Elizabeth of York - Elizabeth of York in Popular Culture

Elizabeth of York in Popular Culture

Biography:

• Elizabeth of York by Arlene Naylor Okerlund. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
• Elizabeth of York: Tudor Queen by Nancy Lenz Harvey (out of print) .
• Elizabeth of York by Alison Weir. Jonathan Cape and Ballantine, 2013.

Theater, television and film:

• Elizabeth is frequently discussed in Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Richard III but never appears onstage. Many productions give her an onstage presence as a silent character, and she is played by Kate Steavenson-Payne in the 1995 film adaption Richard III, where she is given dialogue originally assigned to another character.

• Elizabeth was portrayed by Norma West in the 1972 BBC mini-series The Shadow of the Tower.

• Welsh actress Caroline Sheen made a cameo as Queen Elizabeth in the docudrama Henry VIII: The Mind of a Tyrant in the first episode covering the future monarch's early youth.

Fiction:

• Elizabeth is the subject of Hilda Brookman Stanier's novel Plantagenet Princess, pub. Robert Hale, 1981

• Elizabeth appears in three of Philippa Gregory's historical novels: briefly in The Constant Princess (2005), around the time of her son Arthur's marriage and death, but far more prominently in the account of her mother's life, The White Queen (2009), which features her from the time of her birth to the age of 18. She appears as a supporting character in The Red Queen, the sequel to The White Queen. In these novels, it is suggested that Elizabeth was indeed deeply in love with her uncle Richard and hoped to marry him rather than Henry Tudor. Gregory has since revealed that the fifth book in the Plantagenet series will be centered on Elizabeths life.

• Elizabeth also appears in "The Tudor Rose" by Margaret Campbell Barnes (1953, reissued 2009), in "The Dragon and the Rose" by Roberta Gellis (1977) and "The King's Daughter" by Sandra Worth, "Uneasy Lies the Head" ("To Hold the Crown : The Story of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York) by Jean Plaidy and "The King's Grace" by Anne Easter Smith.

• Elizabeth appears in Sharon Penman's first novel, The Sunne in Splendour, where she is portrayed as having loved her uncle, King Richard III, and had false hopes of becoming his wife.

• Elizabeth appears in Anne Powers's novel "Queen's Ransom", in three of four sections. This book tells the point of view of each queen during the Wars of the Roses, so Elizabeth appears in her mother's (Elizabeth Woodville) and her aunt's (Anne of Warwick) sections, as well as her own.