Did she marry for love – and, if so, why was that so shocking?
It wasn’t only Elizabeth’s lowly background and colourful past that proved so shocking to England’s court, it was also the fact that she and Edward may have married for love. For a king to choose his wife for love or lust – for “blind affection”, as the Italian historian Polydore Vergil would put it at the beginning of the 16th century – was so odd as to amount almost to an indecency. So much so that it would later be alleged that Elizabeth’s mother, Jacquetta, had used witchcraft to bring the two together.
But is it true that Edward and Elizabeth genuinely loved one another? Popular early versions of their first meeting certainly suggest so. Several describe a lustful king trying to force himself on a virtuous lady, who refuses to live with him “unchastely”. One tale even has Elizabeth defending herself with a dagger; another has Edward holding a knife to her throat. But all the tales end happily. The king was so struck by the lady’s virtue that he married her, in secret.
And yet it’s possible that cold political calculation had some influence in Edward’s decision to marry Elizabeth. The king may have seen some propaganda value in an alliance with a woman with connections to the Lancastrian side in the Wars of the Roses, and even in choosing an English bride. Edward’s choice of Elizabeth may also have signalled his growing independence from the powerful magnate Warwick the Kingmaker (who had alternative marriage plans for Edward). And it wasn’t as if Edward was marrying a peasant – though Elizabeth’s father was a mere knight, her mother sprang from the royal line of Luxembourg.
For all that, there’s no reason to doubt that this was a match made chiefly on the grounds of personal attraction. In fact, it was perhaps the first such in English royal history – but not the last. It could be argued that it was with Elizabeth Woodville that the notion of marriage for love as a viable option entered the chronicles of British royalty. Following her lead, all of Elizabeth’s royal grandchildren – Henry VIII, Margaret Tudor and Mary Tudor – displayed a belief in their right to personal happiness; a belief that marriage and love should not be wholly different matters; a belief which, this May, we are witnessing once more in the wedding of Meghan Markle to Prince Harry.