← THIS IS HISTORY — A DYNASTY TO DIE FOR
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A
Hello, friends. I'm doing something different this week. You'll notice this is history has dropped into your feed twice. Don't worry, I've got a special gift for you. I wanted to give you a taste of what we do on our bonus episodes. So I've done you all a solid and gifted you one of my favorites from this season so far. In it, producer Al and I introduce you to the doe eyed king Henry VI for the first time. Plus we meet his assertive and intelligent bride to be Queen Margaret of Anjou, fresh off the boat from France. Remember, you can get all bonus episodes ad free and on video over@patreon.com thisishistory now let's start the episode.
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B
The Cock John.
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A
What is talking. What? That's what I call it.
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B
What's that?
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A
Nevermind. So the Cock John. Yeah, funny name for a ship. I have a suspicion that this is a transliteration of cog John, because a cog is a regular type of, is a large sort of merchant type ship in the 14th, 15th century. So I think it's probably the cog John. Typically you see ships in this period and I'm thinking back to when I wrote Lionhearts, the novel which was all about sort of naval battles. Typically they're called the cog and then the name of a saint or something like that. So I think cog rather than cock.
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B
Cog over cock.
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A
Okay, well that's my motto. You may have a different one. I wouldn't like to speak.
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B
I'm just gonna leave my motto, decision making to one side. And maybe we should get this show on the road. The ship on the road. The ship Berthing. Berthing. I don't know. I'm stop this.
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A
Ship on the sea.
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B
Ship on the sea. That's it.
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A
Let's set sa on the good ship that is.
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B
This is history indeed. Hello and welcome. We love having you here on this is History. Welcome to another episode. Let's recap on our latest episode for this season, season nine, all about Henry VI and his dithering. But we really this episode get to meet him properly. You know, he's been this kind of like figure in the background as the adults have sort of, you know, ruled on his behalf. But it's now his moment, his time to shine. And you know, he's not exactly the saviour that people wanted him to be and he's got really big things on his in tray. So he's got the ongoing peace negotiations with the French and he's also got a wife, Margaret, anjou who is a wife, but also I guess a pawn in a bigger political battle, for lack of a better term. So let's start with her and her story. You know, you open the episode with this, I guess speaking of ships, this comical vomit comet as you call a ship. Who is Margaret and why is she setting sail over the channel?
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A
Well, Margaret of Anjou is going to be a big character certainly in the rest of this season, season nine and, and somewhat into season ten of A Dynasty to Die for as well, because she's, she's one of the more consequential English medieval queens, you know, the best one in the world that the, the, the, the role of queen in the Plantagenet era can be somewhat circumscribed. But then now and again there come along these amazing characters. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, I mean Margaret of Anjou is one of those characters. She takes a sort of a very direct hands on political role in very turbulent times. So that all lies ahead. What we're meeting now is Margaret as a 15 year old aboard the ship. The reason I call it the Vomit Comet is because people are, it is very stormy seas when she crosses over to England. And so it's reported she's been feeling quite unwell before she gets on it. So that's not just a sort of a flight of nautical fancy on my part. Who is she? Well, she's the daughter of Rene, Count of Anjou, who's brother in law of Charles vi. So she is part of the extended French Valois royal family and her marriage to Henry Vill has been negotiated with peace in mind. There's a great urgency and necessity certainly on the English side to find some formal end to this war. I mean, 100 years war, as I said in the main episode, has now been going on for something like 107 years. They didn't call it 100 years war then, but we're well beyond a century of war now and there have been a few decisive stopping points. Supposedly there was a treaty of Bretigny in 1363. 60. That was after Edward had sort of motored his way to the walls of Paris. And there was this moment of ceasing hostilities where England basically got an enlarged Gascony in full sovereignty. That means no English king would have to do homage to a French king for it. That situation sort of held through Richard II's reign until it started to fall apart under Henry IV and Henry V. Then we had that decisive moment in 1420 which we heard about last season. Treaty of Troyes Where Henry V is basically triumphant. He says, I'm having Normandy in full sovereignty, I'm having Axton full sovereignty. And by the way, I'm heir and regent to the realm of France that's now fallen apart. So it's the search for another kind of, not just a truce, but a treaty, a stopping point to this war that everyone agrees is going to be a sustainable situation. The difference between 1360 Treaty of Brittany and 1420 in the 1440s is England really has no chips to play. There's no leverage over the French. All England has is we'll stop fighting. And from the French point of view, they're like, you're gonna stop fighting because you can't afford it. And we know it. And the Burgundians and we heard last time and Armagnacs have made up at the treaty Arras. So this is big problem time for the English. So they're really scrabbling around. And what William de la Pole, Marquis, well Earl Marquis, he's going to become Duke of Suffolk, manages to negotiate in 40, 44 is okay. We marry this actually slightly impoverished daughter of the House of Valois. Rene, Count of Anjou, is a sort of slightly shady character. In and out of jail, got no money. We sort out the, the Anjou family, they get a queen on the books for a cut price dowry in return. The deal is that the English get a two year truce. During that truce, they've got to negotiate the peace. So Margaret of Anjou's betrothal, which is actually handled by the Marquess of Suffolk, he stands in at this ceremony for Henry vi when, when they're in France, there's a formal betrothal. This starts the top clock ticking on a, on a two year truce. And the idea is that by the time this has run out, they'll have negotiated peace, England will have a queen. Henry VI can get on with the business of producing more royal family because let's be honest, there's almost none. There's him, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, that's pretty much it. The royal family has really shrunk so they need to repopulate, otherwise they're going to have a dynastic crisis coming down the barrel. And this looks, this is sort of sold on the English side as well. If we have this marriage, we can arrange a new peace deal and we can just kiss goodbye to this awful war that we don't really want. But it's not a very good deal, not very good deal at all. Because as soon as the clock starts ticking on the Truce. Margaret of Anjou goes over to England and she is basically a sleeper agent. I mean, she's given very. She's only 15 going on 16, but she's given very clear instructions. You need to be in that king's ear. And this is the sort of French instruction telling him the price of peace. And that's going to be this, this place that we hear about again and again in this main episode, the county of Maine, England. The first thing they're going to try and prize out of the English hands is the county of Maine. And that. And the deal is that's going to be handed over to Rene, Count of Anjou, to hold nominally independently. Maine and Anjou are neighbouring counties. They were all part of the original plantagent emperor under Henry ii. Hand that over. And then that'll be the basis for the. The permanent piece. So that's the deal that Suffolk strikes. Now, he doesn't really have many cards to play, but this, this doesn't look very good and I think it's a measure of how bad this does look that they try and keep it a secret as long as possible. I mean, it's not a, it's not a mark of a. A very happy and successful deal if you basically don't tell anybody any about it, anybody about it and try and hide it for as long as possible.
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B
And can you just give me a slapshot of the adults in the room? Because first. Well, on the English side, because up until this point we've been hearing about all these adults who essentially run England on Henry VI's behalf. But, you know, we'll get to Henry in a bit. But Suffolk is a new person because prior to that it was his uncles. Why does Suffolk come into center stage at this point?
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A
You're right. This is. By the 1440s, you've had this sort of slow creep towards power of William de la Pole, Suffolk. We heard last episode that Gloucester Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, has been heavily politically discounted and discredited by the goings on with his wife, Elmer Cobham. So there's been this sort of direct attack kind of led by Cardinal Beaufort, but also connived in by Suffolk against Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Suffolk has sort of. What's the phrase? He's risen without a trace, if you've heard that phrase before. He sort of just kind of floated his way. He had, you know, French service. I mean, his family has done long service in France. Grandfather at the. At Harfleur, father at Agincourt. I think they both killed in the course of Henry V's wars. But this is. He's got a lot of credit in the bank as a. As a. As a noble family. And he builds up this private interest in East Anglia. So for anyone who's not totally familiar with the geography of England, that is the sort of bulgy bit that sticks out into the North Sea. Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, sort of adjacent to North Essex. Suffolk builds up such a powerful land holding in that area that there's this famous quote in the Paston letters, which is a huge volume, a huge sort of bulk of letters written by a gentry family called the Pastons around this time, saying, unless you have my Lord of Suffolk's good lordship, I. Unless you're in his good books, you can't get anything done in this country. Specifically in East Anglia, where the Pastons have a lot of land, but really across the whole of England, he builds up, little by little, a lot of influence on the Royal Council and a lot of private influence in East Anglia until you sort of some, you know, he just floats into power, really. And you get to the point in the 1440s where he's really directing everything. I mean, there's a point to which Beaufort and Gloucester have kind of knocked heads so many times that they're both diminished by this. And so Suffolk is the person that rises into this space. And clearly he has a close rela. Personal relationship with Henry vi. He seems to know how to manage him. Not that he takes a great deal of managing. He knows how to gatekeep him is probably a better way to put it. And he really sort of takes a grip on almost every area of policy, really, including, as we've heard, foreign policy, which is sort of front and center of all England's concerns at this time.
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B
So you've got Dillard Poll in, for lack of a better term, pole position. I know it was a bad one, but I had to do it.
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A
Keep doing them.
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B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you had one this episode, so I'm entitled to one great one all. Yeah, one for one. But this is the moment where we meet Henry vi. But. And I want to get this right, which is why I pulled up the script here, you know, you're quoting a chronicle describing Henry's fashion sense and you say it's giving depressed Goth standing alone at the back of my Bloody Valentine concert as a portrait of Henry vi. It's a really spicy one. So I want to know, you know, we meet Henry VI here. Who is he and why does he let everyone down?
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A
Well, okay, so let's Take this by turns, this description of Henry VI is by John Blackman, his confessor. It's a very, very famous description of Henry vi. I will caveat it slightly, which I didn't do in the main episode. Blackman as his confessor has an interest and also writing slightly after the fact, knowing that Henry VI's story is somewhat of a tragedy, is playing up his piety here. He's saying, look, this is a guy who's just really, really a simple, religious, pious, good man. But Blackman inadvertently sells us a really dismal impression of a Plantagenet king. So Blackman's the one who says he's always dressed very simply, the sort of farmer boots, the, the black, simple clothes. He, he can't bear to hear swearing. His sort of the worst oath he'll, he'll put up with is forsooth. And forsooth. Well, he wouldn't really have enjoyed this is History very much. There's some bad language on it. I realize. He, there's a, there are, you know, he, Blackman says he, he sort of abhors human flesh. I mean he's, he's just very squeamish about all things kind of sexy. There's separately a very good story about some sort of court celebration when Henry's quite a young man and one of the nobles around him thinks it'll be sort of great guns to bring in essentially a load of belly dancers. And Henry sort of like screams and sort of orders them out of the room. He's totally furious. I mean really, he really is buttoned up and sort of squeamish and pious. And as I said in the main episode, this is like his father. I mean, Henry V had some of this in him as well. But in Henry V it was coupled with a whole different range of personal attributes. The intense interest in war, the absolute sort of laser guided decision making, the certainty of his own mind, the ability, no matter how sort of unlike an Edward III type he was, to get along with people, to win people's respect and trust. He was a leader. And Henry VI is never ever, ever a leader. He just doesn't give charisma. He. This story that Blackman tells us of his kind of dowdy appearance isn't the only story we hear of this. We'll come to this in probably season 10, much later in Henry VI's life. There's these stories of his, his sort of shabby, tattered old robe that he sort of hangs around in after things have gone very, very wrong for him. People. So what are we saying? There's a degree of snobbery about clothes, but there's something deeper going on beneath there, isn't there, which expect a vision of kingship. Part of the job description of kingship is to give magnificence is to embody power and that. And there's a language of power that is sartorial. And Henry vi, that's one of the many ways in which he cannot speak or give the language of power.
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B
So there's this portrait of Henry vi who was quite dowdy and shabby, and yet the things that he's interested are giving that majesty, as you say, you know, these grand chapels, these grand buildings. He almost kind of feels like a very early Renaissance man in some ways, like his father in a different way. So I guess. Could you describe, elaborate on that contrast? Because he's kind of shabby figure at home, but he does project this majesty through buildings.
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A
Yes, well, this is all piety. And so there's a comparison here with Henry iii. So if any listeners want to go back and listen to, gosh, how long ago, season four, I suppose they'll remember that Henry iii, similar character, sort of shied away from very decisive, clear, gripped leadership, but threw himself into these grand architectural projects. In Henry III's case, it was the total redevelopment of Westminster Abbey. And Henry VI really probably excels. Even Henry iii, maybe that's a bit strong, but he's there or thereabouts with Henry III particular, you know, his particular legacies are Eaton College and King's College, Cambridge. I think he also founds All Souls in Oxford. So he's, he's, you know, you can't take it away from the guy. He's got this magnificent eye. And for these, these incredible neo Gothic foundations, I mean, King's College Chapel in Cambridge, Eton College Chapel, which, you know, the. As I described it, the way I described it in the episode, was the plan for Eton College Chapel. It was eventually scaled back because this was going to be like the biggest chapel in the whole of Europe. It was truncated, it was scaled back. It's not the biggest college chap, not the biggest chapel in Europe, but it is still astonishing. I live about three or four miles away from Eton. I moved there roughly 10 years ago and I'd heard about Eton. I knew about Eton. I mean, you can't not know about Eton. It's such a major part of sort of the British and English in particular, the establishment. It's the most famous school in the country, but I've never been there. And one morning I bought a bicycle when I moved where I live now, and it was in the spring or the early summer and I started going on sort of bike rides very early in the morning, getting up at dawn, going for a sort of, you know, an hour and a half ride. And I can remember so vividly the moment I rode through Eton, through the playing fields of Eton, famous playing fields of Eton, turned left at the mini roundabout and then went through Eton College, the grounds, the town that it is, and almost fell off me bike. It is the most sensationally beautiful establishment for a school. And then you just cross over a little bridge and you've got Windsor Castle right there. The same story of King's College Chapel. I can remember the first time I clapped eyes on King's College chape. It's just, it's mind blowing how, how beautiful these foundations are, these, you know, religious foundations. And so Henry VI is brilliant at this. I mean, that's where all his energy and his talent and his skill lies. He would have been probably a pretty good bishop in many regards. Maybe he wouldn't, because it's still in this age, a degree of political decisiveness needed. But certainly he would been better placed in the church. And so it's something of a tragedy that this character who is really, really, you know, he tapped right into the zeitgeist of the high end ecclesiastical foundation culture of the 15th century, of plowing money into these new religious foundations which are designed to sort of, you know, to sing offices for the dead, to renew the kind of spiritual life of the country. He's amazing at that, but that's everything really. And his talents as a politician, as a ruler, as a diplomat, as a warrior are somewhere close to zero.
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B
Well, on the kind of the bishop point, one of the things that this newly founded college is going to do is provide free education for 70 poor boys at a time. Does this speak to, I guess, Henry VI's ethical frame and moral frame that he perhaps inherited from his father?
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Possibly to his, but certainly to the piety of the time. I mean, you used the word, I think, early Renaissance man, the sort of the incoming trends of the Renaissance of humanism, which later in the 15th century. But this sense that there's a religious renewal, some of which is pushed into sort of great architecture, a lot of which is pushed into this new learning. Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, is a Renaissance man himself. This idea that there is, you know, there's great value and enormous sort of prestige in sponsoring learning. So parts of that are finding its way into Henry VI's piety, I think it's pretty conventional what he's doing. He's never really a radical or original thinker, but he's certainly tapped in, as I say, to the kind of mood of the time, which is religious renewal, sponsorship of establishments of learning like Oxford and Cambridge colleges, which will have a sort of a religious function that's expressed through inquiry about the world. That's where Henry VI's mind is sitting. But he's not really unusual in that sense.
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B
And there's a really interesting portrait of that piety in the negotiations of the French. They build, well you dub it the great Embassy, where the French and the English are there to kind of find butt heads and be like, hey, can we stop killing each other, please? But at some point, Henry vi, if I remember correctly, stops proceedings because he doesn't think the opening is polite enough. Yeah, yeah. So I guess it's such an interesting, I guess, mental image because essentially the English have to be really quite strategic against the French and not lose all their territories. But you've got a guy that's essentially prostrating in front of the French. So could you, I guess, paint us a portrait of the negotiations and how they open and what bargaining chips the English have at the time?
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A
Well, there's, you know, the French come over and they're fated, rightly so. There's diplomatic protocol, and then there's gonna be this critical moment. You know, Suffolk has managed the negotiations while they've been over in France, but now there's no getting away from it. Henry VI has to play a. Ostensibly a leading part in these negotiations. He's not a kid anymore, you know, he's, well. Well of the age where he should be doing this anyway. So there's an attempt, probably led by Suffolk, to stage manage this up to a point. Henry sat in his throne, as we heard. He's given the right gear to wear. He doesn't look like a, you know, an oik or a, you know, or an emo. He's got all the big guys standing around him. Okay. Yep, that's tapestry showing Henry V, trying to remind everybody. Yeah, all the blocks are. The building blocks are here. But then there are two problems, and you've alluded to them both. One of them is, is that the English don't really have a lot to trade with here. What are they. What have they got? Well, they've got Normandy, somewhat denuded from what it was. They've got Maine, they've got Gascony. So they have these lands in France. But the goal of the game is to hang on to those things and hang on to them in as advantageous a set of circumstances as they can. The dream would be to have them all in full sovereignty and say, okay, well, maybe we can trade away the crown of France. That's one thing to trade away, but listen, that ship sailed. Charles VII has already been crowned King of France, so there's no kind of trading away. We'll let you be King of France. He already is. He was crowned at ram, and Henry VI notably was not. So that's not much of a bargaining chip. So then what are you down to? The marriage has been bargained well, and, and, and there's still conditions attached to that. So they've. All they've really got to bargain with is the land they hold, but that's the thing they want to hang on to. So it's a pretty bad starting point for negotiations. So then it comes down to psychology and charisma and personality. Then you're really relying on the guy in the chair being able somehow to over awe, impress, charm the people in front of him, make them want to do a deal with him. Not the guy. Henry VI is not the guy. So what you have, as you pointed out, is these sort of preposterous moments where the Latin oration is going on. Henry kind of springs from his throne now. This kind of smacks of. Maybe this is something he's been told to do. Suffolk's like, let's give him a bit of, you know, a bit of energy. The Latin blah, blah, blah, is gonna be going on. You leap out of your seat and go, come on, guys, let's have a party. Right, yeah, I see the script. It makes sense on paper. But Henry VI leaping up and doing this is just sort of comical and a bit shit. And so him doffing his cap and going around slapping them on the shoulders. Yeah, if that was Edward III doing that, where he'd go, shut the fuck up, let's just have a party. You know, Edward III could do that and that would seem spontaneous, but Henry sort of getting up and going this. Bit long winded, isn't it? Oh, my God. It's just, you know, it gives. It's so amazing how two leaders, two kings, can do the same thing and give a completely opposite. That seems to be what happens with Henry VI at this moment. So from, from this point on, the English are really cooked. And you have this, you know, this described in the accounts. Every time they ask Henry a question, he's like, guys, it just stinks of weakness and that's it. What else do the English have now? They. They give up the land, they keep fighting. Which one do you want? They've already made it very clear they don't want to keep fighting. There's only one person in the entire kingdom who wants to keep fighting. That's Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester.
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B
I want to know why Maine was so significant that I guess that territory. Was it more because, as you alluded to, Margaret's dad was poor and he needed something, or is there symbolic importance to the French having that first?
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A
It's territory territorially significant. I mean, it abuts Normandy. It's a sort of gateway. It's part of the gateway between Normandy and Aquitaine. So it's historically been core to the Plantagenet dynasty. You know, Le Mans was one of. Was, you know, a beloved city of Henry ii. So it goes all the way back to the early days of the Plantagenets. But it's not really just sentimental value. It's like the English have. This is part of Henry V's conquests and to the south of Normandy, which is this kind of bridging zone between the two great spheres of English territorial conquest. So giving it up is opening the back door to Normandy, if you see what I mean, in sort of military, strategic terms, you know. But just giving it away full stop is such a bad, bad look as soon as you start parceling bits up and handing them over, particularly if the deal is, we'll give you Maine if you promise to keep negotiating with us for a treaty. Why would Charles VII go, okay, thanks for Maine, Yeah, you can have everything else. That's all I wanted. Doesn't make any sense. I mean, they're being played. But unfortunately, the only. Their only other recourse would be for the English to stand up from the negotiating table and say, well, all right, screw you and keep fighting. But everything is draining away from them. You know, the Burgundians have abandoned them. They've had this sort of. It's never been a formal alliance with the dukes of Brittany, but they've. The dukes of Brittany have definitely sort of sat in between the French and the English. Brittany abandons the English and the tide is going out on them. And everybody knows there's no way this doofus sitting in the throne is going to pull a Henry V and stand up and say, you know What? I'm taking 15,000 men over and I'm just going to invade and batter you senseless. And then we'll see. He's not Going to do it. So they're stuffed.
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B
Yeah. And I guess, I guess over the territorial border in Normandy, you've got Richard, Duke of York, who's scapegoated for a lot of, a lot of things.
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A
Yeah. So. Yeah. So this is so beyond the, the international diplomacy, there's also a degree of internal diplomacy that stems somewhat from having this lack of leadership in the, the person of the king. So you have this group of nobles. We've heard about some of them. I'm going to try and introduce them in a, in a, in a judicious way. And one of, one of the big problems you have whenever we step into wars of the Roses history is there are just so many goddamn people. And one of the things I'm gonna try and do in this podcast is limit the cast of character so that we can really tightly focus on the politics and on the, you know, on what, on the, the, the elemental bits of the story. But there's no getting away from Richard, Duke of York in this story. He's gonna, he's gonna be a very, very important person. The second half of this season. He's, you know, there's been a rotation of people since John, Duke of Bedford died. There have been people, you know, no nobles sent out to hold the line in France as, you know, unlimited and short term appointments as lieutenant or governor of Normandy. And Richard, Duke of York is one of these, the Dukes of York. You know, it's a very senior noble position. You know, goes back to the Edmund Langley, Duke of York, who was the son of Edward iii, as you know, as I think I said in the main episode, if listeners want to go back to season eight and remind themselves the episode just as, as Henry V is about to take troop Star Fleur, the Southampton plot of 1450 sees Richard, Duke of York's father, Richard Earl of Cambridge, mixed up in the Southampton plot and executed for it. But you know, that, that's his lineage and he's not disgraced by his, his father's stupidity. So he's, he's growing up to become a, you know, what should be a sort of plank of the English noble establishment. That's not plank as an insult. That's a sort of, you know, foundation stone. But he comes back from Normandy having expended a lot of his own money and a good deal of his own time on a, in a what looks like it's becoming a losing cause. And does he get any thanks for it? No, he just gets his sort of accounts like pulled up by the council and they Start going through them going, why'd you spend that? Why'd you spend that? Where's that money gone? What have you done for this? It's not a great way of keeping him on side. It used to be thought, I mean, by historians, that Richard, Duke of York, sits much more closely to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester at this time, who's this sort of arch belligerent, the one who wants to keep the war going. It seems much more likely, I think, historians would agree now, that at this point in the early 1440s, Richard, Duke of York is at most ambivalent in the peace process. And he may actually be behind it. He may be a pragmatist who's like, well, we have to do something to stop the war. And if it means giving Maine away, well, so be takes some time for him to move to a position which is closer to where Gloucester sits, which is, we fight and we, you know, we. We don't give up. But one of the factors in driving him in that direction, one of the early factors, I think, is the way he's treated when he comes back from. From Normandy. He has his accounts, you know, sort of shredded in front of him, and then he's sacked, sent off to Ireland and. And the Duke of Somerset is sent to. To Normandy in his place. It's just not very good man management. And man management, particularly of the big nobles, is the key skill of the king, and it's one of the things that only a king can really do. Having the Duke of Suffolk as a proxy telling the king how to manage his nobles is no good for this. In big constitutional political building block terms, you need a functioning king to keep the aristocracy in check. It's not a case of the aristocracy have this class interest in being grasping and ripping the king to shreds. But there are always going to be natural tensions between these people, these powerful oligarchs. Effectively, a competent, functional king will have as one of his core attributes the ability to man manage this team and have them work harmoniously together, settle their disputes, keep them all on side. Once you have a character like Henry VI who, you know is incapable of that, that's when the rot sets in. And really, that's the story of the next 5, 6, 7, 10 episodes of this podcast.
- [33:55]
B
Yeah, and it's something that French will exploit ruthlessly, which we'll discover over coming episodes. And just to finish, Dan, you know, we mentioned Margaret of Anjou at the top of this episode, and you called her a sleeper agent. Will we be finding more about that? Assertion in coming episodes, I think.
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A
Yes. So we're going to certainly see the playing out of her. I mean, there's no doubt at all that she has, in her brief as queen in her early years, persuade Henry VI to give up Maine. I mean, there's letters between her and Charles VII where that's clear. From that point on, her role does change somewhat. And it's interesting that. I mean, I set up in this episode, in the main episode, this clash of characters between Margaret and Henry. Very different sorts of people. But Henry is notably very nice to her. He is a sort of. He's a big green flag as a husband and she will become very, very protective of him. Now, how you pass protectiveness of him from protectiveness of herself and the broader dignity of the crown and royal family is something we'll come on to and discuss. But there's no getting away from that, that Margaret of Anjou is going to become a very important person, but not so much as an agent for the French, as a kind of dogged defender of the Lancastrian family.
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B
Ooh, interesting. So what have you got for us next week?
- [35:35]
A
Right, next week, episode six. We've had this. This name, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, around the story quite a lot. He's taken a pretty heavy blow with the disgrace of his wife, Eleanor Cobham, but history is not finished with Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester and the last brother standing of Henry IV's children. Henry V's youngest brother is about to go out, not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with some very dramatic circumstances and possibly a conspiracy theory. Ooh, interesting.
- [36:11]
B
Well, look out for Dan's horoscope reading of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester in next week's episode. But if you've got any other questions about everything that we've discussed so far or the season, Henry vi, Marguerite of Anjou, we'd love to hear your comments and thoughts. Royal favourites. You can DM us anytime on Patreon or you can email us on thisishistoryonymusic.com now, as always, Dan, I would like to know, what is this week's Patreon discussion starter?
- [36:39]
A
Well, we've talked a lot about Margaret of Anjou and her motivations. I want to know from you, do you think Margaret Anjou was a French spy?
- [36:50]
B
Let us know on patreon.com thisishistory and if you've not yet joined up, we'd love to have you in our royal court, whether you're a spy or other. Otherwise. We welcome everyone here at this Is History. Now, that's where you can watch all of these subscriber episodes on video, get extra delicious video content. Delicious, delectable, whatever. And you can.
- [37:10]
A
Delightful, delightful.
- [37:11]
B
The 3Ds, you know, because we do things in threes here at this is History. Those of you who know what the three Bs are and you can, you know, get all these other wonderful little things like Dan studio updates and. Yeah, talk to us anytime. And Dan, there's another place where he can start watching you.
- [37:27]
A
Yes. Don't forget we've launched our own YouTube channel over at YouTube.com hisishistorypod. That's our username, hisishistorypod. And on that channel we'll be posting all of our main episodes in video going forward.
- [37:43]
B
Yes. And that isn't to take away from the audio, the beautiful audio episodes that our lovely sound designer Amber devryu makes. It's just a way that you can engage with the show. So whether you wanna watch or listen, we love hearing and having you all on the show. But that's it for now and we'll catch you next week.
- [37:58]
A
See you next week. Well, I do hope you enjoyed that free bonus episode to get more of them ad free with a whole lot more perks, which include the chance to appear in the bonus episodes for my new miniseries, History's Greatest Failures. Become one of my royal favorite subscribers@patreon.com thisishistory.