The White Princess Explained: The English History Behind the Series

The White Princess history explained: Yorks, Lancasters and one marriage

If one thing defines Starz, it is a taste for Tudor England. First came The Tudors, then The White Queen in 2013, a miniseries about the Wars of the Roses and the rise and fall of Elizabeth Woodville. Now there is The White Princess, which began on Starz on April 16, 2017 and runs for eight episodes of about an hour each. It picks up where The White Queen stopped and follows Woodville's daughter, Elizabeth of York, into her marriage with Henry VII.

Confused already? That is normal. The era is crowded with Henrys, Edwards, Elizabeths, Margarets and Richards, and it is hard to keep track of who sat on which side, how long each held the throne and who named a child after himself. The sequel adds a second problem. The actors from The White Queen did not return, because a generation had passed and four years had gone by, so even viewers who loved the first series have to learn the faces again.

One more warning before the history. Both shows are adapted from novels by Philippa Gregory, and The White Princess comes from her 2013 book of the same name, with a little borrowed from its 2014 sequel, The King's Curse. Gregory writes historical fiction, and she takes real liberties. Treat the series as a drama set among real people, not as a documentary. The rest of this guide separates what happened from what the show invents.

To keep it simple, people below are named by first name and number instead of by every title they ever held. The only thing to remember is that the war was a fight between two branches of one royal family, and the show begins when it ends.

Names repeat across the story and not only by accident. Royal families of the period reused a small stock of first names, which is how the show can include a Henry VII, a Henry VI and later a Henry VIII without anyone breaking the rules. Spotting the number after the name is the quickest way to place a character in time.

The two sides of the Wars of the Roses

The Wars of the Roses were a long struggle between the House of York and the House of Lancaster. The first battle, at St Albans, came on May 22, 1455, and the fighting ran, with long pauses, until Henry VII beat the last Yorkist opposition at Stoke Field on June 16, 1487. Other great families took part too, and several of them changed sides more than once. For the TV series, two camps are enough.

The Lancastrians had Henry VI, a king whose weak rule left the door open. The Yorkists had Richard of York, then his son, who became Edward IV in 1461. Henry VI was restored for a time in 1470 and 1471, but Edward returned, won at Barnet and Tewkesbury, and Henry died in the Tower of London. England had been bled by battles, and Edward IV's later reign brought a rough peace.

Edward V, Richard III and the princes in the Tower

Edward IV died in 1483. His twelve-year-old son, Edward V, reigned for 78 days before his uncle Richard III deposed him. The boy and his younger brother, Richard, vanished from the Tower of London, and rumors that they were murdered spread quickly. Their fate was never confirmed. Their older sister was Elizabeth of York, the heroine of the show.

That disappearance is the engine of the story. In The White Princess, Elizabeth Woodville is shown saving her younger son by swapping him with a servant boy, planning to put him back on the throne once the war settles. This is Gregory's invention, and it sets up the plot that follows. The real history is a mystery, and the show leans on that gap.

Henry Tudor, Margaret Beaufort and Bosworth

Henry Tudor was a Lancastrian claimant. He defeated and killed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, took the crown as Henry VII, and in January 1486 married Elizabeth of York. The match joined the two rival houses, and the red and white roses were later combined into the Tudor rose.

Standing behind him is his mother, Margaret Beaufort, a patient and ruthless political operator and the show's most dangerous woman. The series makes her an architect of events and puts her in open conflict with Elizabeth Woodville, who in the story blames Margaret for her son's fate. Margaret is also the person who argues that the marriage must go ahead, because a union with York is what makes the Tudor claim look legitimate.

In the show's version, Elizabeth of York is engaged to Henry yet falls in love with Richard III, her uncle and the man whose seizure of the throne cost her brothers their place. As Richard loses support, several Yorkist houses switch to the Lancastrian side, which gives Henry the numbers he needs at Bosworth. That romance is the series' own twist. In real life, rumors circulated that Richard meant to marry his niece, and he publicly denied them.

Who is who in The White Princess

Cast as listed for the 2017 Starz series.

Is The White Princess accurate? A guide to what the show changes

Only partly. The big frame is real: Bosworth, the end of Richard III, the Tudor claim, and the marriage of Henry and Elizabeth in January 1486. Elizabeth was born in 1466, the eldest child of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, and she was crowned queen in November 1487. Her surviving children included Arthur, Margaret, the future Henry VIII and Mary.

The details are another matter. The infant-swap, the affair with Richard III and the idea that Margaret Beaufort steered Richard toward killing his nephews all come from Gregory's novel, and none of it is established fact. The series is not alone in this, since the fate of the princes in the Tower has never been settled. If a scene feels like a thriller, assume the writers are filling a blank.

The series also leaves out or compresses plenty. The real Wars of the Roses ran for decades, with a string of battles at St Albans, Northampton, Wakefield, Towton, Barnet and Tewkesbury, and a viewer who expects that full chronology will not find it here. The show treats the earlier fighting as backstory and spends its hours on bedrooms, council chambers and the long cold war between two mothers.

As a viewing guide, the best advice is to treat the premiere as a family tree with a pulse. Elizabeth of York is the pivot, Henry and Margaret are the Lancastrian side, and Elizabeth Woodville and the ghost of Richard are the Yorkist past that refuses to stay buried. Once those four are fixed in the head, the later arrivals, among them Perkin Warbeck, Margaret Plantagenet and Margaret of Burgundy, are easy to place.

A last practical tip: the series moves fast through the political backdrop, so a viewer who knows the order of kings can enjoy the drama without a note pad. Edward IV, then his young son Edward V, then Richard III, then Henry VII is the sequence to keep in mind. Add the two Elizabeths and Margaret Beaufort, and nearly every argument in the first hour becomes readable. Anyone who wants the longer version can read about the Wars of the Roses in any good history of the period, but this much is enough to watch.

Critics were mostly kind. Rotten Tomatoes lists a 76 percent approval rating from 17 critics, and Metacritic gives a weighted score of 71 from nine, with the consensus praising the acting and the fresh perspective. It was followed by The Spanish Princess, announced by Starz in March 2018 as a follow-up built around Catherine of Aragon.

Sources

• The White Princess (miniseries), Wikipedia — cast, source novel and historical setting