Cecily: An epic feminist retelling of the War of the Roses

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The Yorkist propaganda that Edward of Lancaster was a bastard is made fact but at least rather than being “evil slutty Margaret has an evil affair”, it’s depicted as something she had to do to survive so Garthwaite gets a lot of points for not using it as another way to denigrate Margaret.

There are two possible reasons for this: a) I have a bit more of a sense of the backstory that went into this book (thanks to the afterword and the talk I attended on Zoom with her and Laynesmith) and it made me appreciate some aspects of it which I might not have otherwise - or at least understand them. Gloucester's characterisation felt especially off to me, because there really is no reason for him to have been such a villainous character. Cecily was a pivotal figure being Duchess of York and mother of two kings ( Edward IV and Richard III and grandmother to a third ( Edward V).

The main characters, Cecily and Richard, were on the one hand recognisable as modern people , for example that Richard was an administrator who would have preferred to run a manageable company (Ireland) rather than engage in endless “takeover bids“. I’m not named after a famous Cecily from history of fiction, but after my maternal grandmother, who died in a car accident when my father was in his teens. Everyone else I’ve read, tries their hands at medievalising their plot through prose but roots all their other aspects such as characterisation and plot arcs into their times and have failed imo. She’s a shrewd judge of character and circumstance: she knows what to do to manipulate any particular person, supplies timely information (sometimes deliberately false: “ It’s true if men believe it. It was all thanks to one of her schoolteachers who insisted on the importance of considering that the actors in history were people with emotions and individual minds, and that when considering past events, it was crucial to try and understand the motivation behind the actions of these notorious doers.

I’m not arguing he should be their spotless BFF but at least somewhat sympathetic and liked by them.In the end, she decides to go to the king to plead for her husband’s life, and if too late for that, for her children’s and her own. And what a novel - it's beautifully written, full of carefully crafted and realistic-feeling characters, chock full of tension and intrigue, and ever-atmospheric as it chronicles the merciless ebb and flow of fortune of its titular heroine. I’ll say it again - too often authors not particularly well versed in the cultural-literary-artistic side of this era, try their hand at constipated purple prose in an attempt to create atmosphere. Afterwards, when Richard is held as a prisoner, Cecily’s first instinct is to lead an army along with her ten-year old son Edward to gain Richard’s freedom, to “show that barren queen of bitches that I have a son. The sack of Ludlow is presented as incredibly traumatic and harrowing while the Yorkist victories are remarkably bloodless.