#b) we need to stop blaming women to absolve men of their own actions

[heartofstanding]

What do you think of the relationship between Edward III, Philippa, and Alice? Edward and Philippa are a famous loving couple, and what is his ultimate opinion of Alice

Unfortunately, we really don't know a lot about Edward III's personal relationships and what we know about Alice Perrers is so marred by the outrage and scandal at her role that it's hard to assess how true it was so "what I think" will inevitably be subjective and speculative.

Edward and Philippa did seem to have a close, affectionate relationship that was loving and I do think that was the reality. Given the very public and disastrous way that the marriage of Edward's parents had broken down, it's possible that Edward and Philippa worked hard at developing a close relationship. There was likely a degree at which this was consciously projected to negate any possibility of the same criticisms made of Edward II and Isabella of France being levied at them, which largely succeeded.

There's no evidence of any conflict between them beyond Edward's accusation that the Archbishop of Canterbury "spoke separately to me of my wife, and to my wife of me, in order that if he were listen to, he might provoke us to such anger to divide us forever". We don't know what was meant and the fact that Edward placed equal weight on what was said to Philippa about him means we should probably view sceptically Ian Mortimer's claim that the Archbishop accused Philippa of adultery.* It's usually accepted that there may have been infidelity on Edward's part before his relationship with Alice Perrers began. Philippa is usually assumed to have been wounded and distressed by this relationship, but I'm not sure if there's any evidence for this claim beyond extrapolation about how Philippa "must have" felt.

There's a lot we don't know about Edward's relationship with Alice. We don't know when it began, let alone how, or how openly their affair was carried out was during Philippa's lifetime. He does seem to have been reliant upon Alice in some way, perhaps even besotted with her. We know that it the relationship dates to the last years of Philippa's life, when she was increasingly ill and dealing with chronic pain. It's probably reasonable to assume that this meant that Edward and Philippa could no longer have a physical relationship. The relationship with Alice may have begun because of this - Kathryn Warner suggests that Philippa may have even given her blessing for their relationship. It is certainly possible but what exactly went on and how Philippa felt about it (even if she did give her blessing) is not recoverable. It was probably a complex emotional situation - it was a sign

I tend to think, given the favour Edward later showed towards Alice, that there was some kind of attraction and interest that drew Edward to her.

We don't know anything about how Philippa felt about Alice. We know that Alice probably came into contact with the royal court through her husband, Janyn Perrers, who was a goldsmith who provided some service to Edward, and that Alice entered Philippa's service some point before 1366. By Christmas 1366, Alice had apparently left Philippa's service and did not return before her death. Possibly, this was due to her pregnancies (it's believed her and Edward's son, John de Southeray, was born around 1364), where her removal to a more remote location might be to give her a more private environment to give birth in, out of respect to Philippa or to attempt to negate any gossip or rumours spreading about the affair. It doesn't necessarily follow that Philippa hated Alice or was the prime motivator of Alice's removal from court during this time. It could simply be about appearances (and marital unity was a very important theme of Edward's reign) or a decision made by Edward without consultation with Philippa.**

We know pretty much nothing about what Alice felt about Edward, much less what she felt about Philippa. Chroniclers attributed her with a mercenary interest in Edward, keen to manipulate him for her own selfish agenda but these depictions tend to slot Alice into a stereotype and reveal anxieties about the way Alice appeared to be acting as an independent and transgressive woman (both in terms of class and gender) than tell us what she was really like. While it's true that Walsingham, for example, disparaged Alice as an individual while disparaging Katherine Swynford more as an appendage of Gaunt, it probably reflects the fact that Gaunt was almost universally unpopular and Edward was universally popular as well as the fact that Alice was seen to have been an independent agent "interfering" with politics.***

As I've said before, there is a tendency in narratives "unequal matches" between high-ranking men and women of lesser status to depict the man as being seduced by the woman. The reality might have been rather different. The standard revisionist take on these sorts of relationship has to be frame the relationship as a true love match - I've seen this done for Alice in a couple of novels, though not very believably. But more pointedly, Alice was considerably younger than Edward and held considerably less power.**** While we can't say that Alice was definitely coerced, we have to be aware that at the start of their relationship, he held considerable power over her and there is the possibility that their relationship was not one Alice might have necessarily chosen for herself.

Of course, their relationship wasn't static. As Edward's health began to wane, their relationship would've changed. How, we don't know but imho it's likely that the sexual element of their relationship began to lessen. We don't really know what Edward's level of mental acuity was towards the end - there have been theories of strokes and/or dementia and while he probably did have a stroke (which is suggested by his funeral effigy) we don't know how well he recovered from it, if at all, and it might be that Alice did take advantage of him, as chroniclers insisted.

(I don't know if I would necessarily blame her if she did.)

* This is one of two main pieces of evidence Mortimer supplies for his claim. The other piece is that for Edmund of Langley to have been born at full term, he must have been conceived at a time when Philippa was in Ghent and Edward was at the Siege of Tournai. For Mortimer, this has only two solutions: Edmund was born 16 days premature or was the result of an extramarital affair. Firstly, 16 days was not dangerously premature so it is entirely plausible Edmund was legitimate, just premature. Secondly, it's also entirely plausible that Philippa or Edward visited each other during the siege - Tournai is only an hour's drive away or a 14 hour walk from Ghent today - and while there appears to be no evidence of a visit, it's perfectly conceivable that the evidence wouldn't have survived.

** Much of this is drawn from the work of Laura Tompkins. Laura Tompkins suggests it may have been shortly after Alice was widowed in 1361 or 1362 that she joined Philippa's household.

*** This is not to say that Alice was therefore "better" than Katherine because she was a more independent woman but to acknowledge that Alice's behaviour was more visibly transgressive and subject to multiple forms of censure. Similarly, the idea that Katherine was the "better" mistress because her only transgression was her affair with Gaunt is flawed because it relies on upholding misogynistic standards for women's behaviour as the ideal.

**** We don't know when Alice was born. Laura Tompkins guesses it was around 1340 on the assumption that Alice was probably in her 60s at her death in 1340. This would make her around 20 when she first came into contact with Edward, who was around 30 years her senior. Alice was from a family of goldsmiths - respectable, well-off and well-connected - but certainly they held less power than the King of England.

[fideidefenswhore]

There's a tendency in modern fandom to rob Henry of his agency, like saying Anne "lured" or "stole" him as if he isn't responsible for his actions. What I find weird is that seems to have, to an extent, been the idea at the time. A hell of a lot of the Catholic/Imperial faction seemed to get the thought that well, all we do is get rid of Anne and everything goes back to normal. Like Mary and Chapuys act like they expect her to be princess and heir again as if nothing happened and the English Reformation will just stop there and turn back. I just can't get my head round how much people then revered Henry as king but then think he's some weak puppet Anne manipulated and who they can manipulate when she's gone.

Yeah, the thing is that...A) We haven't changed as much as we like to believe that we have, B) Obviously modern analysis of contemporary reports of this period is reliant on these reports, but has the benefit of hindsight (and yet when hobbyists without any background in history simply read these reports absent of any contextualization or expert analysis, they tend to take them pretty...literally? which dovetails into these fandom interpretations), C) That very double negative is the cornerstone of misogyny. Women are ultimately, even supernaturally, powerful but also ultimately powerless/weak, and/or exploit men's weakness, world's tiniest violin.

Misogyny alone is not enough to explain, there's also the political and religious at play with the psychological:

"Anne became [...] 'the evil counsellor.' In spite of Chapuys, the Emperor needed to maintain a civil relationship with Henry for his own purposes. He therefore chose to believe that Anne was bullying Mary (and Catherine) behind her husband's back. In a similar way Mary deceived herself into believing that it was not really her father who was subjecting her to such remorseless pressure, but the wicked woman who had acquired such an ascendancy over him." +

"Her actual contribution to the 'scourge' of Lutheranism [...] was inflated to unbelievable proportions. Chapuys [went as] far as to blame 'the heretical doctrines and practices of the concubine' as 'the principal cause of the spread of Lutheranism in this country.' [This] created [...] a political/religious 'wing' of sentiment [against Anne Boleyn] that was [later] exploited by Cromwell [...] and it was a powerful obstacle in the way of Anne's acceptance by the (still largely Catholic) English people."

For me, what separates is that this subject (although more specifically on the mistreatment of Princess Mary, riffed on that here) is discussed as if it was an untapped timeline, and it's ...not? The events immediately preceding May 1536 do not vindicate or absolve any cruelty on Anne's part; by any means, but what they do prove is that Chapuys was wrong about her being the 'X factor' here, as it were. Once she's subtracted is when Mary's disbarred from succession in much firmer legal language by Parliament. Moreover, the Boleyn downfall was a watershed in court division and factionalism, its aftermath was not a period of 'relative' (or otherwise) tranquility but rather continuance, even amplification, of religious suppression for those that did not adhere to the tenets of the new Henrician 'supremacy'.

Also, let's not underrate the ambition of the 'Marian faction'. They wanted a return to the status quo, yes, we shouldn't discredit religious motivations either, but they also wanted to regain the status and favour they felt they had lost. They were bargaining on the future favour of Mary once she was heiress again, bargaining on the future of Henry having no other children by marriage (so, even Mary as Queen), that's generally forgotten because most of them did not survive to reap (and, arguably, Mary becoming Queen later had very little to do with her faction of the 1530s that had failed upwards, considering especially that Mary was not reinstated into the succession--conditionally, but still--until several years after the Exeter Conspiracy).