The White Princess

Based on the 2013 novel by Philippa Gregory, this 2017 Starz-aired eight-episode miniseries continues with the struggle for the English crown in the 15th and early 16th centuries, a story that began in the 2013 predecessor The White Queen (VL-5/14). That earlier series centered on the Wars of the Roses from the 1460s to the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, in which the Yorkist Richard III was defeated by the Lancastrian Henry Tudor. The White Princess follows events up through 1499, when the last two serious Yorkist claimants to the throne were executed and the Tudor dynasty was secured by the betrothal of Princess Catherine of Aragon to King Henry VII's eldest son Arthur. The narrative focuses on Elizabeth of York (Jodie Comer), niece of Richard III, compelled to marry Henry (Jacob Collins-Levy) as a means of uniting the realm, illustrating how she grew increasingly supportive of her husband despite the suspicions of his manipulative mother Margaret Beaufort (Michelle Fairley) and the efforts of her own mother (Essie Davis) and aunt Margaret of Burgundy (Joanne Whalley) to dethrone him, the former by magic and the latter through military force. The series is more soap opera than Shakespeare, and it traffics in some generally discredited speculation (that Elizabeth had been in love with Richard, for instance, and that Perkin Warbeck, the second pretender backed by Burgundy, was the younger of the princes killed in the tower by Richard). But it is surprisingly entertaining. Recommended. (F. Swietek)