Quickly held and then thrown as if too hot.
A slender reed to be woven,
Thatched into whichever family were rising.
A red rose, a white rose
And between them: one thin girl.
The enemy now becomes our ally,
Marriage and I am now a princess.
He wound my hair around my limbs,
Binding me with long lengths,
So I lay utterly still as he entered me
In those grey, fleeting nights.
Then brutal men decided battles
Must be fought and death must win.
My prince cut down like a sapling,
The tide ebbs and flows to York.
Gloucester may well be the man,
Who murdered my red Prince,
Such a union is odious and desperate,
But it is the only clear pathway.
Protection and ambition combine,
Loveless, yet a throne may satisfy.
I lie utterly still in our marriage bed,
He has my body but not my head.
Anne Neville (11 June 1456 – 16 March 1485) was Princess of Wales as the wife of Edward of Westminster and Queen of England as the consort of King Richard III. She held the latter title for less than two years, from 26 June 1483 until her death in March 1485. She had just one son, Edward, who predeceased her.
Anne was a member of the powerful, northern English Neville family being the younger daughter of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, called in history, "The Kingmaker". As a result of this, she was used as a political pawn during the series of dynastic civil wars known as the Wars of the Roses.
The only contemporary image of Anne showed her to have copper coloured, long hair and a placid face.
I used paintings of women from the right time period to illustrate the poem. There is not much information known about this Queen, no historian recorded her personality or any of her thoughts. She is silent figure. Shakespeare used her to great dramatic effect in Richard III but what she was really like, we shall never know. This poem is my attempt to find her voice.
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