Starz’s emotionally complex and morally complicated limited seriesThe White Princesshas finished, and my lingering thought is justwhy isn’t there more?!The final episode left us with Lizzie (Jodie Comer) fully embracing her Tudor future with her husband, King Henry VII (Jacob Collins-Levy) and their sons. Putting aside the potential curse that she and her mother laid, she had her brother, “The Boy” (Patrick Gibson) put to death alongside her cousin in order to quell any possibility of rebellion. In those very last moments, we see Lady Margaret (Michelle Fairley) lean over and try and equate Lizzie’s actions with her own, where she is met with a resounding, “STEP. BACK.”
The White Princesswas a sublime follow-up toThe White Queen, diving deep into the very real and relatable emotions at the heart of such an unbelievably cruel time as The Wars of the Roses. The show also ramps up the emotional stakes by taking such a firm stance about The Boy being who he claims to be, and even knowing the history, the trajectory of the last few episodes feels very much like he will prevail. To then have it beLizziewho so coldly oversees his execution in the 11th hour to secure the Tudor throne …Game of Throneswishes it could create that ruthless of a moment.
Lizzie’s Choice
“If Henry loses, he will lose his life and both of their sons will die. Obviously that’s completely untenable for Lizzie. The other option is to decide or convince herself that The Boy is not her brother,” showrunnerEmma Frosttold me in a phone interview about the final episode. “So what this [execution scene] represents is Lizzie finally understands that this is her job and her duty, inescapably, to make that tough decision. A Boy who she can attempt to tell herself isn’t her brother and her cousin vs. her sons, her husband and half the men of the country.”
What has been so fantastic about Frost’s adaptation ofPhilippa Gregory’s novel is how the women have been elevated in a way that gives them a believable agency, particularly Lizzie and Maggie (Rebecca Benson). It’s necessary for drama, but also (to my mind) captures some of the unknowable spirit of these people and their time.
“Very little is actually written down about these women. They are so far back in history, and recorded history is the tales of things white men did,” Frost said. “I know Elizabeth of York was supposed to have been a very loyal queen and wife. Obviously to my mind there are lots of different ways you can be loyal and faithful to the king and one of those does involve having some influence and some agency.”
Are Lizzie and Margaret the Same Now?
There are so many shades to that kind of agencyThe White Princessaddresses, and how the women are able to operate. Both Lizzie and Margaret make incredibly difficult choices to secure their family’s power. I asked Frost if she thought that, in the end, Lizzie and Margaret were equals in their brutal acts, as Margaret seems to suggest:
“I think Margaret always had choices. She didn’t do what she did because she was in a corner trying to protect the ones she loved, she did it for her own ambition, however she dresses it up. And she did order the murder of two innocents. I think Lizzie has found a very different door to the same ultimate decision. She’s making the decision to order execution. But for Lizzie, it’s a Sophie’s choice […] Everything we’ve seen of her, she’s tried to do it the right way. [The Boy is] the reason, in some ways that she has no choice.”
After the finale, I spent a lot of time thinking about heroes, and the definition of a heroic act. Are there heroes inThe White Princess? Lizzie makes an unbelievably difficult decision in the end (and throughout the story), but perhaps the real heroine is Maggie, who finally steps up, comes out of her shell, and fights for what she knows is right even at her own peril. “Maggie really is heroic,” Frost said. “She finally realizes no one is letting her brother out and she can’t stand it.” But still, it’s Lizzie who must step up and make the decision, and act in a way her husband cannot. In this moment, she is protecting him, which he knows and understands because by watching her, he knows that The Boy is no pretender.
“She tries so hard to do everything right, nowhere along the line was there something she did that I would judge her for. She gets to the point where it’s kill your brother and your cousin or allow an execution of your husband and your sons. And that takes it to a place for me that I find tremendously exciting and I hope viewers will feel that too. Even though I’m sure they’ll feel very torn on it as they did at the end of episode seven. No one knew whose side they were on anymore. It’s kind of great for us.”
Tudors vs Yorks
On of the best things aboutThe White Princesshas been its incredible cast, includingEssie Davisas Lizzie’s ethereal (but ruthless) mother Elizabeth. As incredible as these women have been, it still all comes down to one of two men being the true ruler of England: Henry or The Boy. For many fans, the exceptional performances of Collins-Levy (a newcomer and series stand-out) and Gibson (whose charisma convinced me of The Boy’s claim) created a Tudor vs York rift.
“In terms or pro-York or pro-Tudor I never once asked myself that question. I don’t feel I have consciously gone one way or another with it,” Frost said. “It’s just the divided families aspect of it. I certainly don’t have an allegiance for one over the other, I just am interested in how these different politics can tear these families apart.”
Those allegiances of course didn’t just tear the families apart (there’s a reason why The Wars of the Roses is also known as The Cousins War), but the entire country. Everyone had to take a side. “We’ve asked the audience, I suppose, to do what the people of England had to have done at that time, and the people of Europe. We’ve forced them now to take a side, and some of them have gone to the other side,” Frost continued. “And I think that’s interesting, from a story point of view, but also from a propaganda point of view. How people can form allegiances one way and then another way.”
In the end, the story is about that macro issue (who the throne belongs to), but the show also zeroes in on the way it affects Henry and Lizzie and their marriage:
“[Knowing who The Boy is] undermines him, and eats away at him. So that means [Lizzie] has to try and bolster him, she has to find a way through this for both of them. But also Henry’s decency shows what a strong character he is. He doesn’t deny it and he doesn’t keep trying to hold on to tell himself, he immediately has the Boy moved into the same cell as Teddy, he wants him treated properly and he breaks down to Lizzie and says, ‘I don’t have the right to be King, I’ll go quietly.’ That’s what he wants to do, the right thing. He’s actually very noble by the end.
Lizzie & Henry - and Season 2?
The White Princessleans into the story of Lizzie and Henry’s relationship as a romance, and it’s a beautifully complicated one. But one of my favorite aspects has been how the two are partners – it’s an underused dynamic in dramas. There is a point early on in the miniseries where they decide to not just be pawns for their mothers, but to forge forth together, as their own family unit. And as Frost points out, they “are not compromising their own gender identities either.”
She added, “the audience who has come into this story and this journey and absolutely been on this side, really particularly rooted for them and identified with them, really for the love story, so much so that there was such an outpouring of grief when we had to do the time jump because a lot of the audience felt as though they’d been robbed of the love story.”
Frost said that had there been more time, there wouldn’t have needed to be a time jump, but such are the realities of a TV production schedule. However,
“As far as Lizzie’s story, I think we end where we needed to. Because after this point, Lizzie’s story and her agency within it does reduce as other characters come up through the narrative. Lizzie dies before Henry does, and before Henry VIII takes the throne. So I think there is, in terms of really boldly telling her story and leaving the audience with really tough moral and emotional decisions, I think it’s a great place to end it.
And also, it’s really rare that a female character is allowed to make these kinds of choices. It’s a really robust thing to have to decide to execute members of your own family, characters that hopefully the audience will love at this point. And I can’t really think of any other examples where female characters are allowed to have the kind of journey that male characters do. And that’s what we wanted to do with Lizzie, we wanted to take it to its ultimate conclusion. In a lot of dramas, women are the weaker sex, more nurturing, bollocks to that. When you’re protecting your kids, you will do anything.”
Men, Don’t Be Afraid to Love This Show
“I hope Lizzie, as an character, becomes an icon who inspires – that however hard those choices are, women can lead,” Frost told me. “We’re just as tough as men, and in some cases even tougher. I hope also that it proves to audiences that female protagonists are just as interesting as male protagonists.”
It’s also true that one of the most frustrating things about a show likeThe White Princess, and its Starz cousinOutlander, is that they are often immediately dismissed as “women’s shows” in a pejorative sense. Why? Sure, there’s romance, but so what? There are also anti-heroes and compelling drama, complex political quandaries and maneuvers, military operations, and sweeping historical intrigue. It’s irritating to even have to defend it. I mean truly, what is not to love?
“There are male viewers who have contacted me and told me how much they love the show. And what’s interesting is they often at first feel a little shy about it, ‘I know I’m not the target audience for this, but…'” Frost shared. She continued,
“[Women] are so used to identifying with male protagonists, because we’ve been brought up to identify with both male and female protagonists. But men haven’t […] and this is the perennial problem of female protagonists in drama, whether it’s TV drama or in movies. I hope that [The White Princess] will show male viewers that they absolutely can enjoy and engage with a story with a female protagonist. And I hope they’ll come to more shows and movies with female protagonists without thinking that in some way that lessens them as men. Of course it doesn’t, these are stories about human beings, and we should be able to identify with those characters regardless of their gender.”
What’s Next
So because I would not let the idea of another season die, Frost shared that, “there’s a million different ways that we could go.”
“Of course it would be fantastic to fill the next chapter with this cast. You hit the usual problem, the problem that we hit betweenThe White QueenandThe White Princessin fact, that you’re covering so many years historically, if you stay with the same cast you’re having to age them up. If you end up in a situation where the actors playing the parents are younger than the people playing their children, you pretty quickly get into a complicated dramatic aesthetic where you kinda of just go, ‘Okay, does this actually work?'”
Instead, Frost suggested, there are so many “similar stories in history, where women have similar moral, ethical, and emotional dilemmas [to those which] Lizzie has. There are other fantastic love stories.”
She also mentioned wanting to tell the stories of women of color in history: “I would really passionately like to reclaim some of those stories,” Frost added. “But you know, when you start digging, there are so many women whose stories have not been told. Even Isabelle of Castille, we have in our show, she’s a fantastic character who presides over Christopher Columbus, going off, exploring the new world. There’s all sorts of amazing women’s lives which have just never been told. And I think it’s time.”
Final Thoughts
When it comes toThe White Princessand what Frost hopes viewers take away from the series:
Most of all, I hope obviously, that we have entertained, challenged, engaged them and given them an incredible roller coaster of a drama. I hope people will be more interested to dig into history, and I know already from social media that tons of people have come to me to say, “Oh, I’m reading this, I’m looking at that, these books, Elizabeth of York or this book, or whoever it is […] That is fantastic, though with the caveat that I always have to submit that it’s largely the story of white men doing white man things and you have to look much deeper to find the women’s history. I hope it will inspire women to have agency, I hope it will inspire young women in their own lives to be strong and courageous. I think what Lizzie does is incredibly inspirational even when she makes very hard choices. Nevertheless, she persisted – it’s part of the whole mantra of what’s happening now politically and having to be brave.
