One of the last scenes of the Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses, based off William Shakespeare’s play “Richard III”. After winning the crown at the battle of Bosworth on the 22nd of August 1485, he marries the beautiful Elizabeth of York and proclaims: “We will unite the white rose and the red.”
In real life, the battle was won on that day but Henry didn’t marry Elizabeth until January of the following year. The reason for that was that Henry didn’t want to be seen as dependent on his wife to rule. His wife’s claim was stronger than his. Because of her gender she had been overlooked in her uncle and now her future husband’s favor. However, by December, two months after he had been crowned, many of the Edwardian Yorkists who had fought for him were becoming angry. Some of them were suspicious that Henry would not honor the promise he had made two years before on Christmas day at Brittany, when he swore that he would return their fortunes and marry their late King’s eldest daughter. As a result, parliament was summoned and he renewed his vows to marry Elizabeth.
Henry had another reason to delay the wedding. Papal dispensation had been promised some time before but it had not been granted or made official until the end of that year when a copy of it finally reached England.
The marriage was seen as the union of the red and white rose, but unlike what Henry says in Shakespeare’s play and the last episode of the Hollow Crown when he takes Elizabeth’s hand, they weren’t the sole heirs of each house. There were many with stronger claims than theirs. Throughout his entire reign, Henry had to battle pretenders and rid himself of potential threats. His mother, another survivor of the wars of the roses, refused to die until her grandson had outlive his minority and was well-established.
Elizabeth of York was loved by all of her subjects, including her husband. Yet, she wasn’t crowned Queen of England until after she had given him a son whom he named Arthur after the mythical Welsh hero and King whom he claimed to descend from She and Henry were married for seventeen years until her death in 1503. He died six years later. The two remain buried at the Lady Chapel in Westminster Abbey.
For more information, I recommend the following books: Tudor by Leanda de Lisle; Henry VII by SB Chrimes; The Winter King by Thomas Penn; The Private Lives of the Tudors by Tracy Borman; Tudor Treasury by Elizabeth Norton and The Tudors by John Guy.
The end of the first volume is in progress! Or so I hope. I can’t say that it’s something complete, but in fact, the topic related to the faculty allows me to approach this part of the volume (despite the fact that its core is not concretized at all, lol). I am excited - I can focus a little more on this, instead of having to approach completely different topics and concepts. Well, these two pages of sketch represent the moment of the approaching coronation of my much loved queen, Elizabeth Woodville!
When I read about the coronation ritual but also about the post-ritual banquet, and found out that the dress she is wearing is purple (but not knowing the type of dress at all), I said to myself that this is the time to use my imagination at its maximum. So I came up with this type of dress, which, by the way, I absolutely adore!
I can only hope that I will meet success on the next pages!
Today I had a day off from the daily chores of college, so I said I would take this time to create the design of Margaret of Anjou. It was not a complicated one to do, the idea came to me almost immediately and the more I progressed with this work, the more I became enchanted by the life of this woman I came to admire! What I find most interesting is the conflict between her, her faction and Richard, the Duke of York, whose design I created some time ago. Well, I told myself, on this occasion I brought them together with the help of this project. Maybe I will have the opportunity to present and develop the conflict between them much better in a separate volume from the main story, who knows?
Well, until then, I can only try to make things as great as possible!
From the beginning of this project, I had the feeling that as soon as I deepen some things, when I go on several alleys and their perspectives, I will end up having a new obsession every time (as it happened to have with Cecily and Richard, the Duke of York, for example.) But no matter how mentally prepared I felt, I didn’t expect my new obsession (still developing) to be George and Isabel. And when you think that it all started with a trivial character design!
So, this time I tried to go a little beyond the stage of a character design and I focused on drawing a moment, more precisely, a moment spent at one of their wedding celebrations in Calais in 1469, when the couple shared this small, intimate moment, before a dance. I didn’t find the exact type and color of their outfits (don’t believe me, the truth is that I was too lazy to look for this or try to find out if there is a description), so I made it up completely. Initially, the jewelry in question should have been a brooch, because I know that brooches were offered to brides or future brides by the man, but I ended up drawing a necklace.
“Trouble’s Comin” was the song I was listening to when this drawing idea came to my mind. My interest was aroused even more when the image encompassed none other than Edward IV and his three eldest daughters. The scene, I believe, may have been set around 1472, with six-year-old Elizabeth, five-year-old Mary and three-year-old Cecily, just a year and a half after his return from exile in Burgundy. It is supposed to be time for hard work, but the Princesses of York will definitely make up for lost time in the presence of their father!
Cecily Neville gave me a big headache when I tried to imagine her better. In my naivete, I thought I got rid of the hardest thing, but it wasn’t like that at all! Her son, George, the Duke of Clarence, was just as hard to portray, and that’s because my mind waged a war between the idea of making him a teenager and the one of illustrating him with a more mature figure. Well, considering that this is the first volume (I have great resentments for all the tasks offered by the college that made it difficult for me to work on this project!), I decided to choose the first option. So, I have a fifteen-year-old Clarence.
PS: I can’t express in words how much I love this type of robe. I think I’ll let myself be swept away and I’ll draw a dozen, just for him!
I was going to do something completely different, but then this idea came to me. My brain whispered, “How about you draw Isabel Neville wearing maternity clothes?” and since then I have had no peace, neither in mind nor in soul. I think this is a hidden pleasure of mine, because I love to draw pregnant women. The outfit is not exactly what I would have liked, but time has not allowed me to think of something more elaborate, but maybe in the near future I will return to this idea with a different approach.
Isabel Neville seems to me one of the most interesting but vague personalities involved in the War of the Roses (I still don’t know absolutely all the details about her!), which makes her a character quite difficult to define in my project. I spent days thinking about a character design suitable for her and a few days ago I felt a sparkle: I needed something quite imposing and relevant to my project, thus I was faced with the need to let historical accuracy aside to some minimum extent/to a certain level (in order to better differentiate the characters from each other). Here I portrayed her as the Duchess of Clarence, a relatively mature figure of hers. I keep looking at historical pictures with her, wondering if I made a mistake, but all I can say right now is that I simply love this outfit!
While also working for this term’s project besides the Wars of the Roses, I thought it would be ideal to take into account the height of my main characters (because why not.) I hope that after I finish the other characters properly, I will better separate these elements.
The characters are as follows: Edward IV, Anthony Woodville, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, Richard Woodville, Jacquetta Woodville and Elizabeth Woodville.
