Cecily Neville, Duchess of York

Cecily Neville was the wife of Richard, Duke of York, and mother of Edward IV and Richard III. Known as the ‘Rose of Raby’, she stood at the centre of Yorkist dynastic politics during the Wars of the Roses and survived the deaths and reversals that destroyed much of her family.

In Anne O’Brien’s The Queen’s Rival, Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, is left with her younger children when the Yorkist leaders flee after the collapse at Ludford Bridge. Joanna Hickson’s Red Rose, White Rose places Cecily Neville, Duchess of York within a narrative shaped by family, marriage and personal loyalty, court politics and dynastic power, and social change and the pressures of ordinary life.