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The Red Queen

Margaret Beaufort's patient game for the Tudor crown
Reading guide
This is the second novel in Philippa Gregory's Cousins' War series, so it is best read as part of that sequence, following the story from the first novel.
Margaret Beaufort, widowed in her early teens, plans to place her son Henry Tudor on the English throne. She enters the house of York as a loyal servant and friend, and with the dowager queen Elizabeth Woodville she arranges a betrothal between Henry and Elizabeth's daughter, aiming to end the Cousins' War and found the Tudor dynasty.

Description

Philippa Gregory's second Cousins' War novel follows Margaret Beaufort, a woman usually remembered as stern and pious, through the Wars of the Roses. Widowed young and left with one son, she is determined that he will be King of England, and she works quietly inside the house of York as a loyal friend and servant. The shop description and the publisher's blurb both stress her ambition, faith and patience, and her unlikely alliance with the dowager queen, Elizabeth Woodville.

The story is about divided loyalties and very long games. Readers who like their history told through the women who shaped it will find Margaret's scheming close and absorbing, with the blurb noting that her plans lead to a betrothal that unites the rival families.

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