Hello, I'm asking what is the "real" answer to a quite heated debate. In Richard III when Richard asks the Queen to give her daughter to him she agrees and kisses (?) him. She later sends a letter to Richmond promising him her daughter Elizabeth. My question is are Richard and the Queen in a romantic relationship and is she tricking him or is she actually handing her daughter over and changing her mind later? Since Richard has no interest in women if the queen is in love with him the she truly must love him in some twisted way, then if she loves him it wouldn't be too far fetched that she'd give up her daughter to him. Holinshed seems to lean that she loves genuinely loves Richard and isn't tricking him but more recent feminist readings seem to say that they are not in a romantic relationship and the stage directions that say "embrace" is a hug not a kiss. However since several has portrayed the relationship between them I am wondering what is the truth? I have been told I misunderstand the concept of their relationship because I believe she is "in love" with him.
Was there any basis on this relationship in real life? How close were Elizabeth Woodville and Richard III irl?
In real life they were brother-in-law and sister-in-law.
If you're referring to Shakespeare's play, plays are interpreted in performance. I find the idea that Elizabeth Woodville was in love with Richard III to be unlikely and the idea that she finds his proposed marriage to his own niece repulsive and that he is attempting some sick sexual mastery over her with the kiss more compelling as a dramatic interpretation.
It's easy to explain Queen Elizabeth's actions in the play, she was basically hedging her bets trying to keep her daughter alive, and possibly queen, no matter who won out. For Richard's part, a marriage with Elizabeth of York would have solidified his claim to the throne--if he and everyone else were nuts enough to think such a match would be legal or canonically valid. Like a lot of rumors (and this one seems to have been reasonably contemporary) floating around about Richard III, there's no solid proof that this match was planned. A lot of these sorts of rumors would have been started by political enemies, something Richard wasn't short of even a century after his death.