#eleanor cobham vs historical fiction

[heartofstanding]

I found out that Edith Pargeter (of A Bloody Field By Shrewsbury fame, alias Ellis Peters of Brother Cadfael fame) had written a short story about Eleanor Cobham sometime in the 1950s and managed to get a hold of it in one of those Mammoth Books of Historical Detectives anthologies.

And it’s really, really good.

It’s not how I’d write Eleanor. Pargeter’s Eleanor is a lot more grey, leaning towards dark, and she is very ambivalent on the question of whether Eleanor tried to kill Henry VI via witchcraft. Her Humphrey is also very grey and while we do raise the spectre of Humphrey’s murder, she also raises the question of whether he was guilty of the crimes he was accused of at his arrest.

But the characterisations! Pargeter is just really good at creating characterisations that move me. She’s not trying to write Eleanor as evil and X heroine as the bestest ever or whatever, but just letting Eleanor be morally grey and sympathetic.

Pargeter’s prose is, as always, really good. Below are some excerpts.

The one thing that bugged me is that Eleanor is implied to have been a bastard - I know Jean Plaidy references this in her novel, Epitaph for Three Women (still haven’t read, will soon) - and I’m not sure where it comes from. It doesn’t seem to be a thing in modern scholarship on Eleanor or in Vickers’ biography but ??? who knows.

Humphrey and Eleanor meet for the last time. I’m not crying, you’re crying (I totally cried).

And the final paragraphs, which also made me cry but also does play into the tradition of Eleanor not really dying but continually living

[heartofstanding]

Good historical fiction is SO hard to find. And yes - that’s exactly the problem with Katherine. Gaunt and Katherine are two greatest people to ever bone in the Middle Ages while everyone else just stinks. I hated what she did to Constance of Castile so we don’t feel bad Gaunt cheats on her.

Oh, god, right. I tried to keep it short but utterly failed. So the problem with those books (Joanna Hickson’s The Agincourt Bride and The Tudor Bride) is the writing is really manipulative? Like I could see the way the gears grinding away as the author tried to make the good guys even more perfect and sympathetic and the bad guys even eviler. Our two main characters, Catherine de Valois and ‘Mette’ her peasant-born nurse (...yeah), and our designated One True Love Interest, Owen Tudor, are hit entirely with the perfect stick.

They’re Good People. They’re kind to peasants and fall in love. Catherine is the most beautiful woman alive and clever, steely and capable - the perfect queen. The perfect regent, except those damn English refuse to let her be Awesome. Catherine becomes the perfect mother. They espouse modern viewpoints - marriage should be about love, mothers should breastfeed their own children, swaddling babies is Bad. And there’s a lot of vague stuff about Catherine really being sympathetic to her Dauphin brothers even though they’re often nasty to poor her and omg she would be a better Dauphin than they were.

And almost every woman we meet is awful. Isabeau of Bavaria is still the power-hungry, neglectful, bitchy mother and queen (hilariously, Catherine then cites Isabeau as a reason why France is the Most Progressive (Salic Law? What Salic Law?) and has Strong Independent Female Regents and that’s why England should let Catherine be regent for Henry VI). Catherine’s sister, Michelle, is a bitch for no other reason than the fact she was married into Burgundy’s family and she’s not Catherine, Jacqueline of Hainault is an uppity bitch. The woman in charge of Isabeau’s children leaves them in soiled swaddling clothes and steals their firewood and Mette is the only one who tries to look after them. Whether she’s in France or in England, there’s always One Bitchy Girl in Catherine’s household. Eleanor Cobham’s treatment gets its own rant.

The antagonists are all historical people bashed over the head with the villain stick. In the first book, it’s John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. He rapes Catherine repeatedly and we get the lovely little bonus of finding out that he at first tries to preserve her virginity so he molests her or rapes her anally but then he gets bored so he starts raping her vaginally*. His men are all rapists - Mette is gang-raped by two of them. Neither Mette or Catherine are in any way traumatised by this. Burgundy was a terrible person but he wasn’t accused of rape. It seems this lovely rape little plot exists so we know two things:

poor, perfect Catherine is such a victim and even more perfect because of what she goes through. we should all love her.

Burgundy is an EVIL PIECE OF SHIT

Humphrey Duke of Gloucester is the second book’s chief antagonist and he’s mildly better treated than Burgundy since he only threatens to rape Catherine (right after he insults Hal). But how else we will know he’s the villain without the threat of sexual violence to poor ickle Catherine? Still, Hickson ignores most of the known facets of his personality to present him as a vain, ambitious pretty-boy who sneers at commoners.

And then you have Eleanor Cobham.

*cracks knuckles*

Eleanor is placed in Catherine’s household, as one of her ladies, and she’s been aged down to 13 (her birthdate is typically given as c. 1400 so she should be around the same age as Catherine (b. 1401), i.e. 20). She’s depicted as a bit of a country bumpkin and of common-stock but, of course, Catherine and Mette are the only women allowed to be likeable in this series, so she has a huge chip on her shoulder and is a gigantic bitch. She’s also really into witchcraft and there’s a dumbass subplot where Henry VI is born still in his birth caul and Eleanor steals it for her witchcraft.

I’m actually bewildered that Eleanor is aged down because Mette constantly treats Eleanor as irredeemable while she’s in Catherine’s household. Because that means I get to go “BITCH SHE’S 13". She and her behaviour is Catherine’s responsibility and they just sit there going “oh well she’s evil, pity about that, guess we’ll do nothing”. SHE IS A CHILD IN YOUR CARE. She is your responsibility and you failed her.

Then, even though this is not a historical fantasy novel, Hickson depicts Eleanor as straight-up murdering Catherine via a magic spell. A) Catherine was not murdered, she mentions a “long, grievous malady” in her will and died shortly after the birth of her last child which suggests she either died in childbirth or from a long illness. B) WITCHCRAFT ISN’T REAL. 

In the epilogue, Mette gives us a brief recap of Eleanor’s trial and imprisonment for the accusations of treason, witchcraft and heresy that virtually every historian says were made up to discredit Humphrey, believes them utterly and judges the fuck out of Humphrey for not standing by Eleanor. I’m sorry? He’s evil because he’s not standing by the woman who murdered Catherine, tried to murder his beloved nephew Henry VI and also raped him (via love potions)? What the actual fuck.

(and, like, Humphrey probably had very little choice about standing by her and there are accounts that he was told Eleanor could be pardoned if he attended the 1447 parliament in Bury St Edmunds where he was arrested for treason himself and died.) 

There’s probably a good essay/rant to be written about the ways in which Catherine and Eleanor are paralleled and one is celebrated for marrying below her and living a simple life and one is demonised for marrying above her and trying to move up in life. Because it happens a lot in historical fiction.

also, I really find it… disturbing how Catherine is constantly harping on about how much better it is to live as a peasant. They marry for love. They breastfeed their own children. They keep their children. They get to dig in the gardens. They do what they want. But then she puts on one of her court dresses and jewels is instantly the most glam woman in the room and she should be regent but instead, she’s going to go visit Henry VI and tell him he needs to give her Tudor sons earldoms because god forbid they actually have to live like peasants.

It felt gross and like the author and Catherine were fetishising the lives of the poor. 

* this leads to a hilarious sequence in which Catherine and Mette smuggle in a vial of chicken blood so she can fake losing her virginity to Hal on their wedding night. But then Hal gets drunk and passes out before consummating the marriage so Catherine comes out in a panic all  “ WHAT DO I DO” and Mette’s like “we’ll just put blood on the sheets and let him think he had sex with you” and it works

anyone know if “My lord John by Georgette heyer is worth reading, if only for the lolz?

[heartofstanding]

Searching for more Eleanor Cobham stuff, I stumbled over a historical romance between OCs set in Henry VI’s minority. I was probably never going to like since it seems pretty damn obvious it was about improbably perfect, always victimised characters mushing their faces together with bonus romantic drama.

But like I said, I was looking stuff about Eleanor when I found it and... oh boy. 

From the author’s note:

...I can’t help but feel that “the daughter of a mere knight” is meant to denigrate Eleanor. In addition to being wrong (her father was, in fact, a baron, and probably intended her to marry a baron or lord), it also seems to me to be pretty classist. Like, the general narrative is that Eleanor is a woman of lower-status than Humphrey, thus she had no business marrying him or becoming a duchess and the fact that she did makes her ignorant of her “true place” and also somewhere she shouldn’t be (in the highest levels of society).

So, yeah, pretty classist to me. No need to replicate and cling to it in your historical novel. 

And, ffs, Gloucester didn’t CHOOSE to divorce her. They were forcibly divorced and his behaviour after her disgrace suggests that he wasn’t exactly thrilled with that. 

UGH STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT

where does this stuff about Humphrey being a drunkard come from anyway?!

...

PLEASE STOP PLEASE STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP 

here is the list of people Humphrey definitely banged:

Jacqueline of Hainault

Eleanor 

the mother(s) of his two (2) illegitimate children

here is the list of people who he potentially banged

Jeanne de Warigny (could be the mother of his illegitimate children)

WOW 3-5 PEOPLE WHAT A SLUT

we have no evidence that Humphrey had a mistress during his relationship with Eleanor. NONE. Not even after their so-called convenient “divorce”. 

We have no evidence Eleanor physically harmed anyone. I’ve said it before but she probably had nothing to do with Humphrey’s abandonment of Jacqueline (the real culprit? the Anglo-Burgundian alliance). It remains debatable how true the witchcraft accusations against her were - she may have been no more guilty of turning to folkloric remedies in effort to have a child and this vulnerability was exploited to the utmost.

But sure, she poisoned someone for sleeping with her man~ so badly they can only eat porridge. SURE.

JUST STOP IT.

seems like a totally romantic and loving and not at all toxic relationship between these two amazing OCs

anyway

this is totally gross. I don’t have access to the whole book so I don’t know if there’s another scene where Eleanor date-rapes him but needless to say that the idea she date-raped random men is without evidence except the fact that it was claimed at her trial she’d used love potions to seduce Humphrey into marrying her. Like all the charges at the trial, we have no idea if they were true or not but the only charge we know Eleanor admitted to is turning to folkloric methods to try and conceive Humphrey’s child. 

oh god someone throw her on a bonfire, what an evil woman.

I tend to think that the idea of a love potion was a way of trying to shield Humphrey (who was very popular) from the fallout of her trial as well as totally discrediting her because he’s been under a spell for like sixteen years and so totally untrustworthy!

but anyway, apparently Eleanor date-rapes random men, it’s gross and god people never stop sexualising her do they? 

Since I did this for Humphrey, I’ll do it for Eleanor.

List of people Eleanor definitely banged:

Humphrey 

list of people Eleanor probably or possibly banged

...yeah, I got nothing

guys, I’ll let you in on a little secret. We have evidence of Eleanor having sex with one man and one man only. Spoiler alert cause this is a huge shocker: it’s the guy she married.

now, is it beyond the realm of possibility she slept with other people? sure. we don’t have any evidence she didn’t,  just the same way we don’t have any evidence that supports or denies that she and Catherine de Valois had a rip-roaring love affair. (once again, my urge to write Catherine seducing Eleanor and tying her to the bed to have her way with her because of shitty histfic emerges).

but

the fact is that Eleanor’s reputation as a “slut” has nothing to do with how many people she slept with or her sexual activity. It was about her affair with Humphrey becoming public knowledge (let’s not forget that it was totally normal and expected that noblemen had mistresses, it’s just that they weren’t supposed to get attached and much less marry them). She has been labelled as an overambitious whore for having sex with one guy who she married as soon as he was free to marry.

I can’t.

just

please

for the love of god

can histfic authors leave Eleanor alone.

[heartofstanding]

People writing histfic about Catherine de Valois are just like “highborn women falling in love with lowborn men is so romantic but lowborn women falling in love with highborn men are just opportunistic whores and Eleanor Cobham should’ve been burnt to death”. 

[heartofstanding]

if you heard screams of rage sometime in the past 12 hours, that was me. I decided to look up Eleanor Cobham in a history book I already knew was shitty (Mary McGrigor’s The Sister Queen: Isabella and Catherine de Valois).

First, her name is given as Elizabeth in the index. But no biggie, because this is the book couldn’t even stick to a consistent spelling of Catherine and said Henry V and Catherine de Valois made their entry into Paris in 1520.

Then it’s absolutely vile about her.

And I got ranty.

okay, doing this chronologically. so this author has a hotline to the afterlife and knows, okay, Catherine de Valois’s precise emotional state at any given moment, but Eleanor is only “reputedly beautiful”. *eye roll* And for the record, those kids are in all likelihood not Eleanor’s because SHE WAS KNOWN TO BE INFERTILE. JFC, if she had kids, they would have been legitimised when she and Humphrey married. And no, magic isn’t real. 

Yes, what happened with Jacqueline was really shitty. It is actually a lot more complicated than “he abandoned her to fuck Eleanor” since until their marriage was annulled, he was trying to aid her (maybe not as well as he could have done but he wasn’t just sitting on his arse). The tragedy of Jacqueline’s situation is that the moment Henry V died the attempt to reclaim her inheritance was doomed to failure and politically untenable but neither she or Humphrey realised that. 

Regardless, if Eleanor and Humphrey blatantly had an affair in front of Jacqueline, that’s especially shitty. But we don’t know they did. We don’t know anything about their affair until it was “known” in 1425. Personally, I like to headcanon a polyamorous relationship that went boom due to personal strain (e.g. the difficulty in the Hainault campaign, Jacqueline’s apparent stillbirth in 1424).

And we have very little evidence of Eleanor’s personality. We have NO EVIDENCE that she was mean or ill-tempered. The anonymous chronicler is obviously writing in the aftermath of the accusations of witchcraft which most historians think are bullshit, designed to exploit Eleanor’s irregular position (i.e. a minor gentlewoman who was married far above her station) and her unpopularity. Their marriage might have been viewed as incompatible simply because of the vast differences in their social standings - Gloucester was son, brother and uncle of kings, Eleanor was a knight’s daughter. Maybe we should consider that narrative as classist? 

And we have NO EVIDENCE Gloucester regretted marrying her. He never said anything against her, even during her trial when it would have been expedient to do so. There is no record he cheated on her or took a mistress - even after their divorce. There is an account he went to the parliament at Bury St Edmunds where he was arrested for treason and died in custody because he had been promised a pardon for her. AUTHOR, HE LOVED HER. 

No. This wasn’t “thanks to her position”, this was thanks to the the lack of precedents for trying a peeress for felony and treason. And someone was probably pissed off that they couldn’t kill Eleanor because the law was changed in 1442 so peeresses could be charged with and executed for treason. YAY. 

“merely made to walk through the streets of ‘London like a common prositute’ before being sentenced to life imprisonment under strict supervision”

"merely”

Look, public humiliation and shaming - being made through London bare-headed (some accounts say bare-footed as well, personally I doubt it) - and then life imprisonment is infinitely more humane than being burnt to death or drowned.  But it’s still a horrible thing to have to go through given that Eleanor was likely to be guilty of nothing more than buying fertility potions, i.e. she was guilty of wanting to have a baby.  One (modern) account of her imprisonment states Eleanor had to be strictly watched so she couldn’t kill herself. “merely” my arse.

Also, why did state her penance walk made her “like a common prositute”? Why? (Also: CITE YOUR QUOTATION.) 

And the whole thing reads as “Eleanor totally deserved to be burnt at the stake and die horribly but got off because ‘privledge’” which is disgusting. NO ONE  DESERVES TO DIE LIKE THAT, YOU HORRIBLE PERSON. And if we are want to talk about privilege, let’s talk about the fact Eleanor Cobham has no voice in the historical narrative. Let’s talk about the misogynistic AND classist narratives that regurgitated again and again and haven’t changed much since the 15th century that tells us that Eleanor Cobham was just a slutty commoner who didn’t have the epic romance like Katherine Swynford or the empowering queen narrative like Elizabeth Woodville to mean we have to think she’s awesome-sauce. Let’s talk about the fact that Catherine de Valois is now celebrated for marrying a Welsh commoner for love while Eleanor is a commoner derided for marrying a man far above her status, most likely out of love. 

You know what? I am so fucking sick of authors, especially women authors, pouring misogynistic vitriol or just regurgitating it on women to make their chosen women look better.

Not on Eleanor, but hey, it was on the same page and it made me MAD.

Oh, nice. Nice. 

Catherine’s own will, written by her, states she had suffered a “long, grievous malady” which implies that she was seriously ill around her death. But yeah, let’s ignore Catherine’s own words to follow Agnes Strickland off a cliff and claim that Gloucester forced her into an abbey where she subsequently died of no other cause than being heartbroken (and giving birth, but like, mainly heartbroken). No. I’m going to believe Catherine when she talks about being sick. 

Was Gloucester “cruel” to Catherine? Well, he was a dick to her in terms of making it difficult for her remarry but then he had valid political concerns about it and he was a dick to Owen Tudor after Catherine’s death. It’s probable her Tudor marriage was an open secret and nothing was done until after her death, at which point her sons were sent to Katherine de la Pole (aka Suffolk’s sister and unlikely to be a crony of Gloucester’s), who appears to have looked after them well and encouraged Henry VI to bond with them. Catherine named Gloucester a supervisor in her will, which was written after her entry into the abbey, which suggests if she wasn’t exactly afraid of him or didn’t trust him. If she had felt he had mistreated her, why the hell did she give him a position of authority and trust in relation to her own will?

And, nice work stating Henry “cinnamon roll” VI was down to murder someone without pity or good cause. I mean, he didn’t have a great relationship with Gloucester at this point but like, fucking yikes. 

[heartofstanding]

outliers: we have a podcast on Eleanor Cobham that presents her story in fiction!

me: YAY

outliers: it’s written by Lauren Johnson!

me: ...oh. Her bio of Henry VI was really good but her characterisation of Eleanor’s husband was two-dimensional and she didn’t even mention the possibility that Eleanor wasn’t guilty of witchcraft. 

outliers: 

me: thanks, i hate it.

(you can listen to it here)

[heartofstanding]

if I read one more thing that pits Eleanor Cobham and Catherine de Valois against each other in some way, I’m going to write Eleanor/Catherine smutfic and no one can stop me.

[heartofstanding]

why do so many historical fiction writers see accusations of witchcraft, take them as gospel and run with them?

Philippa Gregory is the obvious example, but I’m thinking of Joanna Hickson who in her straight-historical fiction wrote Eleanor Cobham as a witch who not only is guilty of the historic charges against her but also succeeded in murdering Catherine de Valois via witchcraft. and that’s not even going into the cesspit of “the accused and/or accusers of the Salem Witch Trials were real witches” which makes up 80% of fiction about the trials.

[heartofstanding]

Okay so Eleanor Cobham was imprisoned on the Island of Man, right? The Isle of Man (Ellan Vannin) is one of the six Celtic Nations. When are we getting our crappy Celtaboo novel where Eleanor is involved in Old Celtic Magiks while there?

Is it terrible that my reaction is just, “hopefully coming soon because I’d still read it”? Except probably never because it seems like medieval historical fiction authors only recognise Ireland and Wales as Celtic Nations.

Anyway, I’d expect it to be full of the stereotype where it’s all “Celtic pagans work real magic and are untouched and persecuted but they’re super progressive” and all “eww medieval England is a sexist pisshole ew”. Eleanor would be evil and it’d be up to the Celtic pagans to work their good, real magic and confine her on the Isle of Man and prevent her from... idk, ruling England on her own? Being free? I don’t honestly know what people her expect her evil plan to be especially since Humphrey’s dead within a year of her arrival at the Isle of Man. And then they trap her there FOREVER and the world is SAVED or some shit. 

I’m still waiting for someone to write a ghost story since her ghost is rumoured to haunt Peel Castle. 

[heartofstanding]

reading Stephen Cooper’s Agincourt: Myth and Reality and

In Anne O’Brien’s The Forbidden Queen (2013) the narrator is Henry [V]’s wife and he is portrayed as a marital rapist with a soul encased in ice...

I am so glad The Forbidden Queen is out of print and my chances of reading it are slim indeed.

[heartofstanding]

see the thing is i’m so into eleanor cobham and really want to write a solid, serious novel that explores her life and doesn’t demonise or sanctify her

but i’m also so riled up about stupid chick-lit style histfic novels that villainise her that i want to write a novel in the same style that whitewashes her character and treats the other women in her life as either “support” or “evil bitch”, especially those blandly perfect protagonists from those chick-hist-fic novels.

(catherine de valois, i love you and i’m sorry, but this is what the tudor bride has driven me to).

[heartofstanding]

Bad news, everybody! I got my hands on the full version of this and oh god.

I didn’t read it all, just searched for Eleanor’s name.

1. yes, Eleanor does date rape the OMC. Or at least that’s the story he’s telling. Apparently her “magic potion” made him lose his inhibition and he had sex with her before they even got to a room and then he stayed in there with her for three days.

I just...

a) I really doubt that 15th century England had any type of drugs that could perform like this. Like. We’re talking about a society whose concept of anesthesia could either be useless or so good it killed you and they had a type of magic sex potion that made him keep going for three days?!

b) unless Eleanor was also doped up on this thing, I don’t think she was particularly happy. That said, there’s a whole subplot about her being into ~dark magic~ so she probably did it for dark magic crap.

c) the whole scene in which is this revealed is written about as the OFC gets really mad the OMC had sex with a lady that wasn’t her and it’s like... woman, you’re getting jealous over the fact that he was raped you selfish horrible person.

2. so there’s a scene where an upset Eleanor tells OMC that his love interest is fucking Humphrey and, when he ignores her, actually takes him and pushes open the door and yep, there’s the OFC with a shirtless Humphrey and he really believes the OFC is fucking Humphrey (she’s not ok because Humphrey is gross and she is perfect but neither Humphrey or Eleanor are aware that she has a plan not to fuck Humphrey) and then he fucking turns to Eleanor, puts his hands around her throat and threatens to kill her if the OFC gets a sniffle because of the whole “Eleanor poisons Humphrey’s other lovers” bullshit mentioned in the original post. 

I mean, if Eleanor was into poisoning people she should just fucking kill both the OCs and then the novel might be more interesting.

3. reading shit like this makes me want to write shit where the reverse happens out of spite.

but i mostly contain that urge.

but man.

Searching for more Eleanor Cobham stuff, I stumbled over a historical romance between OCs set in Henry VI’s minority. I was probably never going to like since it seems pretty damn obvious it was about improbably perfect, always victimised characters mushing their faces together with bonus romantic drama.

But like I said, I was looking stuff about Eleanor when I found it and… oh boy. 

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