The Never, Forever Queen

Elizabeth of York was born in 1466, the eldest child of King Edward IV. The Wars of the Roses had been ongoing for over a decade at the time of her birth. Her father was a Yorkist king who spent his life defending his monarchy from Lancastrian relatives who maintained that they had a stronger claim to the throne. In 1483, Elizabeth became the sister of the King when her father died, and her younger brother, Edward V, ascended the throne. Edward was still a child, and is sadly only known to history as one of the ‘Princes in the Tower’ who mysteriously disappeared during the months following their father’s death. Edward IV’s younger brother then assumed the throne as Richard III, who recently became world famous as ‘the King in the Car Park' when his body was discovered over 500 years after his hasty burial following the Battle of Bosworth. As the oldest surviving child of Edward IV, Elizabeth could have argued that she had a stronger claim to the throne than her uncle. There is no evidence that such a claim was ever made, however, and she was instead brought to court for her marriage to be haggled over.

Less than two years later, with Elizabeth still unbetrothed, Richard was defeated in battle by the Lancastrian heir, Henry Tudor. It was subsequently agreed by Elizabeth’s and Henry’s mothers that Henry and Elizabeth should marry, thereby ensuring that the children of the marriage would have an undisputed claim to the throne of England through both Lancastrian and Yorkist blood lines. Henry’s claim to the throne was fragile, through his mother rather than his father, and through a blood line that had long been alleged to be illegitimate. This was, therefore, a sound political move on the part of the Tudors. However Henry immediately signaled that he was not intending to share the monarchy with Elizabeth by arranging to be crowned alone as Henry VII, three months before the marriage. Two years later, Elizabeth was crowned in a ceremony that clearly defined her position as Queen Consort. She died in 1503, following complications of childbirth.

By all accounts, and against significant odds, the marriage of Henry and Elizabeth was reported to be an affectionate one. Henry VIII, who as the younger son, was brought up by his mother with his sisters until his older brother unexpectedly died, wrote affectionately about his mother. When he became king, he commissioned a likeness of her that appeared to hint at her right to be recognised in history as a Queen of England rather than as her husband’s consort. We will never know if Elizabeth resented being sidelined to the ranks of Consort, when she had every hereditary right to reign alongside (or even instead of) her husband. Perhaps, having lived through the turmoil of civil war for the first twenty years of her life, she resigned herself to her position, in the pursuit of peace for her children’s generation.

It is interesting to speculate what Elizabeth’s granddaughter, Elizabeth I of England, learned from the life of this grandmother she had never known. There has been much speculation about whether Elizabeth I never married due to a deeply rooted mistrust of men, following her father’s execution of her mother, when she was not yet three years old.  Another example has also been raised: that of her sister’s disastrous marriage to Philip of Spain. Elizabeth I was, by all accounts a clever and wily monarch, and may have had an additional, more coldly calculated reason for remaining unmarried: drawing upon the example of her grandmother’s subjection, she may have decided to ensure her position would never be usurped by a husband, remaining single to preserve her status. In this way, she managed to hold her own against an overwhelmingly patriarchal society, at a time in which the preacher John Knox proclaimed ‘It is more than a monster in nature that a woman should reign and bear empire over man.' 

And ironically, it may yet be that Elizabeth of York, who by rights should have been crowned Queen of England but was never accorded the title, has in fact emerged as one of the most famous Queens of all. It is alleged that the Queen of Hearts image on the traditional European deck of playing cards was derived from her image. On close inspection, we can see that the illustration bears a clear resemblance to a portrait of Elizabeth, and, as in the portrait, the Queen of Hearts holds what appears to be a Tudor Rose in her hand. 

We can never know if Elizabeth of York served as an inspiration to her formidable namesake to forge her place in history as the first Queen of England to wield power very much on her own terms, beyond the dominance of men. But I have always very much hoped that this ‘never Queen’, who (by all accounts) gracefully accepted that she was doomed to the sidelines by the prevailing circumstances of the time, did in fact become the ‘forever Queen’, looked upon by many generations as the most benevolent lady in the pack.