History lesson

History has always interested me, but I have to say I'm glad I only had to know American history as a student.  Right now, I'm doing a little reading about English history and it's not nearly so easy.  In the first place, it goes back much longer than America.  For another thing, so many of the royals were named "George," "Richard," "Henry," or "Edward."  The women were named "Elizabeth," "Mary," "Margaret," or "Anne."  It makes it difficult to remember who belongs to which house and what year they reigned.

My interest was piqued recently when my son told me about our family history.  Supposedly, the Pollock clan was very powerful, very wealthy, and had a great deal of land.  Until they backed the wrong queen and lost everything, being forced to become a subset of another clan.  My brother immediately assumed the queens were Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots, but I had been reading about the White Queen of the York line and the Red Queen of the Lancaster line.  Thought I'd do a little more digging.

I'm not interested in genealogy, I'm interested in history.  In the first place, if I'm related to royalty, what happened?  In the second place, I have the feeling we're all related to royalty.  In those days, royalty were about the only ones who could survive.  Royalty could leave the dirty, disease ridden cities in the summer. The poor and the shopkeepers couldn't.  Royalty could afford to eat well and get someone else to do the dirty work.  The poor and the workers were either starved to death, worked to death, taxed to death, or forced to fight wars with pitchforks and hoes against trained warriors who had armor, lances, arrows, and horses.  Then, too, in some countries, young girls were sacrificed to the gods. In my opinion, having royal blood is no big deal.

But, oh, the intrigue, the mayhem, the murder!  Who needs mystery movies and novels when there's history? Truth is stranger than fiction, as the saying goes.  It does boggle the mind keeping all the players in their proper place in history.  And, there's so many of them.  The White Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, was a commoner and hated.  She is accused or enticing the king by witchcraft.  For a long time, I thought Mary Stanley was her enemy because Mary Stanley has a son named Henry Tudor.  How did that happen?  She says she was married twice and her first husband was Stafford (I think).  Have to look it up.

Now, the Kingmaker's Daughter, Ann Neville and her sister-in-law eventually becomes queen.  But, how does the feud go from the Lancaster's and the York's to the Tudor's?  The Tudor's are a part of the Lancaster line and to tell you the truth, I don't know how the Lancaster and the York lines got started in the first place.  Talk about tangled webs.

However, studying history and realizing that America still has freedoms the English never dreamed of, especially in those days, is a good reason to just read about it and not have to live it.  If you figure it out, let me know.