Artistic License History / The White Queen

• The Battle of Bosworth Field is shown taking place inside a dense forest, rather than a field. This was probably a budget-cutting device to hide the fact that a battle involving thousands was filmed with only a few dozen actors.
• The Total Eclipse of the Plot of March 16, 1485 was only a partial one in England.
• Margaret Beaufort did not devote all of her son's life to getting him on the throne, nor would the young Henry Tudor have declared himself "heir to the Lancastrian throne" when Henry VI and his son Edward of Lancaster were still alive. And even after both Henry VI and Edward were murdered in 1471 (Henry in the Tower of London, Edward at Tewkesbury), no one really took Henry's prospects seriously, and Margaret certainly was not The Chessmaster egging on open warfare between Richard of Gloucester and Queen Elizabeth. It was only with the disappearance of Edward IV's sons in 1483 that a Tudor accession became even remotely plausible.
• The romance between Richard III and Elizabeth of York is largely fictitious. There were rumors at the time that the King would marry his niece after Queen Anne's death, but little evidence to support them. There is an eyewitness account of Richard angrily denying that he poisoned Anne intended to marry Elizabeth and declaring he had loved Anne. He was actually negotiating political marriages for himself and Elizabeth with Portugal.
• Rather than being rivals, Queen Anne and Elizabeth of York seem to have gotten along well in real life, at least based on an account of them playing an elaborate outfit switch prank during the Christmas court and laughing together. Although, at least one contemporary letter hints that Elizabeth did develop a crush on Richard after Anne became sick and died and didn't object to the rumors that he wanted to marry her. He was the one who objected (see above).
• Obviously, Jacquetta was not really a witch! She was indeed accused of witchcraft by Warwick in 1470 and by Richard III in 1483, but naturally these claims were unsubstantiated.
• Westminster Abbey had a dedicated sanctuary building. It did not resemble the damp, dingy cellar depicted on screen.
• No records survive of the real Jacquetta's appearance, but if a royal woman in fifteenth-century England had been six feet tall, it probably would have been remembered.
• Elizabeth's swapping of her son Richard of Shrewsbury for a servant boy to save him from Richard III is based on popular myth. Recently, there has been some speculation that Richard of Shrewsbury survived to become Perkin but if he did, it is far more likely that Richard sent him to his sister in Burgundy.
• The series has the Princes in the Tower alive in 1484, with Elizabeth still trying to get her sons back. It also places Buckingham's rebellion in that year. In Real Life, the boys were never seen again after summer 1483, and by the end of that year, everyone on both sides presumed them dead. Buckingham's rebellion took place in October 1483. Richard III's son Edward of Middleham is shown dying in 1485 when he actually died the year before. There's also a failed raid on the Tower of London to rescue the boys which is entirely fictional. Finally, the show has Margaret Beaufort responsible for commissioning Buckingham for the murder of the princes, which is straight nonsense—the murders were probably on the orders of Richard III, they might have been Buckingham on his own initiative, but it definitely wasn't Margaret. There is a 2017 book called "The Survival of the Princes in the Tower" that contains some still-fringe theories that Richard sent the boys away for their safety, Edward V to Ireland and Richard of Shrewsbury to Burgundy. The book even suggests that Elizabeth Woodville would have been well aware of this at the time of Richard's defeat.
• Anthony Woodville was with Edward V and Richard Grey when they were intercepted by Richard of Gloucester, but this is ignored by the TV adaptation. Moreover, Anthony and Jane Shore weren't lovers.
• Margaret Beaufort had never sent a marriage proposal to Richard of Gloucester.
• Margaret's brother was actually named John Welles. He wasn't killed young ut actually ended up marrying Elizabeth Woodville's daughter Cecily. He also wasn't her only brother as her mother was married three times and had sons with her first husband.
• There's no evidence to suggest that Margaret and Jasper were ever in love. They were certainly close but only as family and political partners. Both wanted to protect Henry and did everything they could to do so.
• Margaret was actually very close to her mother. There is no evidence to say that she abused her at all. True, Margaret did marry young but not because of her mother abusing her. She wouldn't have had much choice in the matter considering it was actually King Henry VI himself who arranged the marriage.
• George, Duke of Clarence was many things, including being something of a Jerkass and The Alcoholic, but he was never known to cheat on Isabel. He had no known illegitimate children, whereas Edward had countless and Richard had two from the time before he married Anne. George also had no known mistresses. In his own time, even people who didn't like him acknowledged he loved his wife and that was at least part of the motive for marrying her without Edward's permission.

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