#the sunne in splendour

[vade-retroo]

"I have seen the future, and it is all battlefields and broken dreams." - THE SUNNE IN SPLENDOUR by Sharon Kay Penman

[wulfhalls]

Watching the white queen.

Save me sunne in splendour adaptation with aneurin barnard as Richard iii,,,,, save me,,,,,,

every single day while we still live in a reality where we have 83 philippa gregory adaptation shoved down our throats and ZERO sharon kay penman one's are even in existence I'm confronted yet again with the fact that God had abandoned us

[thebluemartini]

Richard III/Anne Neville Fanfic: Forever My Queen

I am on a total Queen Anne Neville/King Richard III kick right now! I watched "The White Queen" TV series a few years ago, and then in the past couple months, I read about them in the novels "The Virgin Widow" by Anne O'Brien, "The Kingmaker's Daughter" by Philippa Gregory, and "The Sunne in Splendour" by Sharon Kay Penman. So now, of course that means I've written fanfiction about them and posted my first fic about them on AO3:

I also intend to write some more fanfics about them. If you have any fic ideas, feel free to send them my way! :)

[anckinskywalker]

when the sunne in splendour gets its own adaptation then you will see. you will all see

[ricardian-werewolf]

A princess lost to the sands of time.

This post is purely indulgent about my whole-cloth original character, Cecily-Anne Plantagenet, daughter of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and Anne Neville, Duchess of Gloucester.

(Cecily-Anne, played by Kate Beckinsale in Cold Comfort Farm) Born in 1473, the twin of Edward of Middleham, Cecily's early childhood was a remarkably undisturbed and peaceful one. She grew up in Middleham for a large portion of her childhood, and was raised similar to her mother, Anne Neville, was. Baptised a few days after her birth for her nameday, She was christened Cecily-Anne, for her maternal and paternal grandmothers, Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, and Anne for Anne's own mother of Anne Beauchamp. Cecily-Anne became especially close to her half sister Kathryn, who was roughly a year or two her senior, and their similarities in dress and style proved sometimes difficult for their head nursemaid, Mistress Burgh, to figure out who was who! When Richard took the throne in 1483, things changed rapidly. Unlike Edward, who did not attend the coronation, Cecily did, and sat amongst the audience. Due to the fact that the Princess of Wales is only a marital title, she was simply known formally as Princess Cecily-Anne.

Edward's death in early 1484 rocked the Gloucester household to its core, and Cecily, like her mother, grew ill with grief, which only worsened with the death of Anne Neville in 1485. Cecily, just months shy of her 12th birthday, followed her father to Bosworth field - something that is wholly historically inaccurate but relevant thematically for what comes after. The Historical record the tudors wrote in the wake of Redmore Plain/Bosworth Field, claims that Cecily was taken under Tudor custody, died in captivity in the tower and her name was written from the Plantagenet history like her parents and siblings. What actually follows this is of my own idea: Kim Newman (of Anno Dracula) put forth the idea of Richard III as a vampire - why not, the biggest villain in all of English literary canon as a bloodsucking monster? the Tudor propaganda machine would have a field day.

I didn't buy it. I wanted to honor what Richard really was at his core and would have done if offered vampirism not from a mercenary choosing to fight alongside him at Bosworth - which alongside the whole idea of Richard as a bloodsucking monster, lends credence to the argument of "my kingdom for a horse." Richard, the coward. Instead, I made Anne Neville the vampiric parasite of a stripe that can be traced to tuberculosis, which in historical records across Europe and America, was linked to vampiric scares. And in a Pre-protestant reformation world, as well as the dissolution, Catholicism and vampirism would not be well-entwined at all. Richard, at Bosworth, died with the vampiric infection in his blood, harbored for months from when Anne was still alive, and at the point which he laid with her in the months prior to his discovery of her illness. Edward's appendicitis was also dead with the vampiric blood of his mother in his system, a reclusive part of his DNA that went from dormant to active as he died. Cecily did not die with the vampiric blood in her system - she was turned by Richard in 1491, after he, Anne, Edward and Cecily had fled to Margaret's court at Burgundy, which gave them open sanctuary from the maelstrom of Tudor's breakdown of all things related to Richard's reign. Johnny and Kathryn came to Burgundy along with George of Clarence's children, who were kept safe under Richard's careful watch. From there, Cecily and her family played a waiting game that lasted from 1485 until 1838, when in this universe, an england reigned by Queen Victoria and her Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, set their sights on the elder princess, and Melbourne moved to seize her as a bargaining chip to disrupt Richard's laid plans of a Plantagenet overthrow. She has not been seen or heard from since. Her parents still hold out hope that this is just a temporary kidnapping, but if Lord Melbourne is the one behind it, then hope is a thing loath to be spare.

[darkphoenixgoddess10]

Almost 10 years ago, I was thinking, “When will The Sunne in Splendour ever get a live-action adaptation?”

Now in 2022, all I can think of is: THANK GOODNESS TSIS ISN’T RUINED BY STARZ!!!

[richarddukeofgloucester]

Just re-reading The Sunne in Splendour, wishing for a film adaptation... several film adaptations and/or a TV series adaptation that continues to be renewed until every scene on every single page of the entire 900+ pages of the entire novel has been included along with every single historical detail that has been discovered since its publication. Thank you, @breathingwithnoheir , for pointing out that one mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger and make tremendous demands when it comes to an undertaking such as this! 

[gettothestabbing]

You mentioned having a Tudor phase and reading a lot about them once upon a time and I was wondering if you had any book recommendations?

Unfortunately, most of the books I read about the Tudors and the Wars of the Roses, while entertaining at the time, are not really ones I'd recommend today. They were mostly from Philippa Gregory and similar authors. So they focused on relationships, romance (or lack thereof), and familiar relationships. I found it fascinating, and still do. But looking back, some of these books were using historical figures to write some semi-trashy stuff. (Not all, but some.)

While they were fairly well researched, some readers might not enjoy the liberties they did take. I don't remember all the titles or details, but I do remember that in The White Queen and The Lady of Rivers, Philippa Gregory made Jacquetta of Luxembourg and her daughter, Elizabeth of Woodville into witches who influenced real historical battles and events to some extent. (Both women were accused of witchcraft at various times.)

If a woman was accused in history of having an affair, the author almost always used it for a forbidden love storyline. And for some reason, in The Constant Princess, Gregory is obsessed with portraying Spain as superior to England and blaming its weather and poor medical knowledge for the loss of her male children in stillbirth and infancy. She also portrays Arthur, her first husband, as Catherine's true love who convinced her to deny the consummation of their marriage so that she could remarry his brother and change England for the better. It's theoretically possible that Arthur convinced Catherine to do this, but the reasoning and planning behind it are quite a stretch, because Henry was like eight years old. I understand why Gregory wants to give Catherine a romance outside of her marriage to Henry. But historically speaking, that one really irked me.

It's not that there's no place for books like this, that ask "what if this accusation or affair really happened?" That was a huge part of the appeal of Philippa Gregory's works for young women like me. But I haven't read them in so long, and as the above paragraph shows, I don't remember them as exactly stellar literature.

BUT! I can recommend The Sunne in Splendour, a nearly 1000-page book about, and defending, King Richard III. It takes the good things that Philippa Gregory's novels pointed out about this widely hated historical king and presents a more solid, better researched take on his actions and personality. (I'm sure the Shakespeare play is great, but from what we know of the man himself, it is a bit of a caricature and definitely influenced by the propaganda of the House of Tudor that came to the throne after him.) This book is kind of hard to find, but I promise that it is WORTH getting your hands on.

If I find any new books, or rediscover value in old ones, about these historical figures that I can recommend, I will definitely talk about it!

[allthingsperiod]

Fav book I’ve read this year: “The sunne in splendour” by Sharon Penman

Short feedback: It hit me right in the fells. Very emotional book with a lot of interesting characters. I would recomend it to everyone, but especially for those who enjoyed Game of Thrones or those kind of books. I couldn’t stop reading.

[breathingwithnoheir]

wait this seems like the perfect excuse for a poll (which i should have posted first because reverse chronological dashboard but whatever)

go find my original post about the book covers then come back to clicky buttons

[coraniaid]

It’s always very odd to me when I read criticism of A Song Of Ice And Fire online (by which I mainly mean: on Tumblr) which takes for granted that this is some sort of obsessively dark and edgy and mean-spirited fantasy, because ... that's not what the series is actually like at all?  

I mean, yes, some awful (and graphically described) stuff happens in these books, but this is at heart a deeply optimistic and almost embarrassingly romantic story, full of a very obvious sympathy and tenderness for the unhappy and the hurt and the powerless.  The weird gritty-for-the-sake-of-it books that the series's detractors describe wouldn't have recurring POV characters like Sansa Stark or Tyrion Lannister or Davos Seaworth or Samwell Tarly or Brienne of Tarth.  They certainly wouldn't obviously empathize with and respect these characters to the extent the actual books do.  They wouldn't be so obsessive about the importance of hope and kindness and understanding in an otherwise uncaring world.  Whenever the text suggests the world isn't fair or kind there's always an unspoken "but it should be,and I wish it was". You are clearly not meant to think that characters like Roose Bolton or Twyin Lannister are being held up as role models to emulate!

I mean, maybe the TV show is more like that -- I gave up on the show after only a couple of seasons, it was a terrible adaptation of the source material, even before the final season that everyone apparently hated -- but so much of the open disdain for ASOIAF I come across on here reads like the people writing the posts haven't even read a single one of the books. Yes, the popularity of ASOIAF inspired a lot of "dark" fantasy novels that actually are bleakly nihilistic and seem to revel in their characters meeting pointlessly sad and violent ends, but Martin's books are just not like that.

Yes, lots of the world-building for ASOIAF is patently ridiculous, and yes, key parts of the plot are just cribbed from the War of the Roses (or, rather, from historical novels like Sharon Penman's The Sunne in Splendour)  and yes, Martin has said some very stupid things in interviews while busy not writing the series.  And no, I'm not sure I could actually bring myself to recommend the books to anyone who's not read them before (especially when it's so unlikely that the series will ever be finished, let alone in a satisfying way).  I haven’t reread them myself in years.

But honestly, back when I was a quietly miserable teenager these books really meant a lot to me, in part because they are the opposite of the caricature often discussed online.  Yes, they acknowledged that sometimes the world was awful and unbearable.  It is!  But they also suggested that it was still important to try to be fair and kind and to appreciate the moments when things were better.  They are books about trying to do the right thing even when it’s so hard as to seem impossible and nobody else will even know that you tried, written in a way that takes for granted that “the right thing” is also the just and the optimistic and the quietly heroic thing; that doing the right thing when you afraid is more praiseworthy than never being afraid at all. And it is baffling to me how often I see people talking about them now who don't actually seem to have ever even skimmed them but are still vocally passionate in their hatred of something that, as they describe it, simply doesn't exist.

[vade-retroo]

the childhood sweethearts richanne's moments in the sunne in splendour are so cute, but I was gagged when:

1. anne slept in richard's room and used his favorite blanket while he was away, because she was so afraid that he died she couldn't sleep

2. edward once called anne "dickon's anne".

[wulfhalls]

A Sunne in Splendour adaptation would absolutely decease me. I NEED IT NOW!!!

sai bennett anne dream casting REAL

[audaciiae]

anyone else just not give a shit about marguerite d'anjou or elizabeth woodville

[navree]

the problem with the white queen is that our main characters consistently falls into this trap a lot of historical domain characters do where they immediately start disliking and distrusting someone who’s done them no wrong and hasn’t given enough reason for that dislike or mistrust, because the people writing the story know that they’ll eventually become rivals/adversaries/enemies

it was a huge problem in ‘memoirs of cleopatra’ where cleopatra goes from liking octavian to hating him the second caesar dies even tho he’s done nothing to engender that hatred and they share similar values for the first year afterwards, all because margaret georges knows that eventually they’ll be enemies and go to war that will end in cleopatra’s death, and it’s a MASSIVE problem with the white queen where elizabeth, our literal protagonist, is an ass to everyone for no reason just because philippa gregory and emma frost know that eventually they’ll be on opposing sides, which means that every action taken against her by warwick or george or richard feels justified because she’s acting out against them for no reason and being a total bitch who pits them against her with her own attitude

[ricardian-werewolf]

Ghost wiring

I haven’t shared a snippet from any of my fanfics on here, in like forever, but this is one from a fanfic that can only be described as Sunne in Splendour set in the world of Threads (from 1984), where Richard and Anne are vampires, and a bunch of other fandoms pop up briefly. “My mind is a box of evils, Dickon. For good example, it believes our son is dead. Because he was buried under a snowbank.” Richard sighed.“Your mind, our minds, plays tricks. The most devious of tricks, Annie. Listen not to it.” he whispered, tilting her chin up to look her in the eye. “And what do we do in the meantime, hm?” Anne retorted, staring at Richard with such a withering gaze he furrowed his brows and stared back at her with the same heated intensity.  “We do what we both do best, beloved. We wait. Ned has been a vampire for 4 centuries, being buried in a snowbank is little enough to give him a scratch. And besides, Cecily-” Anne’s brows moved from being furrowed to being raised, and Richard knew that she did not know. By jesu, she did not know! “Cecily,” Anne repeated, her voice at once both a solemn whisper and tinged with a holiness in its lilt that stilled Richard dead in his tracks. Cecily-Anne, their other daughter, disappeared from their sight in 1838 under Lord Melbourne’s control, could not have survived. To speak her name was once more ripping the gauze and bindings off a porous wound and pouring salt into it.