The White Queen -The White Queen

Grafton Manor, Grafton Regis, Northamptonshire, England, Spring 1464

I can still remember the first time I went to Grafton. I was only 13 then; a young girl with no clue about what her future had in store for her. But life changes. People change. Your own self changes with those circumstances. Now I find myself the queen of England, though I am not crowned. My husband is ordained by God, or so they say, though I as well as everybody else in the country knows that it matters not who God favors in England but whom the people feel they must rise for. The person who rules with the support of the people is truly the king in this country and my husband simply has more support than the other king that they say rules this land, my great uncle Henry or to his Lancastrian supporters Henry VI, King of England. 

What I find more and more now is that England is a godless kingdom. There is no divine power that intercedes on anyone's behalf; you are simply on your own. I learned that when I was not yet a teenager and was brought to this country with the intention of taking the throne one day. Now I am the wife of the king and the heiress to the Duchy of Burgundy and I find wherever I go that I am either loved or hated. Perhaps I once was conscious of it, but now I am not. I simply have too much to think about to make that the center of my attention. It would be too vain to do so, especially with the danger that my family faces every day. 

I am riding through the hills of Northamptonshire with my husband and my children to form an army. We already have about half of it riding behind us; 3500 men and we plan to meet up with John Neville, now the Baron Montagu, and his army, about 2500 men, in order to scare away the Lancastrian advance up north led by the now disgraced Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset, the husband of one of my greatest friend and companion Ippolita Della Rovere, who is now locked in the Tower of London with her children for their safe keeping till we can put down this rebellion that her troublesome husband has aroused. 

But there is another reason, a reason far more personal, that I have decided to take our route through the small town of Grafton Regis, Northamptonshire, a rather unimportant place on the way to everywhere. A reason that lies deep beneath my past. A reason that I have never truly been able to forget.

While I do my best to forget about my Lancastrian royal cousins, Queen Margaret and King Henry and my godson, their only child, Edward, I have never been able to forget my other English cousins. 

I guess you really couldn't call them cousins. Jacquetta and I are six cousins once removed or twice removed, I can't remember which. Virtually not related, but my unexpected voyage to England changed all that when my great grandfather, the Duke of Burgundy, went hunting for suitable relatives that might mentor me at the English court. Jacquetta looked like the perfect option. She was once the wife of the heir presumptive to the English crown and then shocked all of Europe when she married Sir Richard Woodville, a knight and soldier that worked in her first husband's household after his death.

A disgraced relative living in England might not have been my great grandfather's first choice for a proper guardian, but he didn't have many options. Jacquetta became a mother figure to me, especially in a time where I was in desperate need of one after my own mother's death. She taught me everything I know and even showed me how to use the gifts I inherited from the water goddess Melusina, who is the ancestress of all members of the House of Luxembourg. She put her life on the line in my defense several times in order to spy for my husband and I during the Civil War that ripped England apart and now I find that I must repay her and bring her family back to court. 

The truth is I am as scared for her as I am for myself. My relationship with two of my most key and pivotal in-laws, the Earl of Warwick and my mother-in-law, the Dowager Duchess of York, has broken down considerably in the three years of my reign as queen. With both of them mounting a coalition of their own at court against me, I find that I am in desperate need of allies and bringing the Woodville's back to court would be a perfect way to counterbalance the Warwick faction within the York party.