‘The White Princess’ invents history, spares drama
Beyond the costumes, there’s not much to favor this royal mess
It’s hard to pull a series out of a postscript.
That wasn’t a problem, of course, for Starz’s The White
Queen because it was telling a story filled with those momentous events on which history seems to turn. That series concluded with Henry Tudor defeating Richard III, ending the War of the Roses, uniting the houses of York and Lancaster by claiming Elizabeth of York as his wife, and creating with her the Tudor dynasty that would give us Henry VIII and eventually, Elizabeth I.
Most people writing a book about that period might end it with a one-page epilogue: The couple marries — lovingly, history says — produces multiple children, and lives happily ever after. Not so fast, says Starz’s The
White Princess (Sunday, 8 ET/PT,
eegE out of four). Based on the next book in the same series by Philippa Gregory,
Princess begins in August 1485, two days after Richard III’s death. In Gregory’s version of the story, as Queen viewers may remember, Princess Elizabeth (Jodie Comer) was in love with Richard and determined to marry him. And yes, he was her uncle — but if there’s one thing the Tudors and their cousins were known for, it’s a fondness for strange bedfellows.
Now, however, she must marry Henry VII (Jacob Collins-Levy), whom she hates both before and after their meeting. And just to make a happy marriage even more unlikely, neither of them has an ideal mother-in-law.
Elizabeth’s mother, the Dowager Queen (Essie Davis), is a successfully practicing witch who wants her son Richard on the throne. ( Princess posits that the Dowager rescued Richard from the Tower and sent him away to safety — though as the series opens Sunday, she’s not quite sure where he is.) Henry’s mother, Lady Margaret (Michelle Fair- ley), is a religious nut who hates her daughter-in-law and wants to be the power behind the throne.
There’s much to be said for exploring corners of history most others ignore, and for following avenues that could possibly be true. And while history says Hen- ry and Elizabeth were happy together, that doesn’t mean they were happy from Day 1, nor does it prevent Gregory from arguing that history got it wrong.
The problem is that all the inventions in a series Starz is optimistically promoting as a “feminist Game of Thrones” seem to exist solely to hide the fact that otherwise, nothing much would be happening.
There’s a frantic effort here to create drama where very little exists, which includes using rapes and throat cuttings to distract us from the emptiness of the storytelling. Nor does it help that the dialogue ranges from pseudo-Shakespearean to flat-out Real
Housewife- ian. (Henry to his mom: “If you spent less time flirting with my Uncle Jasper, perhaps you’d give better counsel.”)
Comer shows some amusing gumption as Elizabeth (a recasting from Queen, like most of the major roles), and Collins-Levy certainly looks regal enough. More regal, it seems, than the actual Henry VII, but as we’ve established, you’re not coming to
Princess for a history lesson, or you shouldn’t be. Come for the fancy costumes, drafty castles, barbed glances and backstabbing power grabs.
Just don’t come for the story, because Princess doesn’t have much of one to tell.