If you’ve spent any time scrolling through Starz or BBC iPlayer lately, you’ve probably seen the haunting, blue-eyed gaze of Rebecca Ferguson staring back at you. She’s playing Elizabeth Woodville. It’s a role that arguably launched her career long before she was fighting alongside Tom Cruise or leading a desert rebellion in Dune. But honestly, The White Queen is a weird piece of television. It’s lush. It’s romantic. It’s also deeply polarizing for anyone who actually knows their 15th-century English history.
The show, which first aired back in 2013, remains a staple for historical drama fans. It’s based on Philippa Gregory’s The Cousins' War novels. Because it’s Gregory, you know what you're getting: a version of history where women aren't just background characters sewing tapestries, but the actual engines of political change.
It's refreshing. It's also, historically speaking, a bit of a mess.
The Problem With Magic in The White Queen
One of the first things that hits you when watching The White Queen is the water. Melusina. The show leans hard into the legend that the Woodville women—Elizabeth and her mother, Jacquetta of Luxembourg—were descended from a water goddess.
In the series, they aren't just "rumored" to be witches. They actually perform magic. They whistle up storms to wreck the Earl of Warwick’s ships. They write names on threads and dip them in the river to curse their enemies. It’s visually cool. But for a show that markets itself as a historical drama, it creates this weird friction.
Historian Dan Jones has often pointed out that while the accusation of witchcraft was a massive political tool in the 1400s, treating it as a literal superpower simplifies the actual, brutal political maneuvering Elizabeth Woodville had to do. She didn't win because she had a magic thread; she won because she was incredibly resilient and navigated a court that hated her for being a "commoner" (though her mother was actually high-born royalty from the Continent).
Why Elizabeth Woodville Was the Ultimate Survivor
Let’s talk about the real Elizabeth. The show gets the "lightning bolt" romance right. Edward IV really did ditch his diplomatic marriage plans because he was obsessed with her. Imagine the scandal. The King of England marries a widow with two kids from a Lancastrian family in secret. It was the 15th-century equivalent of a nuclear bomb going off in the middle of Parliament.
Rebecca Ferguson plays her with this sort of cool, detached steel. It works. In the series, you see her lose everything. Her husband dies. Her sons vanish into the Tower of London. Her "White Queen" status is stripped away.
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But what the show doesn't always capture is the sheer length of her survival. She lived through the reigns of four different kings. She saw the end of the Plantagenet dynasty and the birth of the Tudors. She was a political animal. While the show focuses on her beauty and her "spells," the real Elizabeth was likely a master of the long game, eventually negotiating with her former enemy, Margaret Beaufort, to put her daughter on the throne.
Margaret Beaufort: The Woman Who Refused to Lose
If Elizabeth is the heart of the show, Margaret Beaufort—played by Amanda Hale—is the twitchy, religious, terrifyingly focused soul of it.
Honestly? Hale’s performance is polarizing. Some people find her "pious intensity" a bit much. But if you look at the real Margaret Beaufort, she was a woman who was married off at 12, gave birth to the future Henry VII at 13 (which nearly killed her), and spent the next 30 years obsessed with one thing: getting her son back to England and onto the throne.
The series portrays her as a religious fanatic who believes she’s talking directly to God. Whether or not she was that "extra" in real life, the result was the same. She founded the Tudor dynasty. She’s the reason we have Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.
The show does a great job of showing the contrast between the two women:
- Elizabeth Woodville: Thrives on love, family, and immediate power.
- Margaret Beaufort: Thrives on duty, suffering, and the long-term legacy of her bloodline.
It’s a brutal game. The show doesn't shy away from the fact that for these women, politics wasn't a hobby—it was a survival mechanism. If your side lost, your children died. Simple as that.
The Princes in the Tower: The Show's Big Gamble
Everyone wants to know what happened to the boys. Edward V and Richard of Shrewsbury. The "Princes in the Tower."
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The White Queen takes a very specific stance here. It follows the theory that Elizabeth Woodville managed to smuggle her younger son, Richard, out of the Tower and sent a "changeling" boy in his place. This sets up the sequel series, The White Princess, and the later Spanish Princess.
Is there any evidence for this? Not really. It’s a great plot point for a novel. But most historians, including Josephine Tey (who wrote The Daughter of Time) or more recently Philippa Langley, have spent years debating whether Richard III murdered them or if they were even murdered at all. By making it a "switcheroo," the show moves firmly into the realm of historical fiction rather than historical fact.
It’s fun. Just don't cite it in a history exam.
The Production: A Belgian England?
Here’s a fun fact you might notice if you look too closely at the architecture in the series: none of it is in England.
Because modern English cities are, well, modern, the production moved to Belgium. Those "London" streets are actually Bruges and Ghent. The "Westminster" scenes were filmed in the Gothic Hall of the Bruges Town Hall.
It gives the show a very specific, Continental look. It’s gorgeous, but it feels a bit more "fairytale" than the muddy, gritty reality of 15th-century London. The costumes follow suit. They are stunning, but the "loose hair" on the queens and the specific cuts of the gowns are more about aesthetic than 1464 accuracy.
In that era, a noblewoman would almost never have her hair flowing freely in public once she was married. It would be plucked, pinned, and hidden under a massive, ridiculous-looking headdress. But hey, this is television. We want to see the actors' faces.
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Why You Should Still Watch It (With a Grain of Salt)
Despite the historical liberties, The White Queen did something important. It moved the camera away from the battlefield.
Usually, when we talk about the Wars of the Roses, we talk about Towton, Bosworth, and men in heavy armor hacking at each other. This series reminds us that while the men were fighting, the women were the ones holding the houses together, negotiating ransoms, and keeping the lineages alive.
It’s a story about agency. It’s about how you exert power when you aren't allowed to carry a sword.
Actionable Insights for Fans and History Buffs
If you’ve finished the series and want to separate the "Gregory-verse" from actual history, here’s how to do it:
- Read the Real Biographies: Pick up Elizabeth Woodville: Mother of the Princes in the Tower by David Baldwin. He actually explores the "survivor" theory of the younger prince with a more academic lens.
- Visit the Locations: If you’re in Europe, skip the Tower of London (for the show's vibe) and head to Bruges. You can walk the exact streets where the filming took place and see the Gothic architecture that defines the show's look.
- Check the Timeline: The show compresses about 20 years of history into 10 episodes. If you feel like characters age weirdly or events happen "too fast," it’s because they did. Keep a family tree handy; the York vs. Lancaster lineages are notoriously confusing.
- Watch the Sequels: If you want the full arc, you have to watch The White Princess (Jodie Comer is incredible as Elizabeth of York) and The Spanish Princess. They form a loose trilogy that takes you right up to the doorstep of the "traditional" Tudor history we all know.
The show isn't a documentary. It’s a lush, dramatic, slightly magical reimagining of a time when the English crown was basically a game of musical chairs. It’s worth the watch for the performances alone, especially Ferguson and Hale, who manage to make 500-year-old political grudges feel like they’re happening right now.
Just remember: the real Elizabeth Woodville probably didn't need to whistle to start a storm. She was terrifying enough on her own.
To get the most out of the experience, compare the show's portrayal of Richard III with the 2012 discovery of his remains in a Leicester parking lot. Seeing the physical reality of the "Usurper King" adds a layer of tragic irony to his portrayal in the final episodes of the series. Check out the Richard III Society's resources to see how much the show leans into the "Tudor Myth" versus the historical man.