Elizabeth Woodville – Got Meghan's Blog

Hello!

This month has been interesting.

Let’s talk about books first, because I have done a LOT of reading lately.

In January, I began reading the Plantagenet and Tudor novels by Philippa Gregory. I was obsessed with the first book, it’s called “The Lady of the Rivers” and it discusses the young life of Jacquetta of Luxembourg. I was hesitant about getting into these books because I loved Starz first adaption with The White Queen. which covers Jacquetta’s oldest daughter Elizabeth, who becomes the new king’s wife, Unfortunately, I did not have as much success with the second book but I’m not giving up on the rest of the series though. I want to learn more about Lady Margaret Beaufort “The Red Queen” and “The Kingmaker’s Daughters” which is focused on Lady Anne Neville.

The next thing I do specifically for Black History Month is attempt reading more black and brown authors, characters and world(s). I was able to find three — one year I’m going to read Toni Morrison! Since I could anything to her, I switched it up and focused on kid books and found I Am You: A Book about Ubuntu by Refiloe Moahloli and Zinelda McDonald” and this was SO adorable! I liked how they had visible characters dressed up to represent their cultures, plus a few others with some kind of disability. It was a gentle read, and I liked the fact it was written in South Africa and its cultures.

My second attempt was Lila by Naima Coster. I knew this book would be short and I was fine with it, I enjoyed reading about these characters and how they were trying to navigate life in New York City. I liked Naima’s writing to be flowy and modern, but I did not like how it ended, it just stops. and I felt very frustrated with it. And the other boy I chose was Over Him: Not a Love Story… A F*cking Story by Shantel Davis. I didn’t finish it because I thought the story itself wasn’t written that well, but I understood the gist of it as well.

After three years, I finished Kendare Blake’s “Three Dark Crowns” series. This is my seventh book series overall and I’m still reeling from the events in the final book. I hope to get my toes on the novellas Kendare wrote within these characters and this world in the near future. And finally, I read “Puck Shy” by Kelsey Grosse. I had found it in early January and saw it would be available on KU Valentine’s Day, so I waited as long as possible, and that was a good solid novella. I think I might do a review on it as well.

Now, as far as music goes. I had a fun time. I rediscovered my love of K-Pop girl group Dreamcatcher. They don’t have a lot of pop-y songs like the majority of the Korean groups, both male and female. I enjoy for their rock and roll style. I also listened to quite a few of new albums were eerily similar, there was “The Glory and The Fallen” by Leah and “Femmes Fatales” by Exit Eden as they both do symphonic metal, but Leah leans more into Celtic mythology.

I should probably tell you; I included a few episodes of LuAnna: The Podcast. This is my way of spamming you (my own readers) like I do my family and friends on Instagram with cute and hilarious reels! I tried Sophiena’s Secret Mum Club two weeks ago, I just couldn’t get into it – they sound too much like Luisa and Anna, and that rubbed me the wrong way. I am currently giving Toni and Ryan a try and I have seen some clips on Insta and enjoyed them so, I’ll try to give you an update on them in March’s post.

Here are my Top 20 songs for this month. If you’d like to check out the full playlist, click here.

Bye Bye by Gryffin featuring Adara
V.A.N. by Bad Omens x Poppy
Vicious by Bohnes
Looking At Me by Sabrina Carpenter
The Village by Wrabel
American Horrow Show by Rain Paris
Code of Life by Epica
High Horse by Kacey Musgraves
Let Me Out by Hidden Citizens x Ranya
FTCU (Metal Remix) by Lauren Babic
Wings Of Time by Leah
Where Do Broken Hearts Go? by One Direction
Friendly Fire by Linkin Park
Scream by Dreamcatcher
Bad Blood by SETOURSAILS featuring Adrian Estrella
Somebody Loves Plumb
Gloves Up by Little Mix
Trophy Hunter by Within Temptation
Circus by Halocene
The Catalyst by Amaranthe

I am sharing two other playlists I’ve made lately. Since I told you about finishing the “Three Dark Crowns” series, I actually made an aesthetic playlist to go along with the four books. These are the songs I thought fit in certain events and the characters. It is a massive list, but I couldn’t help myself. And the other is nothing but, in your face, upbeat songs. There are no rhyme or reason for it, but I wanted to give it to you anyways.

So, that’s it. I am hoping I’ll be in a mood to blog more, but I don’t want to force anything either. I hope you are doing well and have great last days of February and going into March.

bigbang

Hi 🙂

I’m really enjoying these different history posts I’ve been doing lately. I’m not trying to do one every month but it kind of just happens. The last one about King Richard III and King Henry VII was completely accidental, I actually wanted to do this first but I needed to think about how the other post would do with my audience and so I decided to wait a bit.

Queen Mary I is the oldest daughter of King Henry VIII and Spanish princess Katherine of Aragon. After Katherine declined to annual her marriage to Henry so he could marry his mistress and one of her ladies-in-waiting Anne Boleyn. She was set away from court and was forced to stay away from their daughter. They were technically still married to as he secretly wed Anne and after Katherine passed Princess Mary was then considered a bastard and lost her way to inherit the throne.

Henry had a total of six siblings, but only two of his sisters survived to adulthood. The youngest, Princess Mary was married to Louis XI of France but they didn’t last very long when he died shortly after. When she came back to England, she secretly married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk who was one of her brother’s best friends. Since they also married in secret, they had to pay a hefty fine to the King for not asking him for permission to marry. Mary and Charles had a total of four children. The only male heirs who were both named Henry died young, but daughters Lady Eleanor and Lady Frances survived to adulthood.

Lady Frances Brandon married Henry Grey, the Marquess of Dorset (who was the great-great-grandson of Elizabeth Woodville and her first first husband Thomas Grey) they had a total of three daughters themselves: Lady Jane, Lady Catherine and Lady Mary. The girls were King Henry VIII’s great-nieces and they were born into a Protestant family. Now I don’t know that much about Lady Jane Grey, only that she was put into succession in King Edward VI’s will and she was married to Lord Robert Dudley. This is all I really know of this part of her personal life.

Lady Jane Grey was the granddaughter of the sister of the former King of England and born into a Protestant family, so she had the means to keep the religion afloat until Queen Mary sent her troops into England and she arrested Jane and her husband and father for their crimes for going against the Act of Succession that clearly states that once Edward died, she would rule after him. Edward had tried to bypass this law and basically threw her into the woods. Jane is known as the “nine day queen” because she only had nine days on the throne of England. To historians, she’s the usurper because she went around the law, but I don’t see it that way.

When Henry finally had his son and kept marrying these other women to make sure he had another “male” heir in case Edward did not survive, which he didn’t and Edward died at the same age as Henry’s older brother Prince Arthur. The kingdom roughly should have went to the Lady Mary, since as Henry got older he did put both Mary and Elizabeth back in line of succession. However, something has always made me wonder, when King Henry renounced the Catholic faith, why did he put Mary back in line to the throne when he knew she still practiced the religion? Did he grow to regret his decision to create the Church of England or did he only do it, so she wouldn’t leave for Spain or France and start a war with her half brother and her homeland?

England was practicing both religions, let’s be honest about here. Lady Jane could have kept the faith but when Queen Mary came and had her killed for trying to go around the law, she brought Catholicism back. In her reign, Mary set ablaze to the Protestant martyrs and with that, she gained the nickname “Bloody Mary” because she killed over hundreds of people for not accepting the true faith. After failing to give an heir with her Spanish husband King Phillip, England went back to being a Protestant kingdom with Queen Elizabeth I as she was the daughter of the reason why King Henry VIII had renounced the religion in the first place.

So I do get the fact that Jane was put on the throne after Edward went around the Act but I doubt she wanted that role or knew what would happen to her after those nine days, but I wouldn’t call her a usurper. Mary was a devout Catholic and was going to change the religion back after her father spent so much time and effort into it. I often think even if Mary wasn’t put back in line anyways, she obviously had the resources to create an army anyways, she would have fought for that crown.

So what do you think, who is the real usurper? Lady Jane Grey or Queen Mary I?

snowflake