Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Michael Hicks' Anne Neville Biography

I’ve been reading Michael Hicks’ Anne Neville: Queen to Richard III, a biography that has excited much outrage among Ricardians, mainly for its description of Richard III as a “serial incestor.”

Hicks’ description is based on Richard’s marriage to Anne, his sister-in-law, and his supposed plans to marry Elizabeth of York, his niece. Although, as Hicks points out, a papal dispensation for Richard and Anne’s marriage has been discovered very recently, it addressed their relationship as cousins, not their relationship as brother-in-law and sister-in-law through the previous marriage of Richard’s brother George to Anne’s sister Isabel. By not having sought to address this relationship, Hicks writes, Richard and Anne were essentially living in sin and bastardizing their son. Though Hicks does “deplore the immortality of the match,” as he puts it, he does later acknowledge that the marriage was “the best possible outcome for Anne,” in light of her precarious circumstances at the time.

I’m no expert in canon law, so I can only say that Hicks’ statement that a dispensation would have been needed to cover the in-law relationship seems correct, especially in light of the fact that Henry VIII would later obtain a dispensation to marry his sister-in-law Catharine of Aragon. (In any case, those who believe that Richard III would not have possibly married Anne without a proper dispensation, thereby jeopardizing the future of his heirs, seem to have no difficulty at all believing that Edward IV married Elizabeth Woodville while he was still married to Eleanor Butler, thereby jeopardizing the succession to the throne.) It may be, however, that Richard and Anne believed that the dispensation they received was adequate.

Richard’s next act of incest, according to Hicks, was his intent to marry his niece. Evidence of this proposed marriage comes from a letter supposedly written by Elizabeth of York herself, now lost, and chronicle evidence that Richard publicly denied wishing to marry Elizabeth. As no marriage was actually contracted, however, and there is no reason to think that Richard would have risked marrying his niece without getting a dispensation, the description of him as a “serial incestor” does seem overwrought. So too does the strange comment in the epilogue that Anne “experienced high society and lots of parties, two husbands, fashionable and expensive clothes, plenty of sex, child-bearing, and lots of admiration and deference.” Though this comment should be taken in context, that of Hicks’ statement that Anne had a “full life,” he has no way of knowing that Anne with her one child had “plenty of sex,” and neither do we. In any case, the sex she had was within the context of marriage, or in what Anne probably thought was a valid marriage. Whoever Anne was—and Hicks reminds the reader frequently that not much is known about her—she was probably not the Paris Hilton-like creature that this passage implies.

Nonetheless, this book is worth reading. Hicks diligently draws together what is known about Anne’s life, and he attempts to consider events as Anne must have seen them from her point of view, though he’s hampered in this effort by the lack of historical detail about Anne and the scanty records of her everyday life. He’s fair-minded, as a reading of the whole book reveals, and those who focus in on his controversial and sensational remarks alone are doing Hicks, and Anne, a disservice.

3 comments:

QUASAR9 said...

Yep, some right royal shannanigans going on or downin history. Even in biblical times the terms for family relations can be confusing.
What does one call the daughter of one's mother's maternal niece or cousin - especially when they are or may be of the same age group.

Bangladeshi families (men) in England marry girls from the same village (or gene pool) back home. Not forgetting some villages can trace their lineage or heritage to the same gret-great-great-grandfather or founder of the village and dinasty.

Incidentally if we are all branches of the same tree, and intermarriage was 'frowned upon' because it was thought safer to diversify the gene pool, have we not gone full circle >>>
ie: we are all fromthe same gene pool, but through travel, a fair bit of killing (slaughter) + geography we 'selected' into ever more 'specific' gene pools, which over the last few centuries with global sea trvel + trade, and air travel since the second half of this century enable us to view 'foreigners' without suspicion and marry across 'races'.

My point being was the ban on family ties or marriage science based or based on religious dogma.

Do we not interbreed or selectively our cattle, and sheep and chickens, which we then absorb into our diets. And do we not selectively breed cute little white bunnies, or dogs for crufts.

I know cloning engenders some of the fears and physiological problems of weakened genes. But incest among humans seems to be more a matter of moral taboo, and the fact that sibbling rivalry doesn't usually make for good bed fellows, pardon the pun.

Apologies for long comment, but it was triggered by reading your post. Q

Carla said...

It must have been quite a job to write a biography of Anne Neville, considering that so little is known about her! This sounds an interesting read, many thanks for the review.

Susan Higginbotham said...

Thanks for stopping by, Quasar 9!

Carla, it was an interesting book. Glad you liked the review!