Maria Duprez asked Philippa Gregory:

Hi Ms. Gregory! I am a huge fan! I just finished The Kingmaker's Daughter and I interested in the relationship between Richard III and Elizabeth York. In The White Princess, you portray that Elizabeth was very smitten with Richard and believed that if he defeated Henry Tudor he would marry her. Do you think he ever seriously considered it?

Philippa Gregory It's one of the very interesting questions around Richard III. Certainly he had her and her sisters at his court and it was remarked that she wore gowns to match the queen – which seems odd. People gossiped that he was paying her a lot of attention, and after the death of his wife he was advised to publicly declare that he was not going to marry her, because Anne Neville's important family and connections would have been offended if he had been seen to slight his wife's memory. He would have had good reason to openly flirt with Elizabeth and give rise to the idea that they might marry, because one of Henry Tudor's claims for support was that he was betrothed to her, and would invade and put a York princess on the throne as his wife. If Richard could make it appear that she might marry him then he would win the old York/Woodville supporters to his side. Finally, and perhaps it is a strong piece of evidence, the historian George Buck recorded reading a letter from Elizabeth to the Duke of Buckingham asking him to support her attempt to marry Richard III in which she says that has given him 'her all'. This sounds rather like a love affair. The letter is now lost and of course it doesn't tell us anything about Richard's intentions towards Elizabeth – only about hers to him. Overall, I think that it is likely that he was thinking of marrying her for good political reasons, and he had engaged in a flirtation and perhaps a love affair with her which was all interrupted by the Battle of Bosworth. Perhaps the winner of the battle won the princess – and that was Henry Tudor.

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