#I think that Margaret has the most meticulous thought-provoking and thorough analyses by historians

[wonder-worker]

Analyses on the propaganda faced by Elizabeth Woodville during her life are actually so subpar and lacking, tbh. Slanders and accusations against her are either reinforced and reiterated or (to a lesser extent) debunked and dismissed; but they are rarely if ever properly examined as tools that constructed a narrative around her, and how that narrative actually framed her. Most examinations I’m reading are so incredibly generic and limited. Lot of times, people don’t even recognize the propaganda against her for what it is, and this includes several of her own well-known historians. If it is acknowledged, it’s usually stated matter-of-factly with its “meaning” taken for granted. Other times, it’s regarded as purely politically-motivated, ignoring the inherently political nature of all propaganda and how it is always reflective of the societal beliefs and biases of its period. Often, Elizabeth is absorbed into general discussions of her family rather than examined in her own right. Other times, she is deprioritized in favour of analysing what was being said about her husband. Both of these approaches are fundamentally misleading: it was Elizabeth who was always placed front and centre when it came to slanders; she was the one primarily framed as an instigator and disruptor.

I didn’t really realize how frustrating it was until now, when I’m trying to answer an ask on it but can’t find any concrete, thorough examinations on the same. Arlene Okerlund, David Baldwin, Susan Higginbotham and Gemma Hollman are all frustratingly generic and matter-of-factly rather than analytical. Baldwin, Higginbotham and Hollman uncritically ascribe to the popular idea that Elizabeth “usurped” Richard of his Protectorate; Baldwin even believes that she plotted against Henry VII and her own daughter and was imprisoned for it. Derek Neal doesn’t discuss or even mention the contemporary propaganda she faced at all in his analysis of her queenship. A.J Pollard, despite the fact that his “Elizabeth Woodville and her Historians” chapter dedicated to examining the propaganda against her, completely ignores how she and her family were slandered and degraded by Warwick and jumps straight to Richard III’s campaign against her, even though lots of Richard’s amplified defamations were inspired by Warwick’s; his analysis is thus very incomplete and fragmented. Pollard also traces the rise of her femme fatale image to the 18th century when in fact it was prominent from the 16th century (eg: Vergil in the 16th century? Habington in the 17th? Etc, etc), and when its basis lay in the slanders she suffered during her life - this isn't highlighted nearly as much, and it's led to a host of historians uncritically repeating Pollard's assertions without actually double checking with the actual sources that Pollard has in fact gotten wrong. John Leland, in his chapter “Witchcraft and the Woodvilles: A Standard Medieval Smear” (which I assumed, judging by the title, would analyse how the rhetoric of witchcraft was used against them) literally ends up arguing that actually, Elizabeth did use “astrological magic” against Richard III and that Richard’s charge against her was “at least partially true, and less likely to have been a purely political invention”, meaning his violent and defamatory reaction to them was “natural”; he also argues that it’s plausible for Jacquetta to have “used image magic” to enable her daughter’s marriage to the King.

Lynda Pidgeon is all over the place: apart from her disingenuous claim that the Woodvilles’ status “was not really an issue” (tell that to the classist propaganda against them, or the fact that Croyland and Mancini and Waurin noted how people were opposed to Elizabeth for her ‘humble’ origin, or the fact that she objectively WAS the lowest-ranked queen prior to her marriage till date which DID affect how her actions were perceived), Pidgeon is also incredibly assumptive and tends to minimize the impact and power of Elizabeth and her family in the name of defending them (particularly in the immediate aftermath of Edward IV’s death: her claim that “chronicles writing shortly after Edward IV’s death suggest that the real power around the throne belong to men such as Hastings” is very clearly contradicted by the very chronicles she references). Her view on Mancini is overly simplistic, seeming to think that he “exonerates” Elizabeth even though he literally does the opposite, emphasizing her “humble birth”, how she stole the treasury, how she usurped Richard’s protectorate, how she murdered Clarence and drove Richard away from court, and how she “controlled” the kingdom and the king. A complex examination of how Mancini was simultaneously aware that Richard was slandering the Woodvilles while unwittingly and unknowingly absorbing the propaganda himself is nowhere to be found in her work. Pidgeon also seems far less interested in examining Elizabeth in her own right and instead spends longer detailing how the propaganda she faced was similar to Margaret of Anjou’s (a simplistic and limiting statement in itself: the slanderous propaganda both queens faced was not unique to them or their time but was instead very common and convenient rhetoric against medieval women; comparing them purely to each other is very limiting) In any case, the comparison is wildly misleading: Elizabeth and Margaret were both accused of certain “standard” defamations but their differing status and nationality, along with the accusations of witchcraft attributed to Elizabeth, make the framework of the propaganda they faced very different. Pidgeon’s statement “such slanders were required to meet political necessity” is accurate but nonetheless misleading: making the propaganda Elizabeth faced out to be purely politically motivated utterly disregards the misogynistic and classist culture it reflects and taps into, which deliberately sought to shape her reputation as we know it. It also ignores that Elizabeth, due to her comparatively lower status, would be – and was – vulnerable to a very different kind of propaganda than any of her queenly predecessors. It also ignores the fact that while they may have had some similar slanders, the effect was drastically different and significantly worse in Elizabeth's case (eg: both were accused of adultery, but Margaret was accused through rumors while Elizabeth was formally declared an adulteress in Parliament, the first Queen of England to have been declared so. All ten of Elizabeth's children were also officially bastardized, something Margaret's son was decidedly not. It's not the same thing, y'all).

J.L. Laynesmith is comparatively better, but even she is very inconsistent and selective: she examines some aspects while attributing others to gossip, politicking or the assumptions of “later writers” rather than contemporary ones. In “The Last Medieval Queens”, she spends pages dissecting how negative perceptions of Margaret of Anjou’s foreign family impacted her image through the lens of xenophobia but does not afford Elizabeth the same analysis in terms of how her gentry family impacted her image through the lens of classism, instead highlighting their positive practical effects in court. It’s an entirely different line of analysis altogether that gives readers a very misleading impression. Similarly, in her chapter “Telling Tales of Adulterous Queens in Medieval England”, while she mentions the fact that Elizabeth was accused of bewitching Edward IV into bigamy/adultery, she only spends a few short paragraphs on this and ultimately even those centres around Edward IV (even though Elizabeth is clearly framed as the instigator by the Titulus Regius itself), a sharp contrast to her pages-long in-depth analysis on the defamations faced by Margaret of Anjou. For Margaret, Laynesmith’s analysis is focused on the social culture of the period and how it tied into her actions; for Elizabeth’s, it’s merely regarded as the political “rhetoric of dispositions” and is thus not analysed beyond that. It’s odd, and I wonder if it's because there was a legality to Elizabeth's situation that wasn't present with her predecessors? Edward of Lancaster and Edward IV were both rumoured to be bastards, but Elizabeth Woodville's children were legally bastardized. Several former queens and noblewomen (Margaret of Anjou, Cecily Neville, etc) were accused of adultery; but Elizabeth was legally relegated to the position of an adulteress and concubine by a statute from Parliament. The sexual accusations she faced were "officialized" in a way that they simply weren't for any English queen before her, and so I think that in the process of debating whether the legal accusations were true or not, the social accusations - namely, the misogyny and classism - are overlooked. I've noticed something similar for Eleanor Cobham: both women had similarly anomalous and comparatively lower statuses, and both were deposed in a manner that was unprecedented. Yet it's mostly the "political" angle that's emphasized in both their cases, when it should be the opposite - they were the ones who suffered the most extreme effects of contemporary slanders, when the law was used to turn the rumours against them into devastating realities. As far as queenship goes, Elizabeth's in particular needs to be emphasized more because it fundamentally broke the pattern of slanders uses to condemn queens and set a whole new horrifying precedent (ie: official accusations).

Katherine J. Lewis's epilogue in "Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England" is by far the most ignorant and ridiculous of them all. Apart from the fact that her primary source is Commynes (who all historians agree is highly unreliable and caricatural when it comes to English affairs) and the fact that she spends a disturbing and frankly disgusting amount of time talking about Edward IV's weight, her analysis on Elizabeth Woodville is terrible. It's not the focus of her book - thankfully - and it's understandable that she wouldn't be analyzing her in depth, but what she does say is bizarre. She mentions the unconventional aspects of Elizabeth's origins, but completely divorces them from her queenship and how it was perceived, instead writing that she was merely "accepted" by the nobility and that she fulfilled "the role of the beautiful, submissive and fertile wife with distinction." (Not only is this a vague, gendered, dismissive and tasteless way to talk about any historical woman, it completely ignores the political and public aspects of queenship and the unusual governing authority Elizabeth was given - yes, even compared to Margaret. But what do I know?), and that "Edward could demonstrate that his rule comprised a restoration of the gendered norms which had been so damagingly inverted by Henry and Margaret." This is ... a very odd statement to make, imo. Apart from the fact that Edward IV's mother was literally described as being able to "rule him as she please(d)" in the early years of his reign, and the fact that he married a woman "whose origins broke all established conventions for English queenship" (which would have certainly NOT given anyone the impression of a restoration of gendered norms lmfao), Lewis's analyses completely ignores the gendered and classist criticism levelled at Elizabeth by her own enemies and detractors during her tenure as queen consort and dowager queen. Elizabeth was framed as a transgressive and aggressive woman; her and Edward's marriage was viewed as unconventional with her being accused of "controlling" and ruining both her husband and the kingdom; female authority was also criticized with her ("As for the government of the kingdom, he (Edward V) had complete confidence in the peers of the realm and the queen" / "It was not the business of women but of men to govern kingdoms ... let him place all his hopes in his barons"), etc. Lewis's examination primarily revolves around perception, so I fail to understand why she seems utterly ignorant of how Elizabeth was perceived? Both Margaret and Elizabeth's reputations were primarily shaped by propaganda + political circumstances rather than reality, after all. The differences were: the angles they were judged by that were interwoven with misogyny (classism & witchcraft/xenophobia), the fact that Elizabeth's Woodville family were slandered and destroyed right along with her, and the legality of the accusations against them (both were subject to rumours of sexual impropierty, but in Elizabeth's case, they were turned into legal realities, an unprecedented humiliation that none of her queenly predecessors had to endure) Similarly, Lewis focuses on how the Titulus Regius frames Edward and completely ignores how Elizabeth is the one framed as the instigator of sexual misconduct and tyranny: she bewitched him. Bigamy is the effect; Elizabeth and Jacquetta's witchcraft is the cause. It's odd that the propaganda, false accusations and misogynistic perceptions against Margaret are all thoughtfully analyzed; but the propaganda, false accusations and misogynistic perceptions against Elizabeth are ignored and disregarded entirely. Obviously, Lewis's book is not about the Yorkists, she is under no obligation to write a thesis on any of them. But then...why bring them up at all? Idk. Like I said, the propaganda used against Elizabeth tends to get dismissed entirely by some people which is extremely misleading when it comes to her actual life experiences. Idk.