85 Followers
30 Following
aisforamaretto

Book On The Move

"An honourable, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man."

The White Queen (Cousins' War (Touchstone Hardcover))

The White Queen - Philippa Gregory I really don't know what to say about this book. So let's start with a short story. One day, I was sitting in my room with my laptop. It was hot, and sweaty─mostly because my laptop was heating up and burning through my lap. I opened 'Google Chrome' because that's how I roll, and I typed in the URL 'www.youtube.com.' "I wonder what's trending today," I thought. And when I got to my YouTube dashboard, I found under the 'trending' section 'The White Queen' trailer. I was shocked, and surprised; I didn't know this was happening! And of course, I had to click on it. And whilst watching it, I realized that my Max Irons was to star as Edward IV of England. And of course, that was what caught my eye and motivated me to watch this episode. So I quickly streamed the episode, and there he was: my King of England, all brain and brawn and ready to take anyone by storm and fuck them senseless seize their land. And after watching his many amazing sex scenes hearing his amazing dialogue riddled with intellect and passion, I was motivated to pick this book up and read it. I had already owned the book (As I'm a History junkie and will read anything that has to do with the English/Russian/French court). And so, the minute I was done with the first episode of the series─and after I was done fangirling about it with my good friend on Twitter and posting many tweets expressing my sexual desire love for Max Irons─I began reading this book. I zoomed through the first 300 pages of this book or so. It was riveting, it was to the point, it kept my attention (which is actually rather difficult to do these days as I have the attention span of a fruit-fly), and most of all it kept faith to most of the knowledge I had regarding Elizabeth Woodville and Edward IV. (And no, I did not search him up because I thought he would be as hot as Max Irons, okay; I'm not that shallow). I was already accustomed to Philippa Gregory's bending of the facts and manipulating a character's history in any way she see fit. However, I won't get into the History vs. Historical Fiction debate today─I'm already sick and tired of debates from all the nature vs nurture discussions we'd have in Sociology class. So, I will criticize this as it is: a book. The characters were well formed, it was clear whom History liked and whom History despised─as decided by the popular opinion. Elizabeth Woodville is traditionally demonized by society as a Queen, so I can see why Philippa would decide to make it seem as if she truly was a witch, or 'descendant of Melusina' as Elizabeth and her mother would say. So, the first two-hundred pages of the novel make it seem as if Elizabeth is this kickass Queen, but afterwards she turns into this annoying little shit hell bent on retrieving the throne that was 'taken from her' and should belong to her son. (I guess once you have the throne there ain't no going back). And after she becomes this maniacal batshit crazy bitch dowager Queen riddled with revenge, her daughter Elizabeth takes her place as the kickass. She's this sassy little angsty teenager who thinks she's ready to handle adult business (as all teenagers think they are) and her mother's just 'no, elizabeth. go to your room.' But at some point it seems that Elizabeth Woodville has lost all rationality, and then her daughter emerges with the most rational and logical of ideas and Ms. Woodville being the proud asshat woman that she is, can't take that. And so, that was an interesting tension to see rise and escalate really quickly.But towards the end this novel got extremely weird, and super boring. It all went from talks of war to letter-writing between Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beufort, regarding the bethrotal between Margaret's son Henry Tudor (No, not Henry VIII) and Elizabeth's daughter Elizabeth of York. And honestly, I could care less about these letters because obviously we all know what happens at the end. So reading Elizabeth's thoughts and predictions about Henry's death really didn't spark any interest in me─but I suppose that's my fault for being the History junkie that I am. Another thing that bugged me about this novel was how... incest-y it got towards the end. So Elizabeth Woodville's brother-in-law Richard, Duke of Gloucester takes over Kingship after Edward IV's death (Oh, don't act like it's a spoiler, we've all seen the Tudors) and Elizabeth's daughter Elizabeth of York goes to court as Queen Anne's lady-in-waiting. And then Elizabeth and her daughter begin talking about how Richard is in love with Elizabeth of York, and how Elizabeth of York requites his love for her. And that really scared me. Because A) they're 20 years apart, and B)he's her fucking uncle... He's seen her diapers changed, breast fed, naked countless times as a child and bathed. I know interfamily marriage wasn't uncommon in that time, but the age gap really bothered me. I mean, if they were cousins then it wouldn't have bothered me that much because cousins marrying each other was absolutely normal─and even preferred─but it was the fact that he was her uncle... Okay, that was the only judgement I had to make throughout the entire book, so I guess that's a plus. The last thing that bothered me about this book, (As stated by many other reviewers) is the fact that everyone's named Elizabeth, Margaret, Edward or Richard. That was really fucking confusing. At one point I thought Elizabeth was talking about her son when in fact she was talking about her husband (which made me sigh with relieve as she was talking about the sexual desires she was having that involved her husband). I think if the family tree at the beginning of the novel was a tad more extensive this problem could have been prevented.But all in all, I'd recommend this book for anyone whose tired of reading 300 year old History textbooks that smell like death and vanilla─as it is a pretty quick and light read─or anyone who has taken a liking/wishes to take a liking to the show, and would can't wait for the next episode to see/find out if Max Irons has anymore hot sex scenes what happens to the Throne of England.