Elizabeth Wydeville : The Slandered Queen

320pp plus 16pp b/w plate illustrations and publisher’s adverts at rear. Indexed with genealogical tables, timelines and charts. Bibliography. Black cloth-covered boards with gilt lettering on spine. DJ price-clipped and mildly bumped at edges. Small dent to boards and block on rear at bottom. Bright, tight and square volume, and clean barring a scattering of annotations in margins, not obscuring text. Elizabeth Wydeville, queen consort to Edward IV and mother of the Princes in the Tower, has traditionally been seen as a scheming, cold-blooded opportunist. Okerlund’s book challenges this perception, showing that the first English Queen to bear the name Elizabeth lifed a live of tragedy, love and loss as no other queen has since endured. Richard III, Okerlund argues, was in large part responsible for Elizabeth’s suffering, as the instigator of the murders of her brother, cousin and three sons.