Coyote Blog

My wife and I watched a series from a couple of years ago called the White Queen, a drama following the Wars of the Roses based on a novel by Phillipa Gregory.  The series begins with the marriage of Elizabeth Woodville to King Edward and proceeds through the death of Richard III at Bosworth.  After the first episode I was ready to stop because I thought it was going to be yet another historical romance rather than satisfying drama about power and conflict.  But as a series, once is gets past the first episode, it really does become a pretty good watch (though it got only mediocre ratings so caveat emptor).  It has a lot of folks battling for power with the same Game of Thrones "you win or you die" vibe -- which is not surprising as apparently George R R Martin has said that Game of Thrones was partially inspired by the Wars of the Roses.

As one would expect from the author, there are lots of strong and interesting female characters but the whole show is well acted.   It generally followed pretty well with most of the history I learned in school though I would be careful answering any AP history test questions from the plot (Gregory takes some literary license with the disappearance of Edward's two sons in the Tower, but since that remains somewhat of a mystery anyway it felt OK to do so).  The series goes a bit off the rails historically in the second season (the White Princess) as the small license Gregory takes with the sons getting killed in the Tower takes control of the plot.