#gisabel

I just...HAD to draw this lil guy again! 😄

(originally 128x128 pixel size, resized to 1024x1024 for mobile Tumblr)

“George, where is Anne?” Isabel demanded. George only smirked and not answering her.

“George, this isn’t funny!” Isabel raised her voice. “My sister is nowhere to be seen.”

“Calm down, wife,” George laughed. “Anne is fine.”

“Where is she then?”

“She’s in the kitchen peeling veggies.”

“What?” Isabel couldn’t believe her ears. “You make Nan work in the kitchen? Why the hell did you do that? I have to go get her. Anne! Anne!”

Before she could run out, George grabbed her arm and pulled her back. “Shush!”

“George, I can’t leave Anne in such a circumstances!”

“Trust me Bella, I’m doing this for us and for Anne.”

“What do mean?”

Clearing his throat, George said, “Ned just pardoned us after your father betrayed him. He did pardon Anne, but I don’t think the Queen is as forgiving. You and Anne are both heiress to the Beauchamp fortune and although we have not be able to sit on the iron throne like your father promised us, we can still be the richest of all in England if your sister ends up in a convent and not marrying Dickon.”

Isabel raised an eyebrow. “I thought that’s what Anne want, to go join a convent. After what she had been through, I can’t imagine her marrying another man. Lancaster was completely a monster.”

“Dickon might be able to convince her.”

“Sorry George, but I don’t see Dickon is capable of…”

“Of what?”

“Of wooing a lady,” Isabel replied. “Such a reserved man.”

“You don’t know Dickon at all, Bella,” George told her. “I put Anne in the kitchen so that Dickon will never find her. After he gives up, I will escort Anne to a nunnery where she can live in peace rest of her life like how she wants it.”

“You think your little brother will not be able to find her?” Isabel asked. “Father had trained him well. He never gives up on anything.”

“You like to bet?” George challenged her.

“I certainly do,” Isabel replied. “I bet that Dickon will find her but Anne will refuse his proposal.”

“And I bet that Dickon will never find her,” George said. “If he did, Anne would wed him and half of your mother’s fortune will go to him.”

“If I were to win the bet?” 

“Then I will…” He whispered the rest in her ear, which made Isabel laughed out loud. 

George and Isabel haven’t heard from Anne nor Richard for months until King Edward summoned them.

Right before their eyes stood Richard and Anne. 

And Anne’s belly was obviously higher.

Isabel and George were in disbelief. Both had lost the bet.

- Hazel Pierce, ‘Margaret Pole, 1473 - 1541: Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership’

~ Did anyone expect anything different ~ hh. You indulge me my friend ;).

Some Comments: I am picky about it, because like most of us weirdos on here I feel somewhat protective of how my OTP is depicted, but given how it is almost never shown as anything other than a terrible relationship full of abuse and neglect (entirely based on given author’s need to exalt Anne/Richard III in its place or their inexplicable hatred towards Clarence) at this stage my standards are so low I will accept anything that shows the relationship as remotely pleasant. Not only do I read fic/would but I write fic, so one step ahead hehheh. You may have noticed I didn’t pick ‘complicated’ because even though I doubt there were never tensions among them (given what happened historically), the relationship in itself had none of the unconventionalities that would indicate that their feelings were anything towards each other but loving and faithful - they were barely ever apart! This in itself makes it at once unconventional and (given Clarence’s track record at switching loyalties at his displeasure) downright intriguing. I put softly both for my feelings and the circumstancial evidence that indicates that the marriage served as a sort of cushion for both against the visccitudes they would face in their lives. Unhealthily... ok I’m not talking about myself but rather that the marriage itself had also led to severe issues: Clarence spinning out of control after her death, Isabel becoming severed from her family, Isabel losing her child during their crossing into the channel. Like who knows, if they married other people maybe both would have lived longer lives.

The Ship:

Honestly, I harp on about these two loads and I will not write everyone an essay about why I inexplicably like this pairing so much (apart from the fact that I am technically a product of this union lmao). But I’ll still add... George x Isabel is very unassuming from the outside, just a conventional arranged marriage right? Sure, Edward taking great pains to veto it it has the whole forbidden love angle and (according to contemporary commentator: J. de Wavrin in Recueil des Chroniques et Anchienne Istories de la Grant Bretaigne, à Present) he had even briefly put George in house arrest when he was bringing it up (lmao), but it’s not Edward IVxElizabeth Woodville or Jacquetta Woodville x Richard Woodville or the other famous love matches. Without going into its more well-known dramatisation-worthy elements, I will just say that, on objective analysis, it was a union that brought a fulfilment neither would otherwise have had. George’s greatest power and influence came from being Warwick’s political heir and a feudal magnate, not the prince he was from birth. The years (1473-1476) he had spent being ‘good lord’ (beside Isabel) were most likely the only time in his adult-life he had felt any sense of happiness (in the Aristotelian manner of speaking), having his worth confirmed. He was praised heavily by Rous and it was only within those years that he did not make any move for the crown (until Isabel died that is). Isabel had grown up most likely expecting to grow into the greatest lady of the realm, sure most noblewomen did but she was heiress to one of the greatest and richest barons in England’s entire history. Sure, her father and husband rebelling caused the patrimony (and matrimony) to be lost in 1470, but had it not been for those strange circumstances Isabel may have never inherited the humongous share that she did (because she would co-inherit with her cousin Montagu and sister Anne).