Last time on The White Queen, things weren’t looking so good for Edward and Elizabeth. The King was captured and had no male heir, Warwick making a play to put Edward’s brother George on the throne. His Queen was losing family members and forced to hole up until things worked themselves out. And crazy old Margaret Beaufort was still thinking she could weasel her own son onto the throne.
This week sees a quick resolution of the events of last week, though with some repercussions. Warwick tries to convince parliament to accept George, but they say no. So Edward is released again and goes back to being King. In order to secure better relations with his cousin, he makes some concessions, finally seeing the right way to play politics. Elizabeth, naturally, doesn’t like that all too much, much preferring revenge over pacification.
But fear not Elizabeth, for it doesn’t take Warwick long before he does something else stupid, this time getting a rebellion going in the countryside so that he can betray Edward in the field. A traitorous enemy leader manages to warn Edward, however, thus throwing Warwick’s plan to the wind. Now, being caught as a traitor for the second time, the Kingmaker is forced to flee with his family and try for France. The journey to France doesn’t go well though and Warwick’s hope for a male heir for George is lost when the child dies during birth. In the meanwhile, Margaret still plots and plans but is making little headway in the matter.
The subject matter of The White Queen makes for a good story, but once again this week’s episode proves that it may be too much to cover. Elizabeth’s daughter went from baby to toddler in one episode and with everything rushing quickly by, there is little room for character development. The poor dialogue in the show doesn’t help either, developing things in a terse, expositional style. If this were a documentary, it might work okay, but it is a drama, so…
Next episode, ‘The Bad Queen’ sees more civil strife and plotting in a quick and hurried fashion. You can check out a preview of that at this site.
Photo Credits -
Warwick and Edward courtesy of hanko9.com
0 comments