This Times article has a quaint way of describing Henry VII : “Tall, with striking blue eyes, Henry was the only child of Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, and Margaret Beaufort…”
Striking blue eyes? Well, yes…except that they looked in opposite directions. Which I suppose counts as striking! I’m not so sure about the blue, though. More a murky grey, like the rest of him!
Oh no!!!! Harry was wall-eyed??? I didn’t know that! seriously, Viscountessw, truly wall-eyed? The squint I knew about, but wall-eyes were a convention in the art of his day, (bizarre but effective, look at the work of Bronzino for one particularly avid practitioner of this device) one eye was meant to be imply one’s ‘public’ face, the other the ‘private’ self. I wonder if MB had this trait – is a Beaufort trait?? I’m fascinated.
I once read that Henry was most disconcerting when he looked at someone, because one eye was direct and normal, while the other followed at its leisure. I’ve read similar comments since that first time, including that he probably couldn’t see anything at all out of that duff eye. Come to think of it, that’s probably why he lurked at the back on a battlefield…he could only see half the field! Oh, and he was a coward too, of course. Mustn’t forget that.
Whether his eyes are due to a Plantagenet trait I couldn’t say. I know some of them had slanting eyes, heavy lids and so on, which they put down to supernatural intervention! See https://murreyandblue.wordpress.com/2017/07/01/edward-iii-slanting-eyes-and-the-legend-of-melusine/, but I haven’t read that their eyes didn’t actually work in unison!
I wonder if the odd appearance of Henry VII’s eyes was exaggerated on purpose in his portraits.
Some of the early Plantagenet kings had a drooping eyelid that created a somewhat uneven appearance (as if one eye was positioned higher than the other). The alignment of Henry’s eyes appears uneven in a similar fashion in some of his portraits.
It could just be that he inherited this trait, but the cynic in me wonders if perhaps this was a form of propaganda, especially since the sketch of Perkin Warbeck shows this feature too (the idea being that a drooping eyelid/uneven eyes in a portrait would’ve been suggestive to people of the time that the subject was of Plantagenet descent).
I imagine Henry wouldn’t have objected to reminding his subjects that he had some Plantagenet blood running through his veins; and Perkin Warbeck would have obvious reasons for wanting to imply that he had Plantagenet ancestry in a portrait (whether he actually was a Plantagenet or not). Just a random thought though.
I suppose with a face like Harri’s, being vain in his portraits was asking a bit much of any artist. Making him look like Prince Charming would have been ridiculous. The old phrase about someone “being no oil painting” certaining applied to him. And his character—sour, bitter and cold—didn’t help with his facial expression. You may be right about him wanting to emphasise the droplets of Plantagenet blood in his veins, but whichever way he looked at it, that blood was from an illegitimate source. Bah! Can’t stand the man!
As for him using his looks as a sort of reverse propaganda…nothing would surprise me. He (or his mother) was a past master at such things. I’m sure that between them they could have made posterity believe the Angel Gabriel was a devilish villain. Shakespeare would have written the play….and gullible traditionalist historians would be clamouring to claim it as historical fact.
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Oh, fo cryin’ out loud! Why don’t we call this forum antil-Red Queen or anti-Tudor and be done with it? Henry is getting more screen time than Richard here! So he was ugly and had amblyopia, or maybe even a handicap (blindness) – proof positive that he was pure eeeevilll! Where have we heard that before ?
Some of the photos of Richards facial reconsturction make hi look cross-eyed. Does that mean anything? In the portrait, he definately has a squint. Was that part of his natural expression, or just that the painter was unsilllled?
The vision in my eyes is wildly out of sync, as one is much worse (or better) than the other, so I have to squint one eye closed while doing close work, such as typing. That’s why so may typos in this – at least that’s my story & I’m sticking with it.And I do wear glasses.
FWIW, I think H’s eyes were a sort of slate-color, dark blue-grey. But that may be just the result of the age of the painting. Elizabeth of York’s eyes look brown, but they were more likely blue, by genetics. Even DNA can only give you a probability, not a surety.
Is this a Richard III fan club – which means that nobody will take us seriously – or a Tudor pan club – which is even less serious?
Enough alreadyl!
I don’t think anyone meant to seriously imply that someone’s physical appearance is indicative of their character, Halfwit. It was just a bit of fun, no maliciousness intended (well, maybe just a touch of maliciousness….we are talking about Henry VII after all lol).
I’m sorry if you felt insulted though in any way because of your vision issues (FWIW my vision is terrible too and I’m sure I squint plenty without even realizing it).
I understand your point too about the issues with Ricardians not being taken seriously and I think you’re right to an extent; but we all need a little bit of levity from time to time. I think as long as we’re not broadcasting misinformation (like “Henry VII poisoned Arthur Tudor” for example…umm, nooo, that didn’t happen) than we aren’t doing any harm.
So Tudor-bashing is just good clean fun, and we can all use a good laugh. Sure. And Don Rickles was an equal-opportunity basher – he made fun of everybody – but that didn’t make him the 20th century Oscar Wilde.
This site does promote some serious research. Today’s article on Falkirk did add to my store of knowledge. And I suppose we all have to relax from time to time – but don’t you know that so-called ‘serious’ Tudor historians will use ‘Ricardian fan clubs’ as a tool for Plantagenet-bashing? I can hear them now: “…neurotic….lady novelists….” etc, etc.
Do you really think that having a laugh at Henry Tudor is what truly irks “serious historians” about Ricardians? I tend to think that the issues are much more deeply rooted than that.
As for insults like “lady novelists” or “Brides of Gloucester”….those lady novelists are laughing all the way to the bank and the ” neurotic” Brides of Gloucester are busy finding Kings in car parks. Ricardians haven’t been deterred by insults so far, so why censor ourselves and become humorless now? Who exactly would that be serving? Certainly not the readers of this blog.
into the fray I go, but first a mea culpa. I just posted a long overdue review of Hicks’ swan song on Richard (presumably his last statements on R, can’t imagine he’s going to revisit any of his long held opinions if he didn’t change anything for this one published last year) – I went in fully prepared to shred him, and I could. But I represent, in some sense, ricardians, and after much fuming and rewrites, decided on civility and graciousness. I am capable of that, with halfwit’s comments I have to agree, it’s not a matter of rising above, it’s a matter of recognizing that the other side can do better, because we do better.
Once I put my quill of poison arrows away and decided there must be something Hicks and I agree on, made notecards in hopes for such miracles, I found that inspite of himself Prof. Hicks protests too much. Sprinkled throughout, at the oddest moments, are mini summaries of Richard so searingly positive and affirmative that they could have been written by the most ardent Ricardian!
Will that turn my cold heart to Harry T? Probably not, I pity more than hate him, I never met the man, obviously, and his nature, such as what comes through in the bits that survive our lives, in papers and deeds, do not exactly endear me to him, but if I had my druthers, I would have chosen Richard’s life, brutalities, and brutalized as it was, to the half-life Harry T led. Pity may be worse.
As to the goofing around with portraits and artists, oh trust me, we lie we lie we lie! In Harry’s day, and long after, to displease a patron of power (and dungeons) was to write one’s own appointment with the rack. In the hierarchy of a painter’s creed History and Religious Paintings were at the top, followed by Mythological and Allegorical themes/subjects, somewhere, wayyyyyy down at the bottom was ugh… the detested Portrait. Rife with minefields, it is only in the ‘modern era’ that we think it just fine to be portrayed as we really are, although, please not in photographs! That is what photoshop is for!
Viscountessw, in all honesty, the first review was well over 20,000 words, and it was venomous. I ripped his Bibliography (a travesty), his many errors (my gosh, he claims Coldharbour is L’Erber/Herber!!! Two totally different manors! Good grief, I had vapors over that one; he places R’s other lodging at “Walbrook beside St Paul’s Cathedral” – ummmmm not bloody likely, Walbrook was some 7 streets East of St Pauls! He lists William Tunstall as a ‘councilor’ to RdG! Good grief, in 1473? He wasn’t even that when R was king! He left out entire pertinent details that would have gone a long way to exonerate not only what happened but why on any number of issues – but then, Hicks would have had to write an entirely different book.
as you heard in that one post reply from a richard macarthur (?) the long held stereotypes that R was willfully murdering anyone in his path has not been put aside for sane debate or even rational thought! My biggest regret is that Hicks COULD have written the better biography, he had it within him, those little scattered blurbs, mini summaries of Richard are more thoroughly expressed, in detail, in content, in overall substance, than most Ricardians could ever hope to hear from mainstream writers! And he let it all drift into the ether, allowing the stereotypes to remain… such missed opportunities is sad, or desperate.
well here’s an update,for what it is worth, I haven’t done any reviews for Amazon for a couple years since I started my latest project, most of what I am reading is hardly something other amazon readers would be interested in – or – willing to wait 6 wks for as they usually come from purged UK libraries
ah but how things have changed, I gave Prof Hicks 4 (out of 5) stars, praised his many positive and actually well done sections, I still say his arrangement of R’s life was novel and certainly new for him, or mainstream author. Alas, the review fell to the Amazon censors, banned, rejected for failing community standards. Indeed.
I checked said regulations, hmm, I made no comments or references as to race, no obscenities, no derogatory or sexual content, no phone numbers, no endorsements … what could I have done to horrify the censors? There is one little detail, NO critical comments permitted in regard to (an author’s work). Even ones gracefully put apparently – I did write that I felt Hicks had missed many fine opportunities to revisit many or all of the major issues in Richard’s life. That qualifies as beyond the pale criticism. And likely explains why Hicks’ book, a year after publication, has only 12 reviews.
The rest of us are in the censors outbox.
as to this quandary, I’m not on any other blogs (Richard or otherwise) and I understand not every post elicits replies, I wish they did considering the effort it takes to find and post them. I work in the weeds – and I mean IN the weeds – with the research for my project, so I love the silly stuff, if Richard haters are out lurking here it makes me wonder why we are so much more interesting than their own sites?
Sometimes humor can be appealing, perhaps a light touch, and it is often directed at Richard too (“but his hair looks like an elderly spaniel!” that from the recent post from the comedy troupe – which I loved, one could argue it was kind to Richard, well… maybe) may well persuade the haters where haranguing and copious academic lectures may not? If haters are coming here to laugh and mock and deride us I feel sorry for them, that’s nothing I would do with what time I have, and I would be appalled to do so on one of their sites, I doubt anyone here would be so churlish to do to the Harrys as what is done to ricardians.
I’m sorry to hear about your review, amma. Knowing you, I’m sure you put a great deal of thought into it and you obviously struggled to be even-handed (hence your decision to abandon your first draft in favor of a more temperate approach).
I wouldn’t take it personally though; I know there was an incident several years ago where a pretty vile personal attack against Hicks was posted in an online review. I imagine this may be part of the reason why the reviews are so heavily monitored now.
I have mixed feelings about this type of monitoring. On one hand, I can completely empathize with authors who have been attacked about their personal lives wanting to filter out reviews that could be damaging to them or their families…but part of me still balks at the idea of censoring book reviews.
It’s sort of like throwing the baby out with bath water; reviews that are actually relevant to the author’s work get tossed away right along with the garbage ones. I guess it’s just another case of one bad egg ruining the bunch unfortunately.
Amma, a few years ago I wrote a series of four novels set in the reigns of Richard and then Henry, and involving illicit liaisons. If anyone remembers the Angélique books by Sergeanne Golon, they were the sort of thing my publisher was seeking. Each book to focus on the heroine and a different lover.
The first book immediately fell foul of a squadron of Italian ladies who decided to tear it—and me!—to shreds. Much of what they said about the actual book was incorrect, and they clearly hadn’t read it beyond page 1. For instance, they shouted that I’d ignored a marriage the heroine is now known to have had, when in fact I dealt with it at length and the theme covers various chapters! But these women became very personal and insulting.
Among other unpleasant things I was called a “lecherous old grandmother” and so on. It wasn’t that I wrote LIKE a lecherous old grandmother, I WAS said old grandmother. No two ways. So I complained to Amazon, and a couple were removed, but not all by any means. Those ladies were organised, clearly knew each other well, and followed me to the next book and the next. I was well and truly hounded and abused. I successfully had some comments removed, but never all of them, so I blanked them in the end. For all I know they may still be chewing their carpets, mouths frothing. I just don’t get to see. Peace, perfect peace.
Incidentally, I don’t think I was the only author they had in their sights, because while the furore over my book was at its height, another author, a man, intervened to take a pop at the worst of the offenders. Something to the tune of “Oh, it’s YOU again, can’t you get a life?” I don’t recall the exact words, but that was the gist of it. So I imagine she’s made a career of it.
People seemed determined to misinterpret the book. Even the reviewer for the Richard III Society made a false claim, that my heroine was only fourteen when she commenced the affair. She wasn’t any such thing, she was of age…but she WAS fourteen at the beginning of the book. I complained and they had to publish an apology and correction.Yet again I wondered if the reviewer had really read it at all, or simply judged it on what they THOUGHT was in the coming pages.
Quite why I stirred up such ire in Italy in particular I don’t know, but I certainly attracted the attention of what seemed to be the worst of the Loony Brigade. But the whole point of the series was its unrelenting support of Richard. I wrote it as a love story between two people who really should NOT be in love at all. It was forbidden love that crossed very definite boundaries. Right, given that, the pointed blurb and the fact that I wrote a lengthy Author Note explaining that it was fiction and I had no factual basis for creating such a love affair, I would have thought those who disapproved of such themes wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole. Not so. They seemed to fall upon it with the savagery of the starving. Yes, the book was controversial, but for some people civilised comment flew out of every window in the building.
Well-founded criticism is fine by me (I’ve been writing/published for decades and have been around the block a few times), and there were aspects of these books which didn’t go down well in some quarters, but lies and personal insults shouldn’t be allowed. As far as Amazon is concerned, people should say they disapprove of a book and why, but that’s all it should ever be.
So, amma, what the heck actually floats with Amazon I haven’t a clue. Your review wasn’t anything remotely like those of my rabidly trained foes, it was reasonable, balanced criticism, but you were turned down. Go figure. All I can think is that the rules have been shuffled since my unpleasant experience, but have now gone to the other extreme, censoring the legitimate as well as the illegitimate.
Your Grace (is that the correct form of address for a viscountess?), I have read all four books, and enjoyed them, and reviewed them. . I was not the reviewer who objected on account of Cecily’s presumed age. I must say that, while you by no means whitewashed Henry, you did make him very…hhmmmmmmm … interesting! Sexy as hell!
As a reviewer, I would find it difficult to object on some of the same grounds amma cites, as I don’t know London geography that well.What I look for is 1) errors in grammar, spelling & punctuation; 2) errors in logic; 3) errors in fact, with a certain amount of artistic liscence allowed for, in fiction. An author’s opinion or POV should be open to criticism only when he or she violates points 2 or 3
You know Viscountessw, I do love an underdog, the unloved misfit, the lonely outcast, the misunderstood genius … oh wait, you were talking about Harry, never mind!
all kidding aside. he really was in an impossible situation, wasn’t he? I mean, that seemingly pious, I did everything for you mother, who runs his administration, even organized the nursery, a cadre of men who strategized and paid for his crown, who maintained every detail of staying in power, an army of leeches who expected payoffs (but can’t give them too much! that leash has a generational option to it, daddy stays in the Tower but son or grandson might not), money was probably an issue, as Halfwit has noted, especially if Harry had to overspend on magnificence to present himself as NOT a Tudor (like that name meant anything dynastically) but a Beaufort, and he certainly went to great pains to retrace all of Richard’s steps on his Royal Progress, just had to reenter York in majestic style, so yes, Halfwit, Harry had to erase while also trying to imply he even existed – someone no one knew, well, in Brittany maybe, but in England? I have been too harsh!
well… what to say?! I apologize for the late reply but our college classes are all in a twist (do we attempt in-person, hybrid or just give up and go all online? I have primarily military students, by choice, AF, and they hate online) so as late as July we don’t know what is going on, mea culpa.
First, to Viscountessw, I am appalled that any reviewer would post personal attacks against you and both you and amazon has every right to protect the author(s) from petty and likely ulterior motive attacks. I’m literally stunned at such news.
What Amazon sent to me was I suspect the garden variety “don’t do this and don’t do that” sort of list, as in nothing racially, sexually, culturally, gender, etc offensive. The irony is that my initial draft was a angry one, Hicks HAS all the resources I can only dream of getting my hands on and he doesn’t make use of it? He doesn’t revisit any of his decades old opinions? He doesn’t just pick of the phone or text someone and say, let’s rehash x,y, or z? Well, I calmed down and decided that overall I actually liked, no, LOVED the way he reorganized how he arranged a man’s life, a man I know he has spent HIS whole career with.
And then it just happened. His review was teetering on being a love fest! If only he had used his golden opportunity to just revisit some of those old stereotypes, he had a new and truly inspired framework (which I wrote about), he had as neutral a framework as we will ever see from the mainstream historian, but, sprinkled throughout, Elizabeth, Halfwit, Viscountessw, truly, Hicks added the most insightful, admiring, even astonished mini summaries of Richard anyone could have asked for. I added entire quotes in the review (with page numbers, of course!) to back it up, and taken as a whole, it was easily 90% positive, and at most 10% negative in the sense of what I would have liked him to revisit (the Countess Oxford for one – (this in particular should have been an easy refresh! Back in 1991 Hicks very helpfully, and I did say this, published de Vere’s depositions that he used in the 1495 petition to regain the few properties he had not been restored to after Bosworth).
As to Elizabeth’s anecdote. what happened to Hicks and his grad student is reprehensible – just as bad as what Viscountessw has endured, and pains me greatly. And I can relate – when I was finishing grad school, I came in for my usual meeting with my First Reader to find he had been, “removed.” All his classes removed, all his grad students were taken from him, all his grad classes turned over to other profs, and he was reduced to teaching the Monday morning lecture hall class (ie. 500+ freshman). I was told that he had shown undue attention to one of the female students in his classes. Say what??? I was in all his classes. I was his primary grad student. Who had lodged a complaint of sexual harassment against him? I found no one investigated, and this was a tenured professor. I went to my grad advisor, my second reader, (both women btw) and the head of our Dept, BEFORE I went to the Univ president … I suggested that they might want to speak to others in our class, as we had just experienced a mindless 90 min seminar presentation by a student x, about (I think) Turner (who knows), instead, it was slide after slide after slide of printed material where the painting or watercolor was located, in what collection, its dimensions, ie. its provenance (as we like to say), oh and dates of acquisition. And then the next slide, quick view then 10 minutes to hear about where it was now located, and its dimensions, and its date, or assumed date of creation … let’s just say that is NOT what the seminar paper was supposed to be about, I nearly walked out, I had research to do, on any given day I would be in either Princeton’s libraries or at Penn but I sure as hell did not need to waste an entire morning listening to that nonsense – I will say my prof, always a calm dude anyway, merely suggested to her to “in the future reserve such material for a handout” – that’s it. We wanted to toss her out of Ritter Annex’s window, but he said this in public, and in my opinion student x got off easy. But I suspect she got her revenge.
I haven’t thought about this incident in ages, not until Elizabeth’s comments about what Hicks and his student went through, my first reader mysteriously reappeared the next week, all his grad classes were returned to him, etc, as if nothing had happened. Students must have filled in the profs I spoke with and given them an earful!
Had I known what Hicks and his student had gone through I would never have even considered a review, too toxic an environment, but it does explain why there are only 12 of them, for a man’s entire career to elicit but 12 reviews? Cute cat trick books engender 1000’s of reviews … and in truth, Hicks does truly admire Richard, even if he can’t bring himself to nudge those stodgy millstone stereotypes out of the
way. Quel dommage, both Richard and Hicks deserved better.
That may be what he said, but his mother was descended solely through an extramarital line and his father was either the same or of no English royal descent at all.
He was too busy hiding behind a pike wall to slay anyone and was just fortunate that someone else slayed Richard, the “elected” (Gairdner) king, before he could reach Henry.
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