The BBC's "The White Queen" Erotic Fanfiction "How Do I Make You Love Me?"
I do so love those rare ships in the night, by which I mean unusual - or at least, less common - ships in fanfiction. If you've written one, you've got to accept you'll receive muuuuuch less feedback than you would for a popular ship and even that might only pop up years after you've written your story. The people who heart it, though, will really heart it for giving them something they'd given up hope of seeing. Ones I've come across and enjoyed recently include a John Noble/Bernard Hill fic "Life after Virginity" by
lobelia321 and a Three Musketeers Athos/D'Artagnan story by Velveteen Thestral, both of which can be found on Archive of Our Own. They. Made. Me. Melt. My own contribution to the rare ship brigade is "Elsa", my Carrie/Saul Homeland fic. I've not had many hits or comments on it on here or on Fanfiction.net (where I'm GoldenBoots) or Archive of Our Own (Golden_Boots) but if you get it, you get it.
This new story of mine is based on the BBC drama "The White Queen", which is itself based on Phillipa Gregory's historical novels about the Wars of the Roses. My ship - Richard Plantagenet and Anne Neville - is a popular one within the fandom but as the fanfic aspect of this fandom is rather small, it isn't going to get many pairs of eyes on it. But what the hell - the connoisseurs who do enjoy it will be precisely the ones I’m writing for!
As with all of my stories, "How Do I Make You Love Me?" is rated NC-17.
It’s the wedding night of Richard Plantagenet and Anne Neville. He wants her to love him. She wants to love him. They both want to be loved by the English people. How can they capture their imagination? By revealing all…
I have striven for historical inaccuracy within this work and believe I have been quite successful.
DISCLAIMER: I own none of the rights to any versions of “The White Queen” - this story’s for fun and not for profit.
Keep your eyes peeled for the coming podfic version!
How Do I Make You Love Me?
Scandalous?
Some commentators at the time described it so. Never before had such explicit details of the activities of the royal bedchamber been made known to so wide an audience. And not just through the medium of words.
A suite of artists skilled in creating impressions of life with a few deft strokes of charcoal are hired by the new king himself and arrayed around the marital bed on Richard and Anne’s wedding night. Why?
“Just another example of the decadence of the House of York.”
“He wants to bind the people to him through erotic curiosity, the cynic.”
“They are in love. They want to prove to us they are in love. And they are not ashamed. The very definition of romance.”
Look at the artists’ grave faces in the firelight as they slip silently out of the way of a royal couple who move so luxuriously about the bedchamber. They will not let a single sweet moment escape the bonds of their art…
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This drawing here. So subtle. Both of them yet in their long white night shirts, it seems at first glance to show nothing more than Richard holding Anne in a soft embrace from behind, their dexter outlines picked out in gold by the enormous fire in the hearth; their sinister sides in shadow. But a closer look reveals the shape of Richard’s mouth at her ear, captured in the act of whispering. His half-closed eyes are almost feline and there can be no doubt the words are carnal. Her face mirrors his, eyes reduced to slits and distant, her half-open mouth loose at the corners, upper lip curling with the pleasure as some word, some touch hits home. His right arm runs across her waist, pressing her to him, while hers lays over it in graceful approval. In the shadows, however, his other hand has found employment and clasps her between the thighs, bunching the white linen beneath it. This is the reason her face has begun to sing.
“They say his voice is beautiful,” says a streetseller to another female streetseller. “And he knows - he knows how to touch a woman.”
“He knows,” she agrees.
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Richard Plantagenet sits on the tiled floor, braced against the foot of the bed and holds Anne in his lap. The pear of her waist and behind form the focal point of the image, light from the fire dancing across her back, animating her long, light brown hair. Her knees are up, legs bent double, though it is not certain her husband is within her yet. Her arms are flung around his head and his face is just visible in the hollow beneath one arm. His eyes are closed in divine concentration as he suckles on her barely-visible breast. Her small breast, so young and pert, his lips enclosing the nipple and drawing it deep into his mouth.
A milkmaid drops the sketch and falls back in the hay, her hand reaching inside her blouse to touch her own nipple, to roll it, imagining the young duke’s soft mouth caressing her the way it does his young duchess.
The farm hand who handed it to her walks into the sunset, casting a final knowing smile over his shoulder.
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Richard is feeling playful in two sketches intended to be viewed together. His sweetheart lies on her belly on the satin coverlet like a hind at rest in the cool shade of an English elm. Richard, a naked Richard, has an open hand on the nape of her neck and the other holds the handle of a cat-o’nine-tails - the straps lie across her apple buttocks. Anne has twisted her neck and she looks up into his face with an expression of apprehension.
“No,” cries a widow. “He must not, not after her treatment by the first husband.”
Then his eyes are seen, huge and heavy, alight with nothing but kindness and desire. His rare smile is a gentle one. The colour of those eyes is rendered as green fire and they want for nothing more, as they lock with those of his beloved, than to see a passion to match his own reflected there. Trust me.
In the second sketch, the cat-o’nine-tails lies abandoned in the blurred foreground whilst in the middle ground, he mounts her. Still on her belly, her expression is revolutionised and so are the angles of her body. Her back dips as she pushes her haunches back and up to meet the entry of his ready phallus, just visible in the gap between her thighs and his. He arches over her, one hand cradling her jaw and neck, pulling her face round to meet his. Their open mouths almost meet. Her ecstasy is beatific; his is a darker thing, his forehead furrowed, the shape of his mouth at once joyful and agonised. In the background, one of the artists has been captured, failing in his charge to record every moment. His pen hand lies limp on the paper, his attention mesmerised by the lovely scene before him.
“So what became of the cat-o’nine-tails? What did they do with it?” cries the youngest daughter of Lord and Lady Torkard.
“Imagine!” says the eldest, biting her bottom lip.
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Anne learns how men are made. She is kneeling naked on the floor, although in the sketch all that can be seen is her body from the shoulders up, drawn as if the artist were crouching even lower than she and looking up at the royal pair (and perhaps he was). Richard looms above her, his nakedness no secret, that serious young face tipped to one side and looking down at her. The eye drifts along the contours of his body. He is slim but not slender. He is sturdy as a young tree yet his smooth skin looks soft to the touch. His erect member stands proud, curving upwards slightly, the veins looking prominent. Anne is looking at it, looking at it, wondering what it would feel like in her mouth, surely. Whether that night he put himself in her mouth and she drank his seed is not known - there is no sketch to confirm it.
I wager that if not that night then the very next, she did. I hold my breath and stroke my throat as I imagine I am her, Richard’s torrent of joy spilling into my mouth, my perception of good conduct between men and women turned upside down.
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They are kissing. Little can be seen of their faces, only Anne’s closed eyes. The back of Richard’s broad shoulders, sweetly sprinkled with freckles, is the foundation of the sketch but it is Anne’s fingers in his hair that draw the eye. Those leonine waves, so dark, so crying out to be fondled. It is a wonder she is not tempted to hook her fingers in those curls and pull. But no, her fingers are spread, a shining black lock falling between each one. Her hand experiences as much pleasure as her lips.
That is what I would do precisely, thinks their chambermaid, who has long watched Richard from the shadows.
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The Duke of Gloucester expands his knowledge of women. Again, that shaggy dark head from behind and Anne’s fingers in his hair only this time, his mouth is pressed to the lips of her sweet cunt. It is explicit and it is not explicit. Nothing of Anne’s secret can be seen yet there is no doubt what he is doing as he kneels on the floor at the foot of the bed, head buried between the thighs he holds apart. Beyond, described with the fewest, lightest lines, Anne languishes upon the bed, blue eyes distant, a gasp of surprise on her lips, her other hand splayed open on her rising breast.
This is the scene that breaks Isabel. She lets out a howl and runs from the great hall, tears of jealousy coursing down her cheeks.
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The final sketch. No-one knows if it depicts the last act they indulged in or not but there is, well, a certain finality to it. Anne is riding her duke, all shyness, all fear now washed away. He holds her arms to support her as she reaches the peak of her pleasure on a downstroke, head thrown back, her long throat entirely exposed. If he were a wolfish man, he might grasp that throat, throw her down and take her, conscious only of his own pleasure. But Richard is entranced by the sight of his duchess in her ecstasy and his self-control is exquisite. Her shadow obscures his torso. Only his eyes are lit and they are fixed upon her face.
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The artists’ work is done. The executions that follow are quick and painless, and no great show is made of them.
And the sketches are a great success. Devotion blossoms in the hearts of the womenfolk of England who go to their beds with visions of a man like Richard in their lives someday - one who will treat them like a queen.
