The New Murrey and Blue blog

The following review extract is from this link :-

“….They might be united by blood, but in 1459 England’s royal family of Plantagenets and Nevilles are being torn apart by an internecine war. Cecily, Duchess of York, is embroiled just as deeply as her husband, Richard Neville, in a plot to topple the weak-minded Henry VI from the throne….”

So, Proud Cis was married to Richard Neville?????? Wow, she slipped that one below the radar! I wonder if the Duke of York knew? And I wonder which Richard Neville it was. For instance, there was the great Kingmaker as well as the 5^th Earl of Salisbury, but Proud Cis was definitely married to the very royal, very Plantagenet Richard, 3rd Duke of York! And she wasn’t even the only Cecily Neville, because there was a Duchess of Warwick of that name as well, and she was both Proud Cis’s niece and sister of the Kingmaker! Are you still with me? Because I’m not even sure I have it right.

Anyway, to find out more about the Duchess of Warwick (thats Proud Cis’s niece) see this link.  

I could go on, but as you’ve gathered, the mish-mash of all those Nevilles and their family connections creates a bit of a minefield. However, giving the Duchess of York’s maiden name to her proudly Plantagenet husband is an unnecessary blooper which I’m sure will give the cringes to the excellent author of the above book. The mistake certainly won’t be Anne O’Brien’s, but suggests to me that the writer of this review REALLY hasn’t read the book. Or doesn’t know that on marriage medieval royal dukes and men in general (as well as their modern counterparts) did not take their wives’ maiden name! They’d consider themselves unmanned! Totally.

To read more about the factual Cecily, Duchess of York, go to this site and this one.