For then I’ll marry Warwick’s youngest daughter.
What though I kill’d her husband and her father?
The readiest way to make the wench amends
Is to become her husband and her father;
The which will I-not all so much for love
As for another secret close intent
By marrying her which I must reach unto.
– Richard III, Act I, Scene 1
What “secret close intent”? How does this help Richard’s ambition for the throne? At this point, Anne Neville is politically useless. Her father, Warwick the Kingmaker, her husband, Edward of Westminster, both dead and both discredited together with the whole defeated Lancastrian cause. What political use has a son of York for a Lancastrian castoff who is not even of royal blood?
Didn’t she stand to inherit a considerable amount of money? That’s a good enough reason.
But IMHO, I think he wanted to strengthen his image as a kingly person. Sort of mooching off of Anne’s noble personhood, or whatever. Keep in mind that Shakespeare was writing for an audience who’d come to understand Richard as a profligate criminal, so he must’ve been, I imagine, trying to create an image of Richard’s romance of Anne as something that resulted from Richard purposefully seducing her for his own ends. Additionally, I think it works, in the context of the play, to understand Anne’s seduction as Richard trying to soften his reputation.
Of course, it’s been awhile since I’ve read the play, but that’s my impression.
*Richard III is unique among medieval English kings in the extent of his connections with the north of England…He is almost entirely exceptional in the degree to which his power base was very largely north-country…His wife and future queen, Anne Nevill, was heiress to the great northern connections of her family, stretching back more than a century, and her marriage was an important factor in winning for her husband the loyalty of the men of her native region…
Richard of Gloucester’s acquisition of the lands and offices held in the north of England by the earl of Warwick, and before him by his father Richard Nevill, earl of Salisbury, and his grandfather, Ralph Nevill, earl of Westmoreland, combined with his marriage to Warwick’s daughter, were to prove of supreme importance in gaining him admission to the fiercely independent and clannish landed society of the northern counties.*
From Richard III by Charles Ross ( 1981, University of California Press ).
So on the one hand she was one of the heiresses to the vast Neville inheritance, well worth the trouble for that alone.
But even more significantly ties of blood were still very important in this period and Anne Neville was related in one manner or another to a whole host of northern lords ( both high and low nobility and even branches of the local gentry ) that were to form the backbone of Richard’s support, both politically and militarily. For someone whose estates were concentrated in northern England she was of immense local political value as a wife.
IRL Richard and Anne had been betrothed as children and it was part of her father’s betrayal when she was wed to Henry, who she seems to have hated and he her. Marrying Anne was probably as much unfinished business as anything else, and he probably had affection for her since they’d grown up together. The fictional character (not the real character, whose motives were totally different and irrelevant to the play) seeks legitimacy. I think that’s a large part of it.
There’s an ancient notion of strengthening claims to legitimacy by taking the widow of a former leader. A couple of biblical examples are when Absalom chased David from Jerusalem he shagged his father’s concubines as a way of establishing validity: “These women belong only to the king, and I just nailed 'em, guess I’m king!” After David’s death his son Adonijah demands his father’s last concubine- the still virgin Abishag- and Solomon sees this presumptuousness as an act of war.
Happens in monogamy as well. The quickness of the ambitious Thomas Seymour’s marriage to Catherine Parr soon after the death of Henry VIII was probably in part “I have a former king’s wife in my bed!” (True they had courted before but he could have had any number of women, most of them younger and prettier.)
Anne’s first husband wasn’t a king though he was the sole heir to one. France certainly isn’t going to send a princess to marry him, she is extremely highborn (her father was a traitor but an extremely high born traitor and her mother- which Elizabethans may likely have known a century later- was F-I-L-T-H-Y R-I-C-H). He can’t take his dead brother Edward’s wife for two reasons: one, she hates him, and two, that’s a really no-gain marriage as she’s technically not the king’s widow [invalid marriage] and she’s only one step up from commoner (daughter of a knight whose wife gave birth about ever 4 months).
So, short version- imo- she’s as high born a woman as there is in the land and she’s the widow of the greatest rival his throne ever had. And there’s really no woman in the land who has any better or more advantageous birth since the Lancastrians are wiped out and the Yorkists are in power anyway.
No, you’re talking about the real-life Richard and Anne. The play never mentions any of that, IIRC, and I don’t think it’s the sort of things the audience at the Globe would be expected to just know.
I don’t think there’s any evidence of that (and she was wed to Edward of Lancaster, Prince of Wales, not Henry, who was already married, was king, and was 30 years older than she was). We actually don’t know much about what her relationship with Edward was, how she felt about marrying him, or how they felt about each other. For that matter, we don’t know how she and Richard felt about each other, or that much about either her or her sister Isobel (who married George of Clarence).
The play does not even mention the fact that Anne was Richard’s fiance before she was Edward’s wife.
I’m pondering this because I’m in the middle of a historical novel, The Sunne in Splendour, by Sharon Kay Penman, who must be a member of the Richard III Society or something. In this story there’s no mystery; Richard of Gloucester (in this version the most moral and honorable of the Yorks, and in no way ambitious for the crown) wants Anne because he never fell out of love with her, and she feels exactly the same way (and she and Edward hated each other). He doesn’t give a fig for her property or her connections.
IRL, I’m sure Anne did want to marry Richard, for whatever reason, because she did, and no one was left to make her do it.
Sure there was. Her sister and brother-in-law were trying to steal her land. She was the widow of the Lancasterian prince and daughter of somebody the Yorkists considered a traitor, stuck in an England controlled by Yorkists. This made her enormously vulnerable, and the King’s brother was interested in marrying her. So what’s her choice? Say no, offend the King’s brother, and be vulnerable when the King’s other brother tries to steal your inheritance? Or say yes, and marry somebody who has enough influence to protect your lands and property?
Like the Encyclopedia of the Wars of the Roses puts it:
In the play, I always assumed the “secret close intent” was simple perverse humor - that’s certainly the way Ian McKellan plays it in his movie; Richard marries her because he can.
I know, I know. But, no one was left to tell her “You will marry Richard of Gloucester!” the way Warwick could tell her “You will marry Edward of Westminster!” She “did want to marry Richard, for whatever reason” – the reason might have been that it was just the second-safest choice for a gentlewoman under the circumstances (the safest choice would be a convent).
Richard and Anne married long before Edward IV died (married, 1472; Edward’s death, 1483), and Anne didn’t die until after Richard became king (Anne dies, 1485, Richard crowned, 1483).
I suspect that Richard wouldn’t have married Elizabeth Grey in any case; as the widow of his brother, Church doctrine would have deemed it incest.
I’m not sure how much marrying Anne would have improved his power base in the north. Through his father, he already had a significant base, and his mother was Anne’s great aunt. Anything Anne could bring him as a connection, his mother already did.
Thing is, another thing (Shakespeare’s) Richard says of Anne is, “I will not keep her long.” IOW, he’s already planning to murder her after he has used her to achieve . . . what? Her death would leave Richard with her lands, but lose him most of the benefit of her Northern connections. He does murder her eventually, after he has been crowned (in Ian McKellen’s version her death is apparently from a suicide or an accidental drug overdose), why is not clear to me (perhaps, only to clear the way for Richard to marry his niece Elizabeth, a far more royal connection), nor is there anything to suggest how his marriage to her helped him push his nephews aside.
Richard III, by the way, is Anne’s first appearance in the miniseries; she is absent from Henry VI, Part 3, where both Richard and Edward of Westminster first appear.
I don’t see how. Richard was at both battles, but her father was killed (against Edward IV’s orders) by Yorkist soldiers, and her husband was executed by order of George, Duke of Clarence, her brother-in-law.
Well, possibly. According to one account, he was executed by order of the Duke of Clarence, and according to the other, he was taken prisoner and then killed by Edward IV, Clarence, and Gloucester together. So it depends who you believe.
Shakespeare believed (or, at least, used used) the latter version in Henry VI, Part 3. He also has Richard of Gloucester murdering old King Harry. But not Warwick, IIRC.
Yes, but it was a dynastic war in an age that was all about the families. Would historic-Anne have drawn distinctions in that regard between one York and another? Does any Hatfield care which McCoy started the whole thing?
The Nevilles and the Plantagenets *were *family. Richard’s mother was Warwick’s aunt, and the families were close allies through almost the entire struggle, up until the point where Warwick got embarrassed and angered by Edward’s secret marriage.
Furthermore, the few contemporary, English accounts (including one apparently written by a Lancastrian sympathizer, who gives the “executed by Clarence” version) all state that Edward of Westminster (Anne’s first husband) was killed either on the field or fleeing it. The first account stating that Richard III took part in killing him was Polydore Vergil, who was not exactly contemporary and who was also writing a history ordered by Henry VII.
In any case, you don’t go to Shakespeare for history, but for humanity.
What “secret close intent”? How does this help Richard’s ambition for the throne? At this point, Anne Neville is politically useless. Her father, Warwick the Kingmaker, her husband, Edward of Westminster, both dead and both discredited together with the whole defeated Lancastrian cause. What political use has a son of York for a Lancastrian castoff who is not even of royal blood?