Virgin Widow - England's Forgotten Queen Synopsis
England, 1469. The War of the Roses
Daughter of Warwick the Kingmaker, and to be married at the age of fourteen, Anne Neville cannot dictate her own future. Used as a political pawn in a fifteenth-century power game, Anne faced conflict, treason, grief and tragedy as well as a love strong enough to survive rejection and separation and the political murder of her first husband.
Twice betrothed as a girl to Richard of Gloucester, the future Richard III and brother of King Edward IV, she is parted from him when her father’s treason forces her to flee into exile. Trapped in an unhappy and humiliating marriage with Prince Edward of Lancaster who is controlled by his mother, Margaret of Anjou and living in a hostile, impoverished court, Anne finds herself at the mercy of other’s whims. On her wedding night, the audience assembled to witness her bedding instead witnesses a royal humiliation, Margaret determines that Anne’s marriage is never to be consummated. Anne is released when the Prince is killed, but the man responsible is Richard the man she loves. Left as a prisoner on the ‘wrong side’ in the war, her father dead, her mother trapped in a convent and betrayed by her elder sister, Anne’s future hangs in the balance, overseen by Margaret. But Anne withstands the force of political manoeuverings, makes her own choices, and ultimately secures her inheritance, her mother’s freedom and the man she desires.
