A Strange Wedding in Amboise
Château Royal d’Amboise
In 1470, just before Christmas, two teenagers from England were married in St. Florent Church at Château Amboise. The groom was seventeen, the bride was fourteen. His father was the King of England, hers was a third rank peer.
It wasn’t a love match. It was a Deal.
The Deal was between the exiled Queen of England, Margaret of Anjou, who had safe haven in the Château and the ambitious social climber, Richard Neville, the earl of Warwick.
Warwick Castle
The Deal was that if Warwick got Margaret’s husband Henry VI, out of the Tower of London and back on his throne, her son Edward, Prince of Wales, would marry his daughter, the Lady Anne Neville. As the poor relation, Margaret could contribute neither men nor money. The carrot was having the Prince and Princess of Wales, the future King and Queen of England, in his family.
If he failed the marriage would be annulled and Edward would marry a woman of higher rank, someone more befitting of the heir apparent.
Richard Neville, a gifted military commander, did not fail.
Louis XI, King of France, Charlotte of Savoy, Queen of France, Charles, duke of Aquitaine, the younger brother of Louis, Edward’s mother, Margaret, Queen of England, Anne’s sister Isabel, Duchess of Clarence and their mother, the Countess of Warwick attended the wedding.
Anne was now the Princess of Wales. She would have her own establishment and attendants. She would live in royal palaces, wear fabulous gowns and jewels at Court. Edward would recover his principality, Wales, his lands in Chester, the duchy of Cornwall and his birthright as heir to the throne. He, a prince of the blood and not the usurper, a mere duke, would one day be the real Edward IV.
It didn’t work out like that.
By the time a delighted Queen Margaret arrived in England with the newly weds, Richard Neville had died on the battlefield and her husband was back in the Tower of London.
Worse was to come.
Tewkesbury Abbey
Margaret led her troops against the usurper Edward IV at Tewkesbury. She lost. Her son died in battle. Queen Charlotte’s English guests had made their last visit to Château Amboise.
Henry was murdered in the Tower 21 May 1471 the day Margaret was imprisoned there. They didn’t meet.
Tower of London
What happened next beggars belief.
Lady Anne Neville, the widowed Princess of Wales, married Richard, duke of Gloucester who had helped kill her father, her husband and her father-in-law. According to Shakespeare, Richard himself was astonished.
What, I, that killed her husband and his father,
Hath she forgot already that brave prince,
Edward, her lord, whom I some three months since
Stabbed in my angry mood at Tewkesbury?
Anne was a teenager. An unworldly teenager. She was fifteen with no-one looking out for her. Her father and protector was dead. Her husband was dead. Her mother was incarcerated in an abbey having sought sanctuary there, her mother in law was in the Tower, her sister Isabel advised Anne enter a nunnery and, after all, it wasn’t as if she did not know Richard. She had known him all her life. They grew up together.
When he, in turn, usurped the Crown and took it as Richard III Anne did indeed become Queen of England
Anne died in 1485 in mysterious circumstances. No cause of death was given. There was no funeral. The Queen of England was buried in Westminster Abbey in an unmarked grave. She had no memorial.
The National Portrait Gallery in London has twenty-seven portraits of Richard III. It has none of Anne because there are none.
Read more about The Ladies of Royal Château Amboise in Out of the Shadows by Pamela Shields.
Post by Pamela (BA History of Art). Artwork by Mark.
Out of the Shadows
The Ladies of Royal Château Amboise
