New Release! Plantagenet Embers Novellas Paperback

Some of you have been very patiently waiting, but now it is here! Novellas featuring Margaret Beaufort, Elizabeth Woodville, and Reginald Pole had previously only been released on Kindle. Now, you can get all three in one paperback volume!

I really enjoyed having the chance to explore the stories and emotions of these characters from the Plantagenet Embers full length novels. I hope you enjoy them too. Happy reading!

Available now on Amazon worldwide.

This paperback volume includes the following ebook novellas:

Once a Queen: A Story of Elizabeth Woodville

A new Plantagenet Embers novella is available now!

Elizabeth Woodville is tormented by impossible choices.

Her husband is dead, and her sons have disappeared. Should she gamble her future upon her daughter, Bess, and a Tudor exile? Or should she trust her brother-in-law who has stolen the throne from her son?

Faced with events she cannot control, Elizabeth is forced to trust others in a way she never has before, sometimes with tragic consequences. She was once a queen, but now she is at the mercy of Fortune's Wheel, which seems to be turning at the beckoning of her enemies.

Elizabeth's story is a poignant tale of love, loss, and betrayal during the birth of the Tudor dynasty.

Once a Queen is a Plantagenet Embers novella and companion to 'Plantagenet Princess, Tudor Queen: The Story of Elizabeth of York'. Now, read Elizabeth Woodville's side of the story.

'Wilcoxson is BRILLIANT at capturing Elizabeth. She wrote Elizabeth with amazing complexity: one one hand fragile and tender and tormented while being cold and cruel and hard as nails on the other. I don't know how she created that balance, but it's perfection.' ~ Author Stephanie Churchill

Once a Queen is available worldwide on Amazon Kindle. Coming soon to Nook at Barnes & Noble.

Follow Samantha on Facebook or Twitter for news on sales and new releases. 

The Beaufort Dynasty?

Margaret Beaufort Coat of Arms

When Henry Tudor won the crown of England in 1485, he likely did not think he was beginning a new dynasty the way we cleanly divide the Plantagenets from the Tudors. In fact, one might wonder if he or his formidable mother might have named it a Beaufort dynasty were they to give it any label besides Lancastrian.

While Henry had inherited his Welsh surname from his father, Edmund Tudor, his claim to the English throne came through his mother, Margaret Beaufort. She was the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt through his children with Katherine Swynford who had been given the name Beaufort. During John of Gaunt's lifetime, his Beaufort children were raised up and even legitimized after he married their mother. In 1396-7, he obtained papal consent to the legitimization and convinced the king, his nephew Richard II, to recognize them by law. The Beaufort children were officially 'sprung from royal stock' and recognized as able to 'receive, hold, enjoy, and exercise, as fully, freely, and lawfully as if you were born in lawful wedlock' any 'honours, dignities, pre-eminencies, status, ranks, and offices, public and private, perpetual and temporal, feudal and noble.'

By the time Henry Tudor landed at Milford Haven, his mother was the sole remaining Beaufort heir, the male branches of the family having been rather thoroughly pruned during the Wars of the Roses. Henry claimed the crown through conquest, but his right to challenge the previous king was based upon the royal blood he inherited from his Beaufort mother.

The Beauforts had always been close to the crown - too close indeed for the York challengers to the Lancastrian throne (who incidentally also had some Beaufort blood through family matriarch Cecily Neville). After their legitimization, John of Gaunt saw his oldest Beaufort son created Earl of Somerset. However, Henry IV, though he was close to and depended heavily upon his Beaufort half-siblings, perceived that it was in his interest to limit their ability to rise. A clause was inserted into the original statute: 'excepta dignitate regali.' The Beauforts could receive, hold, and inherit titles, but not The Title. Was this amendment a legal addition to the law? At the time, it did not seem to matter. The Beaufort's loyally served their royal half-brother and his son after him, making no claim to the throne of their own though they did collect plenty of other titles and honors.

Then Henry VI was crowned as an infant after the death of his legendary father, Henry V. Then Henry VI lost everything his father had gained in France and eventually proved unable to rule a country desperately in need of a ruler. In a turn of events Henry IV could not have imagined when he stole the throne from his inept cousin, Henry VI's cousins sought to do the same.

By 1485, with royal and noble bloodlines decimated by war, Henry Tudor's Beaufort blood suddenly made his family tree one of the most prominent in the land.

If you believe rumors of Edmund Beaufort being the true father of Edmund Tudor, the argument for the Beaufort dynasty increases exponentially. When Katherine Valois became a young widow upon the death of her husband, Henry V, the infant king's council was quick to realize that anyone who married her would gain astounding power. Therefore, a fledgling romance with Edmund Beaufort was halted by sending Edmund to serve in France. Katherine soon married Owen Tudor instead, but rumors persist to this day that Edmund, not Owen, was the father of Edmund Tudor, Katherine's eldest son after King Henry.

While this makes a great case for renaming the Tudors as Beauforts, it takes more than a little hope and imagination to believe that Edmund Tudor was recognized by all of the highest ranking men of the land as a Tudor and never believed to be a Beaufort if he really was one (unlike Henry VI's son who some did claim to be a Beaufort bastard rather than royal prince). Surely, someone - for example Margaret Beaufort's acquisitive mother - would have pointed out that Edmund was of Beaufort stock if there was any reason to think that he was.

Henry's mother was justifiably proud of her Beaufort heritage and her son's relationship to King Henry VI through her Tudor husband, who was his half-brother. Margaret was a staunch Lancastrian, striving for years to see Henry receive his birthright from York kings who left him in exile, so she likely would have considered his reign a return to the Lancastrian branch of the Plantagenet royal family. It did not take long, however, for the name Tudor to go down in history.




Additional Reading:
Margaret Beaufort: Mother of the Tudor Dynasty by Elizabeth Norton
The House of Beaufort: The Bastard Line that Captured the Crown by Nathen Amin

Henry Tudor's Claim to England's Throne

Portrait of young Henry Tudor
by Musee Calvet

It is often said that Henry Tudor did not have a strong claim to the throne when he took it in 1485. However, he was quick to publicize his three-prong claim in the hopes that people not convinced by one reason would willingly accept another. With many of the branches of the Plantagenet family tree rather thoroughly pruned during the decades of the Wars of the Roses, it is somewhat surprising just how good Henry's claim was.

Tudor's strongest claim was through conquest. Regardless of the semi-royal bloodline that we will discuss next, Henry Tudor marched into England and killed its king. Richard III had left behind his heir, John de la Pole, and a few other nephews and the like, but it doesn't really matter because he was defeated on the field. While we sometimes minimize this claim, people of the time did not. John de la Pole did not fight Tudor (at least not at first), but served him, as did most noble sons of the era who could match their king's pedigree with family trees reaching back to Edward III.

Yet, Henry could also trace his ancestry back to the legendary king, and this was the second prong of his claim. Henry's mother, Margaret, was the heiress of the Beaufort line descended from John of Gaunt, which was legitimized in 1399. The Beauforts had suffered heavy losses during the Wars of the Roses in support of the Lancastrian king, Henry VI. Debate over which Plantagenet branch held a superior claim to the throne had begun as soon as Henry Bolingbroke took the crown from his cousin, Richard II. Unknowingly, Henry IV set the precedent that the crown could be taken by whichever family member was most able, rather than the one who inherited it, and his descendants suffered for it. Confusion over whether a female line should be considered and reluctance to crown children with greater claims than capable adults added fuel to the debate long before Tudor made his claim, causing bloodline alone to be a shaky foundation.

Henry VI

In addition to his mother being the great granddaughter of John of Gaunt, Henry's father was half-brother to the king, Henry VI. Edmund Tudor's blood was decidedly not royal, but his father had married Catherine Valois after the death of her first husband, Henry V. While Catherine could not pass on any right to inherit England's crown to the children of her second marriage, it could not hurt that Henry could call the Lancastrian king his uncle.

Henry Tudor understood that others could match his pedigree, so he planned to take a wife whose status was unquestioned and whose popularity was well-known. When he married Elizabeth of York, Tudor had already established that he took his position in his own right. However, uniting England under the joint heirs of Lancaster and York was a brilliant political move. Those who did not believe in Tudor's claim were likely to support him for the sake of his wife. The union went far toward securing peace and acquiescence to Tudor rule. By timing the wedding when he did (after his own coronation), Tudor ensured that Elizabeth strengthened his claim rather than making it her own.

The fact of the matter is that anyone who might have made a grasp for the throne of England by 1485 had just as questionable of a claim as Henry Tudor. That is precisely how the Wars of the Roses began in the first place with York proposing that their line was superior to that of the sitting Lancastrian king. With so many noble sons dying on the field and disagreements on just which Plantagenet heirs had superior claims for almost a century before Tudor's victory, a claim of bloodline alone was simply not sufficient to bring about peace.

A Lancastrian Surprise

I have been keeping a little project to myself, but I am excited to share it with you today. The Last Lancastrian: A Story of Margaret Beaufort is available NOW. That's right. No pre-ordering & no waiting. Get a glimpse of Margaret long before she dreamed of a Tudor dynasty in this novella prequel to the Plantagenet Embers Trilogy.


Available now on Kindle for only $0.99!

Also on Nook at Barnes & Noble!



Read an early review at Knight of Angels!

Why Margaret Beaufort?

My guest today is a kindred spirit. Judith and I share a love of the Tudor era and the amazing woman who helped to form it. Her latest series features a woman who is more often made the villain in novels, so I asked her about her inspiration for writing from the point of view of the woman famous for being a force behind her son's throne, Margaret Beaufort.

Welcome, Judith! I am happy you are here!
~ Samantha

Guest Post by Judith Arnopp

I am often asked why I chose to write about Margaret Beaufort and, although I hate to answer a question with a question, my usual reply is ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ Poor Margaret has gained quite a negative reputation, especially in fiction and I think it has a lot to do with her portraits. The portraiture of most of the women I’ve written about, Anne Boleyn, Katheryn Parr, Elizabeth of York, depict young, attractive women who’ve the added bonus of a touch of romance in their lives. Unfortunately for Margaret, her surviving portraits were painted late in life; she appears dour faced, pious and elderly. I believe this severe image has tainted the way authors have chosen to depict her.

It is clear Margaret was never a great beauty, and she never enjoyed a great royal romance but her impact upon history is undeniable. Margaret’s political involvement in the wars of the roses helped establish the Tudor dynasty, and her role in Henry’s government stabilised it. When I write I imagine I am the protagonist. In Margaret’s case I wanted to access the girl and the young woman, so I put away the portrait of the old lady and imagined a painfully young child thrust into the adult world.

Putting aside the assumptions that have been made and using only the known facts of her life, I came up with a rather different view of Margaret. Throughout my life I have favoured York over Lancaster but when it comes to writing I have to be objective. I do not demonise for the sake of drama, history is exciting enough without making too much up. Obviously I use my imagination to fill in gaps, add dialogue etc. but I examine the factual evidence and do my best to consider, without bias, the deeper character of the person I am writing about. When writing in the first person I also have to remember that we are all blind to our own negative side, and Margaret would never have seen her own actions as flawed. This helps me to illustrate her possible motivations without evoking the almost pantomime villain she has become.

Margaret is often blamed for the disappearance of the princes from the Tower but I have found nothing in the record to prove it; there are plenty of other candidates who could be held equally as culpable. Unauthorised entry to the Tower was just not possible; whatever the fate of the boys, it was carried out with either the knowledge of the king or the Constable of the Tower.

Margaret’s life, even before her rise to power, was interesting. From infancy she was the sole heiress of the Duke of Somerset, her hand in marriage pursued almost from the cradle. She married four times, her first marriage to John de la Pole took place when she was just six years old but was quickly annulled. Her second marriage, this time to Edmund Tudor at the age of twelve, was also short lived, his death leaving her widowed and pregnant at the age of thirteen. In extremity she turned for support to her brother-in-law, Jasper Tudor and gave birth of her only son at his stronghold in Pembroke. It is believed the birth left Margaret so damaged she could conceive no further children.

Her third marriage to Henry Stafford, second son of the Duke of Buckingham, was of her own choosing, providing her with access to Edward IV’s court. In the years that followed Margaret trod a dangerous path through the complexities of the war between York and Lancaster – her heart lay with her Lancaster kin, but when York finally won the throne she seems to have bowed to the inevitable and accepted Edward IV’s rule.

With the royal nursery quickly filling with York heirs, the idea of Henry Tudor ever attainting the throne at this time would not have occurred to her but she petitioned instead for his pardon and the return of his estates.  

Margaret managed to survive the upheaval of the next few years while power passed to and fro between York and Lancaster. Henry Stafford died of wounds received at Barnet, fighting for York, leaving Margaret widowed again. She remarried swiftly, choosing for her final husband the powerful northern magnate, Thomas Stanley. This union brought Margaret even closer to the royal family where she formed a link with the Queen, Elizabeth Woodville; a relationship which, after King Edward’s sudden death in 1483, was to develop into intrigue.

Initially she seems to have accepted Richard of Gloucester’s claim to the throne, bearing the new Queen, Anne Neville’s train at the coronation. It was not until later that she began to plot actively to place her own son on the throne but there is nothing to suggest she was complicit in any plan to murder the princes. In fact, there is no actual evidence that they were killed at all – they disappeared, there were later murmurings against Gloucester but nothing has ever been satisfactorily proven. It is the mystery surrounding this period in history that makes it so interesting and irresistible to authors. There are as many theories as there are candidates for the crime (if any existed).

After Bosworth, when Henry became king, Margaret was finally in a position of power. She is often portrayed as the ‘mother-in-law from hell’ but, while there may have been initial resentments between Margaret and Henry’s queen, Elizabeth of York, as there often are between in-laws, ultimately relations between the two women were amicable. While the queen confined her interests to the royal nursery and charitable works, playing no part in administration, Margaret took a leading role in Henry’s government. She was one of his chief advisors, taking charge of finances and the running of the royal household, overseeing the upbringing and education of the royal children.

In my novels that form The Beaufort Chronicles, writing from Margaret’s perspective, I try to illustrate her motives, show the events and the people of the fifteenth century through her eyes. I have to ‘know’ only what she may have known. I give voice to her inner self, her passions, even the negative thoughts we all have but never speak aloud. Novels are, of course, only fiction but after the treatment she has received in both fiction and non-fiction, I think she is deserving of a voice.

People love to have someone to blame, and Margaret being plain, pious and forthright provides the perfect scapegoat. She was clearly no beauty but her portraits were taken in later life; the purpose was not to display her good looks but rather her piety, her charity and her intelligence which were, in those days, virtues to be proud of. It seems strange that today these characteristics have come to be regarded in the negative.

Piety in the middle ages was the norm; it would have been far more remarkable if she’d been atheist or lax at prayer. In the twenty-first century we have become uneasy around intense devotion to God, and because of this, in trying to make sense of emotions that are foreign to us, authors have resorted to portraying her as a religious fanatic. But perhaps, if we had to endure the unsanitary conditions of the fifteen century; the child mortality, the frequent bouts of pestilence and famine, and the ever-present threat of death we too might turn to the protection of a greater supernatural power.

I won’t deny that Margaret was a forthright woman but determination gets things done and Margaret is one of the few medieval women to have set out, virtually unaided, to achieve her goals. Initially, she seems to have accepted York’s rule, she was compliant under Edward IV and in the early part of Richard III’s reign but at some point, her agenda altered and she began to work toward what she saw as the rights of her son.

Margaret played a huge part in providing Henry with the means to invade England and take possession of the throne. After Bosworth and the reward of seeing her only child crowned King of England she could have sat back and enjoyed her dotage. Instead, she continued to work diligently for the Tudor cause. She assisted in the establishment of the dynasty and was a key figure at Henry’s court, building the public Tudor image, attending to the administration of the court, and overseeing the raising of the Tudor heirs.

Tudors are not everyone’s favourite royal dynasty and there are those who will never see virtue in Margaret Beaufort’s role in the wars of the roses but, dynastic preferences aside, she was a strong determined person, a religious person who did not rely on beauty to buy her way into power. She relied solely upon her remarkably agile mind. If she were a man she’d be hailed as a political genius.

Connect with Judith

Judith’s historical novels offer a view of the Tudor court from the perspective of the women close to the throne.

You can connect with her on her website.

Find her books on Amazon.

Her work includes:

The Beaufort Bride: Book One of The Beaufort Chronicles

The Beaufort Woman: Book Two of The Beaufort Chronicles

The King’s Mother: Book Three of The Beaufort Chronicles – coming soon

A Song of Sixpence: the story of Elizabeth of York and Perkin Warbeck

Intractable Heart: the story of Katheryn Parr

The Winchester Goose: at the court of Henry VIII

The Kiss of the Concubine: a story of Anne Boleyn

Medieval Novels

The Song of Heledd

The Forest Dwellers

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