly went so far as to allow a priest, Etienne Guibourg, to perform a black mass in a blood-soaked ceremony. La Voisin was executed and Madame de Montespan ended her days in a convent.

There is also a legend of a French Enchantress named Melusine and in legends from Brittany several notable families claim that Melusine is their ancestor. She is credited with the building of castles and monuments in Brittany that still exist today. Melusine is also credited as being an ancestor of the Luxembourg royal family, as she married Prince Siegfroid in 963 A.D. One story says that Melusine married Raymond of Lusignan in Poitou. Melusine’s father, Elynas, was a King of Scotland and he had broken his word to her fairy mother. When Melusine learned this story, she and her sisters locked their father up in a mountain. Her mother was so furious upon learning this that she cursed the girls. Melusine’s curse was that once a week, she would transform into a monster. The only way to ease the agony of this transformation was to spend the entire day in a bathtub, keeping wet. Worse, if ever she married, and if ever her husband saw her in her monster form, she would be cursed to remain that way forever.

In the Poitou version of the story Melusine told Raymond that they could be married on one condition: he must leave her alone in her tower every Saturday night, and never, never spy on her. Raymond was so enchanted by this beautiful woman that he willingly agreed and she built the Chateau Lusignan in a single night for him. Inevitably Raymond broke his promise and spied on his wife on the forbidden Saturday. When he saw the creature she became, he made a sound of horror, giving himself away. With an unearthly scream, Melusine flew out the tower window, cursed to remain in her monstrous form forever more.

Legend has it that ever after that moment, whenever a Lord of Lusignan was going to die, Melusine would fly in circles around the tower, wailing her unearthly scream in grief. Supposedly the banshee-like cries of Melusine only stopped after the Chateau was torn down. The famous medieval painting from the Duc de Berry’s Book of Hours (Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry), from the entry for March, shows the Chateau Lusignan in the background. If you look closely, you can see what looks like a dragon flying over the tower on the right – this is supposedly Melusine.

House of Plantagenet

The House of Plantagenet ,a branch of the Angevins, was a royal house founded by Geoffrey V of Anjou, father of Henry II of England. Plantagenet kings first ruled the Kingdom of England in the 12th century. Their paternal ancestors originated in the French province of Gâtinais and gained the County of Anjou through marriage during the 11th century. The dynasty accumulated several other holdings, building the Angevin Empire that at its peak stretched from the Pyrenees to Ireland and the border with Scotland.

The name Plantagenet has origins as a nickname of Geoffrey V of Anjou derived from the name of a shrub, the common broom, known in Latin as the Planta genista. It is claimed the nickname arose because Geoffrey of Anjou wore a sprig of the common broom in his hat. The significance has been said to relate to its golden flower and contemporary belief in its vegetative soul Since the 15th century, Plantagenet has been applied retrospectively as a surname for the descendants of Geoffrey of Anjou. There is barely any contemporary evidence for the name before the mid fifteenth century, and the house itself used no surname until the legitimist claimant Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, father of both Edward IV and Richard III, assumed the name about 1448.

The Plantagenets are also called Angevins in reference to their progenitors' positions as Counts of Anjou, once an autonomous county in northern France. The male line descends from a Count of Gâtinais who married an heiress to the county. Her Anjou ancestors derived from an obscure 9th-century nobleman, Ingelger. It is due to this lineage that the Plantagenets are sometimes referred to as the First House of Anjou. One of the more notable counts was Fulk, a crusader who became King of Jerusalem. Fulk's son Geoffrey Plantagenet gave his name to the dynasty and Fulk's grandson Henry was the first of the family to rule England.
According to Gerald, these legends were not always discouraged by the Angevins. Richard the Lionheart was said to have often remarked of his family that they "come of the devil, and to the devil they would go." A similar statement is attributed to St Bernard regarding Henry II. Henry II's sons reportedly defended their frequent infighting by saying "Do not deprive us of our heritage; we cannot help acting like devils." The legends surrounding the Angevins grew into English folklore and led some historians to give them the epithet "The Devil's Brood".

The Plantagenet Family
A House of Devil

Dark and sticky, the Plantagenet web of intrigue often ensnared its diabolical spawn in a chiasma of dread and horror. The Angevins were believed to be descended from the devil, for according to legend, Melusine, the daughter of Satan, had married a Count of Anjou and borne him children. Her true identity was finally revealed when she was forced to stay throughout the Mass whereas previously she had slipped out before Holy Communion was taken. At the sight of the holy relics Melusine immediately flew through a stained glass window of the church and was seen no more. Her two eldest sons came along for the flight; the two younger ones stayed behind with 'Dad.' Oddly enough, among those who believed the story were the Angevins themselves. But, could there be a more rational explanation for what happened that day? -Something free of superstition and hokus pokus? Irrespective of the 'supernatural' nonsense, there were some very real reasons that people referred to this collection of troublesome monarchs as 'A House of Devils'.

Of course, the Plantagenet name was not used by this notorious family until it was given as a nickname to Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou in the 1120s, and the legend goes back several years before that time. Count Fulk Rechin de Anjou (1068-1109), admitted that he knew nothing of the first three of his line: Ingelgar, (the first Count of Anjou), Fulk the Red, and Fulk the Good (941-960). Nevertheless, the 12th century seems to have been a great time of mythmaking when many noble houses invented legends in order to give themselves legendary ancestors. However, claiming the Devil as an ancestor seems to be going a bit too far.

Popular gossip told of the Plantagenet's descent from the daughter of the Devil himself. It was a convenient explanation for their demonic energy, their ferocious ruthlessness, and their sometimes wicked deeds. The violent temper of the Angivins, their vicious reaction to being thwarted or crossed, was almost pathological in its intensity, so there were many who agreed with this assessment. In the days of long ago, when tales of elves, goblins, witches, and fairies were believed to be true, a count of Anjou, men said, returned from a distant journey with a strange woman whom he married. His people referred to her as "the dark princess of the forest." It is, however, doubtful that she came from the forests surrounding the Angevin territories, as the people who lived there were as pasty white as those who didn't live in the forest. But, to the people, who had never been anywhere beyond a few miles in any direction of where they were born, anyone or anything that came into their midst from 'beyond,' as it were, came from the forest -they simply didn't know that a whole world lay beyond the Angevin forests, or that there was more than just forests out there. Her name was Mesuline. She was evidently a princess, and very beautiful. Her skin very dark, making her most likely of middle eastern origin. They were married several years and she bore him four sons. She was quiet and dutiful, but there was much that was odd about her: she had no relatives or friends, she refused to be seen by her husband on Saturdays, she never went to church, and when asked to go she always made some excuse why she couldn't attend. The reasoning behind her behavior had less to do with possessing demonic powers and more to do with the idea that she was most probably Jewish or Islamic with regard to her religion.

But, to narrow it down even further, although she could have been Jewish, she was more probably Islamic rather than Jewish, in that the people already understood what the Jews were like and, while they would have been critical of her, they would not have found her ways particularly strange.It was Islam that was new and completely foreign to them. The Christians believed that Islam came from the Devil, and the Muslims in turn believed that Christianity was of the Devil -everbody had everybody else pegged as coming straight from Hell. So, rumors began to circulate about Mesuline, that she might be a witch.

However plausible and harmless it was that she simply practiced a different religion, her behavior alienated not only the Count, but also his people who grew increasingly suspicious of her, whispering that she was a sorceress and claiming she had bewitched the Count. The real reason she did not attend Mass was probably because she was not a Christian. Although he loved her, the Count had to do something about her. No king would allow his throne to be threatened over the likes of a woman, even his own wife. He tried telling her she must attend Mass, even if only to show the people that she was not a witch, but she refused. The Count's advisors urged him to do something and in the end persuaded him that she must go, one way or the other. Reluctently, he finally agreed.

One Sunday the Count instructed four of his knights to stay close by him when he literally forced her and her sons in the royal chapel and locked the door to prevent them from slipping out. Why the chapel? Because there were stained glass windows that no one could see through. It was important that people see them go in, but necessary that no one see what was to happen inside. There were only the knights, himself, Mesuline, his sons, and the priest who said Mass in attendance. When they emerged after Mass, there were only the knights, the Count, the priest, and the two youngest sons -Mesuline and the two older boys had vanished. Of course, the Count had to come up with an explanation as to what happened to the three of them, as they were never to be seen on Earth ever again. So, his advisers concocted the following: Just as the Mass began she attempted to leave, but the knights trod on the hem of her robe to detain her. As the priest raised the Host above his head she uttered a scream, wrenched apart the fastening of her cloak to escape from it, and still shrieking flew out of the window. She was Melusine, daughter of Satan, and no evil spirit, as it is well known, can look upon the Body of Christ. In her flight she dragged the two elder children with her; but the two younger ones remained. The people -still full of superstition at that time- bought it, hook, line, and sinker. Never mind that there was no external evidence that someone had broken a stained glass window to exit the chapel. The truth, of course, was far more down to Earth, if not sinister and evil. Once locked in the chapel, the Count and his knights likely strangled Mesuline and two older boys to death. Their bodies were then spirited away through a secret passage beneath the alter or in the walls that led to a honeycombed maze of tunnels beneath the structure (old castles generally had underground tunnel systems to enable the royals to escape when under seige).

Extracts From The White Queen

In the darkness of the forest the young knight could hear the splashing of the fountain long before he could see the glimmer of moonlight reflected on the still surface. He was about to step forward, longing to dip his head, drink in the coolness, when he caught his breath at the sight of something dark, moving deep in the water. There was a greenish shadow in the sunken bowl of the fountain, something like a great fish, something like a drowned body. Then it moved and stood upright and he saw, frighteningly naked: a bathing woman. Her skin as she rose up, water coursing down her flanks, was even paler than the white marble bowl, her wet hair dark as a shadow.

She is Melusina, the water goddess, and she is found in hidden springs and waterfalls in any forest in Christendom, even in those as far away as Greece. She bathes in the Moorish fountains too. They know her by another name in the northern countries, where the lakes are glazed with ice and it crackles when she rises. A man may love her if he keeps her secret and lets her alone when she wants to bathe, and she may love him in return until he breaks his word, as men always do, and she sweeps him into the deeps, with her fishy tail, and turns his faithless blood to water.

The tragedy of Melusina, whatever language tells it, whatever tune it sings, is that a man will always promise more than he can do to a woman he cannot understand.

In the dark ness of the forest he saw her, and whispered her name, Melusina, and at that summoning she rose out of the water and he saw she was a woman of cool and complete beauty to the waist, and below that she was scaled, like a fish.

She promised him that she would come to him and be his wife, she promised him that she would make him happy as any mortal woman can, she promised him that she would curb her wild side, her tidal nature, that she would be an ordinary wife to him, a wife that he could be proud of; if in return would let her have a time when she could be herself again, when she could return to her element of water, when she could wash away the drudgery of a woman’s lot and be, for just a little while, a water goddess once more.

She knew that being a mortal woman is hard on the heart, hard on the feet. She knew she would need to be alone in the water, under the water, the ripples reflected on her scaly tail now and then.

He promised that he would give her everything, everything she wanted, as men in love always do. And she trusted him despite herself, as women in love always do.

Melusina’s mortal husband loved her, but she puzzled him. He did not understand her nature and he was not content to live with a woman who was a mystery to him.

He allowed a guest to persuade him to spy on her. He hid behind the hangings in her bath house and saw her swim beneath the water of her bath, saw – horrified – the gleam of ripples on scales, learnt her secret: that although she loved him, truly loved him, she was half woman and half fish. He could not bear what she was, and could not help what she was. So he left her, because in her heart he feared that she was a woman with a divided nature – and he did not realise that all woman are creatures of divided nature. He could not stand to think of her secrecy, that she had a life hidden from him. He could not, in fact, tolerate the truth that Melusina was a woman who knew the unknown depths, who swam in them.

Poor Melusina, who tried so hard to be a good wife, had to leave the man who loved her and go back to the water, finding the earth too hard. Like many woman, she was unable to fit exactly with her husband’s view. Her feet hurt: she could not walk the path of her husband’s choosing. She tried to dance to please him, but she could not deny the pain. She is the ancestress of the royal house of Burgundy, and we, her descendants, still try to walk in the paths of men, and sometimes we too find the way unbearably hard.   

When he saw her, the water lapping on her scales, head down in the bath he had built especially for her, thinking that she would like to wash – not to revert to fish – he had that instant revulsion that some men feel when they understand, perhaps  for the first time, that a woman is truly ‘other’.

She is not a boy though she is weak like a boy, nor a fool though he has seen her tremble with feeling like a fool. She is not a villain in her capacity to hold a grudge, nor a saint in her flashes of generosity. She is not any of these male qualities. She is a woman. A thing quite different to a man. When he saw she was half-fish, but what frightened him to his soul was the being that was a woman.

The Legend of Melusina by Philippa Gregory

"The story of Melusina ... came to signify for me the difficulty that women have living in a man's world – almost as if women are beings of another element ”

By Philippa Gregory, Author of The White Queen

 

The story of Melusina is told in many countries, from the Celtic west of Europe to Germany and the Nordic countries; there even seems to be some Native American versions. Rewritten, she appears in the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and in Hans Christian Anderson's story of the Little Mermaid (and so to Disney!) and in the legend of Undine or Ondine.

 

The story is much as Elizabeth Woodville tells it in The White Queen. A girl, herself the daughter of a water fairy, meets with a knight in the forest (different families and different forests feature in different parts of Europe) and they agree to marry – but she tells him he can never visit her in her chambers on Saturday, the day she is cursed to always take the form of a serpent or a fish from the waist down.

 
After having children together and a happy marriage, he breaks the interdict and sees that she is not entirely human. In some versions she knows at once that he has seen her and goes away immediately. In others he pretends not to know, but the truth bursts from him when their monstrous sons kill each other. In some versions he dies without her, in others he lives on sorrowing, or she haunts the house where they were happy.

In the rewritten versions he leaves her, preferring a mortal woman, but in one wonderful old telling her response to this is to stretch her foot through the ceiling of his wedding banquet. In Ireland, Melusina is the banshee calling over the castle to warn of a death. In France, she is one of the Dames Blanches, the White Ladies who haunt the forests and trick mortals with riddles and dances and foretell deaths by crying outside houses. In Germany she is a being of the forests as well as of water.

Melusina's roots may be even more ancient. Legends of water women and the sirens go back to Homer; drawings of mermaids are found in ancient Egypt and Assyria. Sabine Baring-Gould, the folklorist, suggested that Melusina could be a Celtic version of an even more ancient legend. She survives, even today, in the stories around springs and wells that are now designated as Christian sites. Undeterred by sanctification, she is renamed St. Melusina in Baringen, Germany, where they shake the crumbs from the Christmas Eve feast over the bushes so that Melusina may eat.
 
The legend was first written down in 1393 (Jean d'Arras, La Noble Hystoire de Luzignen) as part of the history of Chateau Lusignan, the house she is said to have built for her husband. She is often described as a master builder: She could erect a house in a single night with an army of fairy workpeople. But the buildings were always flawed, just as her children were always malformed. J. E. Cirlot (A Dictionary of Symbols) suggests she is an intuitive genius both “prophetic, constructive and wondrous, and yet at the same time is infirm and malign.”
Melusina's significance goes even further than this powerful folklore. The psychoanalyst Carl Jung took an interest in her role in alchemy. Here Melusina is a manifestation of Luna – the element of dark, cold, water, and spirit, and as such she makes the alchemical union with her opposite: Sol, the source of warmth and light. The union is known by alchemists as the “chymical wedding,” which signified to Jung the union of body and spirit, consciousness and unconsciousness.
 
I won't pretend to understand this except at a level of wonderment, but I must admit to having a sense of shock when I read the words “Luna and Sol often appear as White Queen and Red King” a year after I had finished my novel on Melusina's descendant and titled it The White Queen. The internet site goes on: “Note these colours' corresponding stages of transmutation; the symbol of this relationship is a rose.” A rose, indeed: The people called Elizabeth Woodville's grandson Arthur “the rose of England.”
“The story of Melusina ... came to signify for me the difficulty that women have living in a man's world – almost as if women are beings of another element .”
 
I had originally come across the Melusina myth very early in my research for The White Queen when I was looking for some element in the stories of Elizabeth, or in her parents, to inspire me or help me imagine her. The discovery that Elizabeth's mother Jacquetta traced her family back to the myth of Melusina was tremendously exciting for me and led me to research the myth and even visit the Chateau Lusignan near Poitiers, France.
 

The suggestion that I make in the novel that Jacquetta believed in her other-worldly ancestry is a likely one. Certainly she believed in witchcraft and was indeed captured, tried and found guilty of practising magic. It was said that she was caught with some little lead figures for charming, and that the marriage between her daughter and the king was brought about by his enchantment. The scenes I created of her and Elizabeth calling up mist, whistling up wind and summoning rain are all imaginary but seemed to me to be what one would do in such circumstances – especially if one thought it might work! In a world where there was little science, there was faith in magic and trust in what we would now call superstitions.

My re-telling of the story of Melusina throughout the novel developed as it went on and came to signify for me the difficulty that women have living in a man's world – almost as if women are beings of another element. Melusina knew that being a mortal woman is hard on the heart, hard on the feet. She knew that she would need to be alone in the water, under the water, the ripples reflected on her scaly tail now and then. Her husband promised her that he would give her everything, everything she wanted, as men in love always do. And she trusted him despite herself, as women in love always do.

 
The connection between a mighty archetype and my novel has been inspiring and sometimes overwhelming. When I read of the legend of Melusina with the house that she built with its fatal flaw, and her sons who could not survive, I think of Elizabeth Woodville and the house of York, which was built but could not last, and her missing sons. While writing this novel I have found elements of history that I can research, some of fiction that I can create, and beyond both these: some deep mysteries which, if I listen, and wait – and if I am lucky – may come to me.

Research into Melusine

I did a lot of research into the legend of Melusine. Melusine is a figure of European legends and folklore who is feminine spirit of fresh waters in sacred springs and rivers. She is usually depicted as a woman who is a serpent or fish from the waist down (much like a mermaid).

There are many tales of the serpant woman Melusine from the celtic west of Europe to Germany & the Nordic countries. Even the native Americans have their own version of the story. Melusine's tale has inspired many great storytellers; for example The Brothers Grimm's The Little Mermaid, Hans Christan's The Little Mermaid which then leads to Disney's version of The Little Mermaid (1989). Melusine also inspired Irish director, Neil Jordan to create Ondine (2010).

This is a video clip of Melusine's story. It is in french though.

I found the legend that Phillipa Gregory told in The White Queen fascinated me and made me hunger for more.

One evening in the forest of Coulombiers, at the end of a long day’s hunting, Aimeric Counto Poitiers and his nephew Raimondin set off in pursuit of a wild boar. They far out-distanced their attendants and arrived at the outskirts of La Font de Ce, quite near Lusignan. There, during the excitement of the kill, Raimondin accidentally dealt his uncle a fatal blow. Overcome by deep sorrow, aghast and contrite at this action the young man was on his way back to confess what he had done when, at a bend in the road he caught sight of three maidens dancing in a glade by the light of the moon.
One of them smiled and spoke to him. Her name was Mélusine. She was a fairy, daughter of Elinas King of Albania and the fairy Pressine. A terrible curse lay on her. Pressine had punished her for her bad behaviour towards her father by condemning her to a sad immortality unless she married a loving knight who was not inquisitive and who agreed never to see her on Saturdays because on that day she had to bathe and watch her beautiful long legs turn into a horrid scaly tail, and if her husband saw her like this, she would never again take on human form.
Raimondin was attracted by the young girl's intelligence and beauty and asked her to marry him. He swore he would never try to see her on a Saturday. Mélusine was delighted to find a husband and accepted. She suggested that he should provide the lands and the castle. But Raimondin, who was not wealthy, wondered what lands and what castle?Once back at court, Raimondin who was very happy but very sad also tried to solve his problem by blaming the boar for the death of the Count. Then, during the ceremony of homage to the new Count of Poitou on Melisine's advice he asked for as much land as would fit into a deerskin. "How stupid" said the assembled lords. However, to everybody's consternation, the deerskin was cut into narrow strips and laid end to end and marked out an enormous area. "Never mind" said the lords, "he still hasn't got a castle". Their complacency was short-lived for in one night, right in the middle of the territory with an apron-full of stones and a mouthful of water Mélusine built the splendid castle of Luisignan. Moreover, so that her husband might be the most powerful lord in the region, she amused herself on certain nights by studding the surrounding hills with mighty fortresses.
However, so much good fortune gave rise to unkind comments and covetousness. Where did Mélusine's fairly-like beauty come from? Why was it that each of the ten children of Raimondin and Mélusine, all boys had some strange physical characteristics? One had only one eye and that was in the middle of his forehead. another had a lion's claw on his cheek; another one enormous ear; and yet another Geoffroy, Mélusine's favourite and it was said the most wicked had a huge tooth protruding from his mouth. And why did Mélusine shut herself away every Saturday?
Raimondin followed the advice of a jealous brother, to try to solve this secret of his wife's. He surprised Mélusine in her bath, combing her long fair hair and swishing her horrible fish tail. Hardly had he taken this fatal step than the fairy screamed and with a great noise like the flapping of wings she flew out of the window voicing a terrible curse on the castles she had built. But she came back to suckle her last child, and some say that on certain nights she still comes to haunt the ruins of her castles.