Q&A with Emma Frost on <em>The White Princess</em>
It’s a bit tricky keeping track of all the Edwards, Henrys and Elizabeths around the time of the Wars of the Roses. “So many people have the same names in this period of history!” says Emma Frost, writer and executive producer of The White Princess. “We call her Lizzie to distinguish her from her mother.” She means, of course, Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, the girl whose marriage to newly crowned King Henry VII was meant to “be the peace that ends the Cousins’ War.”
This Lizzie, however, still loves the slain Richard III and was his lover before Henry’s army killed him at the Battle of Bosworth. Her younger brother, the rightful ruler—one of the “Princes in the Tower” everyone believes dead—was actually hidden away by their mother, leaving Lizzie with dangerously divided loyalties. “How big a price should a human being pay personally for the greater good?” asks Frost.
Based on the historical novel by bestselling author and historian Philippa Gregory, Princess picks up just where the 2013 miniseries The White Queen left off—with the first Tudor king, from a remote branch of the Lancastrian family tree, winning the crown—and Elizabeth of York’s hand in marriage, though he doesn’t want it. “They have good reasons to be enemies,” adds Frost. She spoke to BHT about historical accuracy, “excavating” the lives of women and one of the most dangerously complicated arranged marriages ever.
