Dovrebbe essere questo romanzo qui: L'Anello di Rubino di Diane Haeger.

Googleando (?) mi esce stranamente il nome di una pittrice barocca

he extraordinary thing about that casting he was in a strange country that he didn’t know and he was suddenly being told you’re the king. It was exactly what happened to Henry Tudor.

In a TV season that’s already been uncommonly strong for female-focused drama (Big Little Lies, Feud), The White Princess offers a chance to see just how much women pulled 15th-century monarchy strings. All of Gregory’s works are told from women’s point of view, which has made her a huge hit in the romance novel set. The male characters here are merely figureheads, though Jacob Collins-Levy’s Henry VII is dishy, of course, making his love scenes with Princess Elizabeth irresistible territory for fans of bodice-rippers. Jodie Comer, who plays the white princess of the title, shows uncommon depth, much more so than she did as the woebegone post-adolescent in Thirteen. Michelle Fairley, previously terrifying as a maternal villain in 24: Live Another Day, is downright chilling as the cruel and calculating Margaret, who cares for little else other than the rise of the Tudors; any feelings of sympathy or compassion just get in her way, so she denies them completely. Essie Davis’ Dowager Queen Elizabeth is just as scheming, especially against her new son-in-law, but her fruitless ambitions seem more tragic, as even the faintest of English history fans know that nothing can or will stop the Tudors. But of all the female leads, perhaps none is more formidable than Joanne Whalley’s Duchess Of Burgundy, whose region has become a sanctuary for those fleeing the Tudors.

La conoscenza tra i due risaliva ad un loro primo incontro ad Urbino e fu poi ampliata durante la permanenza a Roma di Raffaello, al quale il cardinale aveva commissionato l'esecuzione di varie opere. R probabile che, trovandosi lo stesso padre della D. a Roma, come risulta da alcune sue lettere, sia anche avvenuto un incontro tra i due giovani. Dalla citata lettera di Raffaello allo zio Simone appare evidente che era stata formalmente pronunciata una promessa di matrimonio: "Voi sapete che Santa Maria in Portico [il cardinale Bernardo Dovizi] me vol dare una sua parente, e con lidenza del zio prete, e vostra li promisi di fare quanto sua R.ma Signoria voleva, non posso mancar di fede, siamo più che mai alle strette ...".

Non sono noti i motivi di queste dilazioni e incertezze addotte da Raffaello circa il matrimonio con la D.: si è pensato a una non buona salute della ragazza, alla sua troppo giovane età, alla volontà di Raffaello di non interrompere altre relazioni amorose. A tale proposito, nella stessa lettera già citata, si legge esplicitamente: "che anch'io ne hò [partiti], ch'io trovo in Roma una Mamola bella secondo hò inteso di bonissima fama Lei e li loro, che mi vol dare tre mila scudi d'oro in docta ...". Fra i motivi del rifiuto il Vasari adduce l'aspettativa della nomina cardinalizia da parte di Raffaello e, quindi, alla conseguente necessità di non essere vincolato dal matrimonio. Sta di fatto che alle reiterate insistenze del cardinale (il matrimonio sembrava dovesse celebrarsi nel 1514), che certamente in questo vincolo vedeva un motivo di lustro per la sua famiglia, corrispose il costante rifiuto di Raffaello, finché la D., giovanissima, morì.

La sua tomba, traslata a Roma nel Pantheon, sicuramente dopo la morte di Raffaello, fu posta vicino al sepolcro di lui a destra dell'altare della Madonna del Sasso; su una lapide, non più conservata, si leggeva un epitaffio attribuito a P. Bembo, che così incominciava: "Mariae. Antonii. F. Bibienae. sponsae. eius quae laetos hymenaeos morte praevertit et ante nuptiales faces virgo est elata ...". È inutile sottolineare che il significato del latino "sponsa" è quello di sposa promessa e non quello assunto in volgare, per cui anche la lapide è un'ulteriore testimonianza del mancato matrimonio fra i due promessi, riuniti simbolicamente insieme dopo la loro morte.

Gregory and showrunner Emma Frost found success in depicting these noblewomen as the secret power brokers behind the Plantagenets and Tudors, expanding their roles and influence beyond that of political tools or premium baby machines. That’s worth noting, especially given the promotion of “The White Princess” as a feminist tale. But this narrative is only somewhat accurate. It’s true that we don’t often see stories of this epoch from a female perspective, unless it’s woman sitting on the monarch’s throne.

But in “The White Queen,” what power the ladies and queens wield is still very much subject to the caprices of the men surrounding them. In “The White Princess,” Lizzie has even less agency than her mother did, at first. As the princess embraces the suffering common folk as a political ploy and grows to trust her Henry, she is able to increase his popularity and bend his will to meet her desires. In other words, she’s the Ivanka Trump of 1485.

Many of the critiques lobbed at “The White Queen” in 2013 also apply to “The White Princess,” although the costumes and set design of the latter are an improvement over its predecessor. But the dialogue remains nearly as constrained and unexciting, even though once again an accomplished cast makes heroic efforts to breathe fire into their lines.

Comer and Collins-Levy’s handsome faces sell “The White Princess,” and Vincent Regan is a solid presence as Jasper Tudor, but given that the energizing conflict is primarily in the hands of Davis, Fairley and Joanne Whalley, who plays the Duchess of Burgundy, their electric performances carry the show.

What is there to learn, after all, from “The White Princess”? Maybe nothing. It’s probably enough for the audience to enjoy another harmless chapter of one of history’s best-known soap operas. But those looking for fire and blood, may want to venture elsewhere. If you’re seeking an education, for heaven’s sake, crack open a textbook — not a novel.

The most interesting are the two warring queen mothers. Michelle Fairley (best known as Catelyn Stark from “Game of Thrones”) plays Henry’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, with icy, God-fearing, goth-queen stature — she might as well be Maleficent, with her rotating black headdresses. Essie Davis plays Lizzie’s mother, Elizabeth Woodville, with long fair tresses and cherubic cheeks like her daughter’s. (“The White Queen” was about her, and though share many of the same characters, they have no actors in common.) The two mothers, who made an alliance to marry their children, absolutely hate each other — and where Margaret indulges in a lot of chaste praying to soothe her anger, Elizabeth Woodville goes straight to witchcraft (!), which is bizarrely played as a totally real and reliable power. As figures in a drama, they are interesting at first, but too unchangeable over time. Lizzie and Henry are trying to create something for the future, but their mothers are both still stuck in a generations-old power struggle, and sometimes “The White Princess” feels stuck in telling a story that evolves only over years.

Still, as a female-centric history of this era, “The White Princess” is fascinating. In a patriarchy, every woman married to a man can identify with a princess in the thrall of a potentially merciless king; Lizzie’s skirmishes for power with her mother-in-law over her son and her husband is even today the stuff of soap opera.

Gregory has written many stories about the monarchy in this era — “The Other Boleyn Girl,” most famously — and all emphasize the women’s dramas and sexual politics that played out behind the throne. Throughout the Tudor era that followed the wars, extraordinary women nearly outnumbered the men. In this case, “The White Princess” observes cannily why that might be the case: After a hundred years of war and strife between the noble families, the women are nearly all that’s left. The Wars of the Roses were a great inspiration for George R.R. Martin in writing his “Game of Thrones” books — a fact “The White Princess” nods to by casting Fairley, including magic, and showcasing a plotline about boys pretending to long-lost heirs to thrones — and much like that series, too, by partway through only the women are left to rebuild. (Henry VII and Elizabeth of York are a much more functional Robert Baratheon and Cersei Lannister; mercifully, Lizzie doesn’t have a twin.)

“The White Princess” intercuts between a wedding and a battle at the end of the fourth episode with surprising facility — creating visual parallels between the vestments, the call to arms, and a ring on a finger to a knife at the throat. The emphasis raises the sphere of the domestic to be just as political, dangerous, and bloody as the battlefield. Except where war ends only in death, marriage, hopefully, brings forth life. In a sense, the full struggle of “The White Princess” is to move away from war towards peace, and that requires leaving behind a paradigm of rivalry. Of course this work is left to women; it’s women who tend to be able to put family over honor. A York woman, when pressed, blurts out: “I do not want my name… all it means is danger.” It is left to the viewer to interpret where Lizzie’s loyalties, duties, and love should lie — with her mother and their family legacy, or with her husband, their son, and a future ruled by another house.