![]() Her second husband was Jasper Tudor, Duke of Bedford, who had been instrumental in helping his nephew, Henry Tudor, seize the throne from Richard. The real-life Katherine Woodville would survive Buckingham by almost fourteen years. As I recall now, I didn’t plan any of it when I first sat down to write the book, but the character of Kate seemed to write her own story and to lead me to places I hadn’t contemplated in the beginning. All of this is the product of my imagination. After placing her in a horrible marriage, perhaps in compensation I gave her a fictional lover, Robin Vaughn, and a role in revealing Buckingham’s plots to Richard along with her suspicions about the fate of the two princes. Her position as Elizabeth Woodville’s sister and Buckingham’s wife made her an important character in the final part of my story. I depict her as a mature woman, full of sad poignancy and hard-earned wisdom. Real or not, I came to be very fond of the version of Kate I had created. And I made my character Kate older than her real-life counterpart so that she could comfortably have a 12-year-old son in 1483. ![]() I did this in the person of a fictional son who had to be old enough in 1483 to go off to war with his father. Why did I do this? The honest answer is that after blackening Buckingham’s character and portraying him as vain, pompous, and power-hungry, I needed a way to humanize him, to give him something or someone to care about beyond himself so that my readers would care about him. I have given the couple two older children: young Harry, who is twelve in the book, and Anne, who is nine of ten. It did eventually produce four children, and again I have taken liberty with their ages. With Buckingham’s character, it could hardly have been otherwise. We do not know a great deal about their marriage, but I portray it as a most unhappy one. It is difficult not to feel some sympathy for him because he had no choice in the matter, but then neither did Kate. Despite her royal connections, Buckingham openly resented having a wife he considered beneath his station in life. This alliance was intended, as were many others at the time, to enhance the wealth, prestige and power of the queen’s family. Using a birth year of 1458, she was only six or seven. In 1465, Kate was married off to the queen’s ward, nine-year-old Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. She was a younger sister (perhaps the youngest sister) of Queen Elizabeth Woodville, the subject of one of my previous posts. Katherine was one of fourteen children of Richard Woodville, who was later to become the first Earl Rivers, and his wife, Jacquetta of Luxembourg. My version of Kate was born around 1450 and was thus in her early 30s in 1483, the year The Protector takes place. For reasons I will explain later, I made her older. Today, Wikipedia, that fount of all knowledge, gives it as c. ![]() When I wrote The Protector back in the 1970s, there was little information to indicate when she was born, and even today the exact year is unknown. The first of these liberties involves her age. She is the sixth and final subject from my series on the women in The Protector.įirst a confession: For better or worse, I have taken more liberties with this historical figure than any other in my novel. The Duchess Kate of this posting was born Katherine Woodville in the mid-fifteenth century. The timestamp is only as accurate as the clock in the camera, and it may be completely wrong.No, I am not talking about that “Duchess Kate,” the former Catherine Middleton who is married to Prince William and in line to become Queen of England one day. If the file has been modified from its original state, some details such as the timestamp may not fully reflect those of the original file. This file contains additional information such as Exif metadata which may have been added by the digital camera, scanner, or software program used to create or digitize it.
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