The Red Queen Cousins' War 2

Married to Edmund Tudor as a child and widowed in her early teens, Margaret Beaufort is left with one son and a fixed belief that he should be King of England. To bring that about she slips into the house of York as a loyal friend and servant, quietly working all the while for a Tudor triumph, and finds an unlikely ally in the dowager queen, Elizabeth Woodville.

The second novel in Philippa Gregory's Cousins' War series shows the Wars of the Roses through the eyes of a woman more often remembered as stern and pious, and brings her ambition, faith and patience up close. It is a story of divided loyalties and very long games, and it belongs with anyone who likes their history told through the women who shaped it.