#jacobcollinslevy

Meet The Cast Of The White Princess:  

Jodie Comer as Elizabeth of York, the Queen of England

Jacob Collins-Levy as Henry VII, King of England, her husband

Essie Davis as Dowager Queen Elizabeth, the Queen's mother

Joanne Whalley as Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, the Queen's paternal aunt

Michelle Fairley as Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby, the King's mother

Suki Waterhouse as Cecily of York, the Queen's sister

Rebecca Benson as Margaret Plantagenet, the Queen's cousin, sister of Edward

Rhys Connah as Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, the Queen's cousin, brother of Margaret

Vincent Regan as Jasper Tudor, the King's uncle

A Quote From The White Princess Season 1 Episode 5 Review “Traitors”:

“You Came Here To Destroy Your own Grandson’s Day, You Are Not My Mother.”                                                                                                  ~ Jodie Comer as Elizabeth "Lizzie" of York, the Queen of England.

Quotes from Season 1 Episode 1 ″Hearts and Minds”:

Michelle Fairley as Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby, the King's mother.

The White Princess Season 1 Episode 2

"Hearts and Minds" (SPOILER ALERT)  Lizzie’s doing a really good job of making Henry think that she’s kinda into him, but she admits to her mother that her smiles are as fake as Cecily’s kindness. “If I have to hear about his years in exile one more time, I will choke him with the pheasant eggs he has such a taste for,” she says, teeth gritted together in a pleasant smile. In a private moment, she and the dowager queen brainstorm about who might still be loyal to the Yorks and/or willing to foment revolution against the Tudors.  All of this takes place as Margaret and her crew of dour-faced gentlemen plan a royal tour that will parade Henry and Elizabeth all over England in a show of unity. They plan to be gone for eight weeks and to avoid York, until Lizzie steps in and makes Henry feel like a wuss for avoiding the last stronghold of opposition against him. (She, of course, wants to make contact with Frances Lovell, the man she and her mother have deemed “the whitest, purest York”.) So Henry makes a point of telling his mom that they’ll go to the town, because “I will not have them thinking I’m afraid.”  But then Margaret forbids her future-daughter-in-law from going on the trip, citing the baby and danger and blah blah blah. So Lizzie’s mother happily steps in… but Margaret don’t play that! So she locks the dowager queen in a room in the castle — having outed her as planning to spread the word to her sympathizers on the road — and has the visiting Bishop keep an eye on her.

When the royal entourage arrives in York, Lovell skulks in the crowd until he can get close enough to the king — and then he stabs him in the arm. Another man shoots an arrow. A melee breaks out, and the guards hustle Henry into a nearby church or something while Jasper and his men take off after Lovell. They track the attacker to a camp, where his friends close ranks, and Jasper soon realizes that they’ve got to retreat or it’s going to get very bloody. (Interesting, though, that he later tells the king that they “lost” the assailant in the woods.)  Henry is pretty sure that Lizzie set up the entire ambush, so he writes a letter to tell her so. Meanwhile, Margaret thinks they should ride to Scotland and offer the single king of Brigadoon-land Elizabeth’s hand in marriage. Henry is all, “That’s a great idea… if we want Scotland and the Yorks to unite and overthrow us!” What he actually says: “If you spent less time flirting with my Uncle Jasper, perhaps you might give better counsel.”

Back at the castle, a bored Lizzie quickly becomes aware that her mom is being held captive elsewhere in the building and that the people are dying — and rapidly — of a mysterious, plague-like illness. Pretty much everyone just wants to hide in the castle, except for Cecily, who wants to hide in the castle while wearing one of those Eyes Wide Shut plague mask thingees.  Lizzie is incensed, arguing that they have the gold and food that the people need, so they should give it to them. After she incites some guards to help her break down the doors to the treasury, she demands that the bishop tell her where her mother is. “She is locked in this palace, and you will tell me where,” she threatens, “or I will push this child from my body right here on the floor, and we will both bled to death and it will be on your head.” I think the moment I go all in on this show is when Lizzie then stands there and pretends to push the baby out of her womb while the horrified religious man watches.  As the mom-to-be grunts and strains and turns colors, I realize that this is possibly the only time in human history when an old man’s total ignorance of female anatomy has worked in a woman’s favor. “God will judge you for your sin,” the bishop spits at her, but he releases her mother, nonetheless.  After a brief reunion with her mom — who is elated that people are dying, because she hopes they’ll blame the fast-moving illness on Henry — Lizzie realizes that she and the dowager queen have different priorities now: Mainly, Lizzie doesn’t want Henry to die, just to be unseated from the throne and maybe tossed back to where he came from.

In The The White Princess Season 1 Episode 3 “Burgundy” We Finally Met Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy That Completes The Female Cast:  

Rebecca Benson as Margaret "Maggie" Plantagenet, the Queen's cousin, sister of Teddy

Suki Waterhouse as Cecily of York, the Queen's sister

Jodie Comer as Elizabeth "Lizzie" of York, the Queen of England

Joanne Whalley as Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, the Queen's paternal aunt

Essie Davis as Dowager Queen Elizabeth Woodville, the Queen's mother

The White Princess Season 1 Episode 4

“The Pretender” (SPOILER ALERT)  It's a tough competition, but if forced to decide who is a more terrible mother-in-law, I'd have to go with Margaret Beaufort.  Elizabeth may be out for Henry's head, but it's not really personal. It wouldn't (and didn't) matter who was on the throne, as long as she had even the faintest hope that her son was alive, she'd be planning a coup.  Had Richard III lived, he'd be the one she was unseating. It makes her a terrible mother, since her plan was always to marry Lizzie to the winner of Bosworth, but as a mother-in-law generally, she's almost tolerable. If Lizzie's husband wasn't on the throne, she'd have no problem with him.

But Lady Margaret was always going to butt heads with her daughter-in-law. Lady M's long separation and just-this-side-of-creepy attachment to her son doomed any woman he married to a hellish relationship with her.  The fact that Lizzie is a York only makes things worse for her. Margaret has long blamed the York's for every evil in her life, as erroneous as that may be. Certainly the Yorks had nothing to do with her marriage at twelve years old, and can only be partially blamed for her initial separation from Henry.  Throw in a Margaret's not so secret desire to wield the power of Queen, and things were doomed. If you thought having to listen about to passive aggressive housekeeping or child rearing tips was bad, at least your mother-in-law isn't plotting to have your mother killed.  You know, after she already had your brothers murdered. 

One of the things that intrigues me about this portrayal of Margaret Beaufort is that her scheming so often has the opposite effect of what she intended. She gets what she wants eventually, but she doesn't always get there by the most direct route.  Take the whole situation with Teddy. What, really, would have been the harm of keeping him at court? It actually seems like it would have been the smart move; not only would it prevent an impersonator leading an army, but it would be clear to all that he wasn't capable of taking the throne.  And with his kind of simplicity, kindness towards him would earn unending loyalty. It doesn't seem like it's be so hard to convince him that he doesn't want to be king.

So Lady Margaret's "plot" to incite a riot gained her nothing, and actually put Henry in an even weaker position. And she only did it to spite Lizzie. She's really just so terrible at playing the long game.  She's just as bad in her personal life -- she gave up the eventual possibility of marrying Jasper Tudor for the more expedient option of Lord Stanley.

Poor Lizzie is the one currently bearing the weight of Lady Margaret's impulses, with Teddy imprisoned, her sisters and cousin auctioned off, and her mother turning against her.  While Cecily has always felt slighted by Elizabeth, Lizzie was her favorite (of the girls), her coconspirator, the carrier of hopes and dreams. With her mother's betrayal, she has lost her anchor, she is suddenly left to survive on her own.  Jodie Comer is owning every scene she's in because she's able to portray Lizzie's internal conflict so well. It helps that, as the protagonist, she gets the best lines, but she brings them to life, and conveys so much with just a look.

It's a little ridiculous how thick Henry is, how blinded he is by his paranoia. Honestly, I don't know how Lizzie could come to feel anything for him when faced with his unrelenting suspicion and constant accusations. Stockholm syndrome, perhaps?  It's baffling to me how he could show compassion to Lambert Simbal but not to Teddy. It seems the kings of England are constantly trying to find the balance between being too forgiving of traitors and too harsh on them, and they never quite get it right.

At least Henry seems to finally be coming around to taking charge of his own life. Maybe it's fatherhood, maybe its being faced with damning other children the way he himself was damned.  Maybe he just wants to be able to get it on with his wife without his mother walking into the room.  Whatever it is, our story is on an upswing -- for now. And it seems that Lizzie and Henry will have a few years of respite before their lives are upended by their mothers once again. But does a longer calm mean a bigger storm is headed their way?