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an-inky-fingered-lass · 4 months

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be the stillness of the moon

An alternate version of my fic, whistling static when the young learn to fly. Rated T.

Read on ao3.

He found her out on the porch, back against one of the cabin walls and one knee tugged to her chest.

Hunch proving true, Coulson snagged a familiar, heavy woolen blanket on his way out and eased the door open, letting it squeak just the slightest bit.

“Hey.”

May was staring off into the distance, the slope of her shoulders letting him know she’d heard and acknowledged his presence. She was still in pajamas, the soft, worn fabric not nearly warm enough for this kind of chill.

Phil made his way over carefully and settled down onto the wooden bench, noisy steps and his shoulders soft and easy. “May.”

“Wanted to see the sky.”

Her voice came out just below a murmur, but Coulson exhaled quietly -- relief and surprise both.

“One of those nights, huh.”

It took a long second, but she nodded. Coulson slouched comfortably, wedged his shoulder against the wooden slats of the cabin. Their cabin.

“How long’ve you been out here?” It was light, but the edge of concern appeared without his permission. It was alright.

May just shook her head.

She’d been off the last few days, snappish or a different sort of silent than usual. He’d kept an eye out but let her be, knowing she would bring whatever it was up if she needed to, and also that sometimes all he could do for her was give her the time and space she needed to deal in her own time, her own ways.

It had been months now, settling into this little cabin and building the kind of peacefulness he’d barely ever dared to imagine; enough time for him to recover his strength somewhat, for that barely perceptible air of tightly wound exhaustion that had surrounded May for years to begin to dissipate. They’d been able to start settling in, building the routines that they both, May especially, needed.

So much of it still felt new. They had thirty years between them, plenty of those spent living in close quarters and through the kind of hard years that taught you the most about a person, but it was still…different, when it was just their four walls; a smaller space, none of the responsibilities that had been a distraction and a stressor and a sanctuary all at once.

He’d gotten to hear May laugh, really laugh, for the first time in so long. He felt more like himself now than he had in years, settled and steady in his own mind and skin. They were still bound to have bad days. Always had, even back when they’d been barely more than kids, only beginning to learn what it would mean to live the life they’d chosen. May was still so used to shouldering everything on her own, and despite contrived appearances to the contrary, Phil actually sucked rather magnificently at the whole talking about it thing. They were working on it, like they were on everything else. It was still hard, sometimes.

“Wanna tell me what’s up?”

“You don’t have to stay,” May said quietly. “I’ll be fine in the morning.”

Okay, not an answer, but not a no, go away either. The fact that she wasn’t claiming to be fine now said…a lot.

“I’d like to, though.”

May blinked at him, genuinely surprised.

“If that’s okay?”

It took another moment, but she nodded. Phil tapped the blanket in his lap, drawing her attention to it, before he lifted it up, gave it a flap and wrapped it carefully around her shoulders. She had too many old injuries to be out in this kind of cold, and the weight would help. “You in pain?”

He saw her hesitate, falter. They’d had the be honest talk a few weeks ago, both of them equally as bad about powering through pain when they no longer needed to. It had taken May literally collapsing on her bad leg after pushing it for weeks for that to happen.

“Some,” May said finally, and Phil breathed out another little bit of worry. “Just stiff. I’ll take care of it later.”

Phil gave the blanket another pointed flick until she bundled herself up more securely, a little of the tension bleeding off her shoulders as she did. They had a few hot water bottles bundled up in one of the kitchen cupboards. He doubted she’d be up for a massage any time soon, but he could go dig those out in a bit, boil some water. As much as he wanted to, he knew better than to suggest going inside just yet.

The stars were bright, this far away from any light pollution. May loved it out here, despite the cold, the endless depth of the sky stretching on and on and on. Phil squinted habitually at his watch (he wasn’t wearing one) and then up at the moon, digging up rusty memories and figuring about three a.m., the angle of the waning crescent.

Pine was sweet in the air. It was still so easy to remember a world cracked apart. Phil swallowed against swelling relief, not for the first time, the reminder of more than he could have ever wished for.

May exhaled softly, letting something go. Phil took the cue and broke the silence, taking a leap.

“You went to see Robin and Polly today?”

May shook her head. “Didn’t go. Drove halfway there and turned around. I called Polly to apologize, made up some excuse, I don’t know.”

Oh. “You didn’t say anything.”

“Couldn’t.”

Phil took a slow breath, making sure he would sound the way he wanted to. “Daisy’s not upset with you, you know.”

There was a long, trembling pause. May’s voice was quiet, when she finally spoke. “She has every right to be. It was stupid of me to yell.”

Their pseudo-daughter (when had it gotten so easy to think of her like that?) was sound asleep in the little room off the hall (officially declared hers whenever she wanted it), here to stay with them the two weeks until Mack called her in to report for her new team’s first official mission. May had come home struggling, hiding it well enough that even he’d missed it at first, and it had been over…nothing, really. Daisy had stared after May’s retreating back with nothing but concern, reading the real reasons for her old mentor’s sudden lashing out in her rigid stride, the harsh lines of her back and shoulders. She knew May so much better than Phil thought either of them realized, these days.

He took another breath, still tempering his tone. “Stupid is the idea that you don’t deserve to be loved.”

May actually startled, turning around to stare at him with a look that tried its hardest to be a glare but fell quite a ways short. “I…what?”

Phil shrugged, keeping the movement gentle and easy despite the ache pulling tight in his chest. “C’mon, May. It’s not like I don’t have some idea of what’s going through your head. But it’s stupid. And I’ll keep saying so ‘til you believe me.”

“This isn’t about…” May closed her eyes with a growl, letting her head thud back against the paneled walls. “I don’t know how to do this, Phil.”

“Do what?”

“Live. Like this. Just be, I don’t know, a person. ”

“May…”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” May turned to stare at him, implacable. “I’m not the person I want to be, not… I’m working on it, but it’s not worth it if I’m hurting you— if I’m hurting everyone along the way.”

Phil shook his head, bewildered. “Where is this coming from?”

May just shook her head.

“Is this about--”

“It’s not about anything,” May snapped. He just blinked at her. There’d been no real heat in it.

May shook her head and looked away, propping an elbow on her good knee and letting her shoulders slump, palm bracing her forehead. Phil could feel her retreating, slipping farther and farther away.

He sighed and scooted closer before he could think for too long about it, rubbing a hand softly up and down the length of her spine. May wasn’t tense, didn’t flinch. Phil exhaled softly.

“Hey.”

May leaned slowly against him, her head still bowed, and he shifted to better settle her weight against his shoulder, breathing gentle and steady.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

He shook his head, knowing she could feel it. “What’s eating at you?”

It’d been so long that the unspoken things just kind of spoke for themselves. May’s snappishness over the past few days hadn’t been the kind of snappish she got when she was pissed about something -- this sort of scattered lapse in control was the exact opposite of shutting down, of keeping everything contained the way she was wont to do. She was doing her best to let him in now because she was in a place to accept support without depending on it, because grounded and self-reliant when it came to emotional stability had always been May at her happiest.

The kind of trust in the trying had carried them through more hells than he could count. It’d been a constant in his life for so long. He’d never taken it for granted. It still meant the world.

She was on the side of the hand he could feel, and the blanket was soft under his palm as he rubbed careful circles over her back.

“I walked the perimeter,” May muttered at last, muffled. Phil just nodded. He’d noticed the mud earlier, caking her boots.

“Checked all the weapons, the locks, the go-bags. Just sat there taking the gun apart, putting it back together. I haven’t gotten like this since that stupid detail in the Alps, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Too stressed,” Phil offered softly. The frustration in May’s scoff came through loud and clear.

“With what. ”

They were opposites, in this respect. He needed time to unwind if he didn’t want to start losing his mind, always had been that way. That was why field command hadn’t bothered him, why Director would have always been a little bit miserable. The weight of it all, he’d learned a long time ago how to carry.

May could handle anything while she was in the middle of it, would take the weight of anything and somehow still manage to stay centered, steady. It was once things slowed down that she’d get wound tighter and tighter, frustration usually the first thing to break the dam. She’d never really thought that was a valid reason to struggle, either. May knew all of it, and still thought she ought to be better than all things that made her human.

“Too much, too soon?”

May scoffed harder.

“What happened today?”

“Nothing. That’s the point.”

Phil just waited.

May straightened a little, after a while, pulling away and scrubbing her hands over her face. She looked away for another long moment.

“Nothing happened. It's just me.” The anger there was a clear mask, now, something heavier underneath. Bitterness?

He stayed quiet long enough to be sure she wasn’t planning to say anything else just yet. “Kiddo loves you, Mel.”

May looked more tired than ever, looking back at him.

“She misses you, wants to spend time with you. There’s no version of that where it’s a bad thing.”

There was another long silence. Phil kept quiet until he felt the air start to unravel, the weight slowly dissipating. May grappled silently with herself, motionless at his side.

He could feel the moment she decided to speak. May didn’t look at him, the words just barely there.

“I see myself hurting her.” Pause. “You. Daisy.”

Phil made a soft sound before he could stop himself. May shook her head in response without looking up.

“I know. I know it’s just… there’s no meaning to it. It’s not… but I…

“There’s nothing to fight here,” May said softly, as close to helpless as she ever let herself sound. “Just…”

“Yourself,” Phil said softly.

May nodded. “And that’s what I wanted. I need that, need to deal with… but I’m no good to be around like this.”

“What if we want to, though?”

May just looked at him, frustrated and desolate. After a split second the look vanished; she was unreadable to him, for a moment, blank.

“May. There’s nothing you could do that would make us-- make me want you far away,” he said quietly, steady, and watched the mask begin to crack. “If you need some air, some time to yourself-- that’s different. But, May, nothing is going to make me want to give up on this. I don’t want anything more than to see you happy.”

He watched her swallow, struggle a second to speak and then decide against it.

“We need you,” he said gently, because he was trying to say, do you understand how much you are loved? and sometimes that was the version of it May understood best. “Me, Daisy. We all do. You are so loved, Melinda, you know that?”

May pressed the heels of her hands hard into her eyes for a second, dropping her hands back into her lap as she lifted her head to stare out at the night.

“I love you,” Phil said, and watched the tears well up, the way May closed her eyes tight. “Melinda, hey. Look at me?”

She did, finally, and he reached out to cup her cheek with the hand he could feel, wiping away the tears trickling down her face. May had been fighting this for so long, but now she just looked at him, unblinking and vulnerable, her hands folded together in her lap.

“You’re gonna be able to hear it without crying,” Phil said quietly. “Even on bad days. It’ll take time, probably, but we have time, okay?”

It hadn’t been a hard thing for her to say, the first time. She’d just waited for the right moment. None of that was a surprise, once he’d gotten his wits back enough to stop gaping in the hall like an idiot. He needed words, sometimes, to understand, so that was what she’d given him.

It was still different when it came to herself. It wasn’t hatred May carried for herself any more, hadn’t been for a while; there’d been a quiet morning and a good hike and in far fewer words she’d told him that much herself. It wasn’t quite peace yet, either, but in so many ways it was forgiveness. He’d watched her fight for it for years, these hard-won inches of kindness, had realized a while ago that that was something he still needed to learn for himself.

May’s strength had never begun or ended at her ability to beat people to a pulp. That had never been the part he was in awe of.

Thing is, strength has never been known to make anything any easier -- not unless you’re moving house with a grand piano. It’s just a promise you’ll make it through.

“It’s okay,” Phil said, steady. It wasn’t so gentle, this time. Melinda needed certainty almost always more than she ever needed gentleness; he’d never entirely gotten over the surprise of realizing that was something he could give her. “You’re not alone, alright? We’re here. We have time.”

They’d lived so many lives, so many years spent choosing the world over theirs. Years of sacrifice, years sacrificed. They were never getting any of that back, but this was still a gift. Nothing had ever felt so much like hope to him as it did to be able to say that so easily -- we have time.

May didn’t say a word, but she leaned forwards to press her forehead into his shoulder, one arm reaching out to hold on tight.

He held her until she stopped shaking, until her breathing settled back to steady.

After a long time, May pulled away, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. Eyes red, she managed to look disgruntled enough that Phil had to bite back a laugh.

“Lighter?” he suggested gently.

May grumbled. “Headache.”

She’d hated to cry since he’d known her. Claimed she had since she was a kid, that it always just left her feeling worse than before, wrung out. He’d said lighter because he could hear it, though, the edge of strain gone from the way she breathed whether or not she’d admit it. He would never manage to explain to her the relief it was, May allowing herself to unravel this far without so much of the old pain behind her eyes, him being able to just hold her without any terror gripping at his chest, so he didn’t try.

They sat there in silence for a few long, slow moments. Once the sense of ease had settled, Phil got to his feet, holding out a hand.

“Stars’ll be there tomorrow,” he said with a little grin, as May blinked up at him. “We need to sleep, Mel.”

May hesitated, but grabbed his hand. She didn’t wobble, as she stood up, but she didn’t quite succeed at hiding a wince, either. They wrapped arms around each other, familiar movements (except now they were just old, not recently injured), and made their way a little creakingly towards the door.

And paused, just inside the threshold.

A lamp was alight. Daisy’s dim outline was at the stove, but they could see her grin as she turned round at them, visibly chewing over potential remarks and discarding most of them.

“Morning,” she landed on, cheekily, and he heard May groan, struggling to extricate herself from her blanket and his steadying arm without the considerable indignity of toppling over.

“Why are you awake.”

“Were we too quiet?” Phil asked, grinning back at their girl.

“Mm-hm.”

May limped over towards the little counter and Daisy moved to meet her, holding out a mug and a hot water bottle. May accepted both.

“I’m sorry,” Phil heard her say, quietly, as he made his way over to sprawl over the couch. Daisy’s answering tone was soft, genuinely warm.

“S’all good, May. I know… but I think I know what you were trying to get at, maybe. We can talk about it later?”

May nodded. Phil smiled a little at the relief bleeding off her shoulders. She couldn’t exactly reciprocate, with both hands full of recently boiled liquid in various forms, but she leaned into it, when Daisy wrapped her in a brief hug. The look that passed between them said more than words ever could. Daisy’s smile was soft, as she pulled away, and that was that.

“AC?”

He grinned up at her as she came over, delivering another mug. Over at the counter, May braced herself against the scrubbed wood and took a sip from her own, looking up with one eyebrow raised.

“Bitter.”

From May, that was the highest compliment a mug (or a maker) of hot cocoa could receive. Daisy grinned over at her.

Phil took a sip in his turn, and wow. “Bitter,” he agreed. He figured he sounded only a little bit dismayed. He caught the pointed look May sent him. Not a little, then.

“Good.”

Daisy edged very obviously away, gathering up a mug of her own. “Uh. Don’t taste mine.”

May eyed her for a second. And lunged.

Daisy yelped, evading; May feinted neatly (Phil recognized the move and grinned) and wound up with two mugs in her hands, Daisy flailing. “May-- ”

They’d figured before that Daisy still couldn’t outclass May when it came down to raw speed, not in this case without quaking either her or the cocoa -- how that was still true given the amount of pain May’s stance said she was in, he didn’t know, but neither of them had spilled a drop. Phil just sighed. May took a sip.

“Daisy --”

“It’s just a little sugar-- ”

“This is not a little --”

“I’m young, my metabolism can handle it--”

“It’s the middle of the night--” May stopped. Glared. “Are you calling me old.”

“Nope!” Daisy said, as brightly as humanly possible. “Never! C’mon, it’s almost morning, mom, it’s like a once a year thing, we’re already up, you need to get warm, c’mon drink yours and gimmie!”

Mom. No one so much as blinked. May might have maybe handed over the mug with less grumbling than she otherwise would have. Maybe. Phil grinned to himself when he saw her scrub at her eyes behind Daisy’s back, just out of the corner of his eye.

“You’re coming on a run with me tomorrow.”

“Sure.” Daisy bundled towards her, herding towards the sofa. “First you need to get off your feet, sit, please, you’re freezing.”

They wound up all bundled up on the sofa together, sipping mugs of cocoa and tangled up in all the blankets in the house. Phil started telling stories, because there was cocoa and why not, dredging up some Daisy had never heard before and that May would have grumbled at, at length, on almost any other day.

Daisy’s ringing laughter filled every corner. The world closed in around them, just for a little while, a little circle of warmth, safety. Family.

May just listened, leaning against him again with Daisy’s head on her shoulder, eyes soft and content.

She was the only one of them who hadn’t gotten any sleep at all, but it was Daisy who dozed off first, her cheek still on May’s shoulder and no tension at all between her brows. May lifted her mug into the coffee table and slipped a pillow beneath her cheek but otherwise wouldn’t move, hands feather-light as they brushed a strand of Daisy’s hair gently out of her eyes. Her eyes were wet again, but she just looked at him, aching and steadfast in the darkness, the gentle light of a waxing moon.

They didn’t say a word. They didn’t have to.

They would all wake up the next morning groaning, lower backs yelling obscenities and Daisy’s neck stiff from being bent at a near-right angle for far too long. For the few hours of darkness remaining, they all slept peacefully.

May awoke with the first rays of sunlight, blinking her eyes open to find her family huddled comfortably around her, upturned faces washed in gold.

They were at peace, safe and warm. All of them bore ghosts in their shadows, stubborn and lingering; some things would still hurt, come morning. Light tumbled shyly through the window, growing in strength until it sprawled, defiant, into every corner of the room.

The day was going to be beautiful. May exhaled, soft and slow.

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wonder-worker · 5 months

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(Dominic Mancini) believed that Edward IV had designated his brother Gloucester as Protector – a statement – a statement which he first introduces with a cautious ‘as they say’, but which then becomes the cornerstone of his argument. In the absence of formal evidence, this claim cannot be checked, but it has always been recognized that the choice of Gloucester to head the government was an obvious possibility for the dying king. If Edward wanted a protector, the duke was, indeed, the inevitable candidate. Gloucester’s position as sole surviving brother of the king, coupled with his outstanding record of service to the crown, would have made it impossible to pass him over, even in a society aware of the dangers which guardianship by a paternal uncle posed to the interests of the heir. But Mancini does not leave the story there. He claims that the council chose to ignore Edward’s wishes, preferring the immediate coronation of the young king to a formal minority. This decision was prompted by fears that a protector might usurp the throne, although Mancini adds that it was supported by the queen’s family, who wanted to prevent power passing to Gloucester. Having carried this initial point, the Woodvilles then proceeded to dig in militarily and financially. The picture is thus one of overt factions, with the Woodvilles manipulating the majority of the council against Gloucester and a small group of councillors who supported the idea of a Protectorate – an element usually identified with the dead king’s friend and chamberlain William Hastings.

…Mancini’s account, for all its overt criticism of the duke, may be based on a version of events originating in the circle around Gloucester. It casts the Woodvilles as the aggressors and Gloucester as the victim of circumstance. [According to this interpretation], the duke was virtually forced into some sort of counter-offensive to protect his own interests, and his seizure of Edward [V] at the end of April could even be justified, although Mancini does not say so, as a return to Edward’s original wishes.

This raises the interesting possibility that Mancini’s insistence that Edward IV wanted his brother to be protector also derives from a version of events put forth by the duke after he had seized the prince and was seeking recognition as protector. Certainly one of the shakiest parts of Mancini’s account is his attempt to explain why, if Edward wanted a protector, the council sought to overturn his wishes. His suggestion that the council feared an usurpation displays the hindsight to be expected from someone writing after June 1483, when Gloucester had indeed used the protectorship as a stepping-stone to the throne. It is difficult to believe that anyone in April seriously feared that Gloucester had designs on the crown. The duke had a record of close cooperation with the Yorkist establishment, something at least as important in the context of 1483 as his much-emphasized loyalty to his brother. He was not an alien, northern magnate from whom anything might be expected, but a key figure in the reconstructed royal authority which now needed to be preserved for the young king.

This weakness in Mancini’s argument has, however, gone unremarked, largely because most commentators have chosen to emphasize Mancini’s second point and argue that the real reason for what happened was Woodville hostility to Gloucester. Mancini himself is clear that there was a long-standing rivalry between the duke and the queen’s family, and this has been accepted by almost every subsequent writer. A clash of interest was therefor inevitable once Gloucester had been chosen protector. But Mancini is here guilty of reading back into Edward IV’s reign the tensions which he observed after the king’s death. There is no contemporary evidence of hostility earlier than the end of April 1483. Although the personal attitudes of the protagonists are unknown, it is clear that their working relationship was one of co-operation.

This does not prelude the possibility that the Woodvilles turned against their former ally and in 1483 and cynically excluded Gloucester from the Protectorship in order to seize more power for themselves. But this would make nonsense of the events at the end of April, when Gloucester was able to seize possession of the (king) from an unsuspecting earl Rivers. The earl, who had apparently dispersed his men before meeting the duke, clearly expected no trouble from Gloucester – confidence which would be incredible if Gloucester had just been the victim of a Woodville coup.

Doubts about Mancini’s version are reinforced when it is compared with the account produced early in 1469 by the anonymous continuator of the Croyland Chronicle. The author was councillor of Edward IV and is in general a far more reliable source than Mancini. His facts (although not always his glosses) cannot be faulted, and he was ideally placed to give the definite account of events after Edward’s death. Although he evidently knew what the king had planned, he nowhere states it explicitly, and his silence has left the field to Mancini’s version. But this very silence casts doubt on Mancini’s central point that the council actually voted down the king’s expressed wishes. As a councillor himself, the author would have surely drawn attention to such a reversal. Instead he allows it to be assumed that the council’s plans for the coronation were in line with the king’s sagax disposito as embodied in the codils of his will. This makes it unlikely that Edward sought a protectorate. The implication instead seems to be that Edward’s ‘wise ordering’ did not envisage a formal protectorate at all, but entailed the immediate succession of his heir for which there was precedent in 1377, when the eleven-year-old Richard II had succeeded his grandfather. This is perhaps also implied by the chronicler’s comment that all the councillors were ‘fully desired the prince to succeed his father in all his glory’.

-Rosemary Horrox, "Richard III: A Study of Service"

*I just want to add that in 1475, when his son was only four years old, Edward IV's extant will did not desire a Protectorate (or regency, or lieutenancy); instead, he named his son 'Keeper of the Realm', placed him under the protection and control of the Queen, and appointed a Great Council to administer the realm. That should be kept in mind when discussing his potentially modified 1483 will, made when his son was twelve.

Simply put: Edward IV's 1483 will has not survived, we do not know what it says, we don't know what his codicils were or if they were even relevant to his son's minority (it could have been related to his children's marriages, for example). The Croyland Continuator mentions that he added codicils yet never claims or emphasizes that he appointed anyone Protector, and strongly implied that moat of his 1475 will remained at full force. We can speculate, but we cannot state anything for certain, and insistent claims to the contrary (almost always to Richard III's benefit and Elizabeth Woodville's denigration) must necessarily be viewed as biased and shallow. Saying that Edward IV could have potentially named his brother Lord Protector is very different from looking at contemporary accounts and evidence to judge whether he actually did - which we ultimately don't know and won't know unless we find the actual will or another contemporary source. Nor does it actually matter on a practical level because neither his council nor his queen were obligated to follow his wishes, which in turn makes Mancini's insistence on the contrary (ie: claiming Rixhard was 'entitled' to the position as per law and his brother's alleged order, which is distinctly untrue: Richard was not entitled to anything on the basis of either of those things) all the more suspect and reinforces Horrox's point about him potentially being influenced by propaganda. I'm just putting this here for the sake of the argument.

#r*chard iii #edward iv #wars of the roses #read it again: ALL the councilors wanted Edward V to succeed his father and be crowned immediately. Even after the Woodvilles were out #of the way they wanted the young king's coronation to happen 'without fail'.#You'd think someone like Hastings (who seems to have disliked the Woodvilles) would argue in favor of a Protectorate - but as per Croyland #he didn't. Nobody did.#It's *Mancini's* account which presents a debate in the council between an immediate coronation and a Protectorate #*Croyland* on the other hand is clear that EVERYONE wanted the young king to be crowned as soon as possible.#What Mancini presents as an argument in the council is what Croyland presents as its unifying factor #Croyland also speaks of Edward IV's will and his deathbed moments as well and nowhere does he mention him appointing a Protector #In 1475 Edward appointed a council of 20 to govern the realm and placed the Keeper under the protection and custody of the Queen #He didn't want a Protector when his son was FOUR. Why would he suddenly want one when his son was TWELVE?#When the only precedent of a Protector during a minority (Humphrey and Henry VI) ended when the king in question was SEVEN?#Moreover Mancini's account IS rather suspect #His notion that Richard's potential appointment to Protector was something he was 'entitled to by law and his brother’s ordinance'#is blatantly wrong. Richard was not 'entitled' to the position by either of those things (and there was no such extant law)#So one wonders where exactly Mancini got the idea from? He himself says 'men say' which may indicate gossip - but even more strongly #indicates propaganda put forth by Richard as A.J Pollard has also suggested #Considering Mancini's account doesn't just speak of Edward giving Richard the position but also the queen denying it to him #Which like Horrox said presents the Woodvilles as the aggressors and Richard as a victim merely defending himself #And believes that Richard was *entitled* to the position ((thus casting the Woodvilles as the wrongdoers) when he certainly wasn't #again: we can't know what exactly Edward wanted unless we find his last will or a well-informed contemporary source #And it doesn't practically matter because neither his council nor his queen were socially or legally obligated to follow his wishes #I'm just putting this here for the sake of the argument

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