NEW YORK - A dashing young English royal falls for a beautiful commoner, and their love becomes a nationwide sensation that forever alters the face of the monarchy. No, their names aren't Will and Kate, but rather King Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. The year is 1464, nearly a decade into the Wars of the Roses, a time when (for those of you who dozed off during ninth grade history class) the English monarchy was violently contested between two competing branches within the House of Plantaganet. By secretly marrying a 27-year-old, widowed mother of two aligned with the rival Lancaster clan, the Yorkist Edward IV added fuel to the Wars of the Roses, a bloody series of power struggles that would rage on for another 20 years. Now Edward and Elizabeth's romance and the resultant upheaval are at the center of "The White Queen," a new 10-episode period epic based on bestselling novels by Philippa Gregory which premiered Saturday on Starz. Their relationship was considered scandalous in those days, when duty trumped matters of the heart. "Love was rarely taken into consideration," said Max Irons, who plays the young king in the series, over a recent breakfast in Manhattan. "When she meets Edward by the road and falls madly in love with him, just a boy meeting a girl, with that comes consequences," added his costar, the Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson, whose character is viewed with intense suspicion by Edward's family and advisors - especially the powerful Earl of Warwick, known as the "Kingmaker" (James Frain). In person, Irons and Ferguson have a playful, chummy relationship, marked by good-natured ribbing and inside jokes from their months together on set in Belgium. On-screen, however, their connection is more visceral: They spend a good portion of the series in various states of undress. Given the unusually high bodice-ripping quotient in "The White Queen," finding the right leading couple was essential. Irons was cast early in pre-production, but his queen proved more elusive. The actor had to go through 15 chemistry tests with potential costars before Ferguson came along - not that he's complaining. "The long and the short of it is, you've got to do a bit of flirting," Irons discreetly said of the process. Acting lineage The son of Oscar winner Jeremy Irons and Irish actress Sinead Cusack, the 27-year-old Irons knows a thing or two about being part of a dynasty. Still, he resisted the family business until the age of 16, when he starred in a Neil LaBute play at school. "This makes academia pale in comparison, this makes sports pale in comparison, and the girls like it, so I might keep doing it," he decided. For Ferguson, 29, acting was a somewhat less inevitable life path, despite what is a borderline spooky resemblance to fellow countrywoman Ingrid Bergman. As a teenager, she starred on the popular Swedish soap "Nya Tider," but afterward retreated from the limelight, settling in a small seaside village where she worked as a dance instructor. That is, until "The White Queen," a job she landed after submitting a homemade audition tape, lured her back in front of the camera. I've never, ever, ever desperately wanted to act. I should probably say I do, but I don't," said Ferguson, who despite her ambivalence has several other projects lined up, including Brett Ratner's "Hercules: The Thracian Wars" and "The Vatican" for Showtime. Strong women "The White Queen" is based on "The Cousins' War," Gregory's series of novels chronicling the Wars of the Roses from the perspective of three women vying to maintain their proximity to the throne: In addition to Ferguson's Elizabeth, there's young Anne Neville (Faye Marsay), pawned off in a politically expedient marriage to the creepy Richard III, and Margaret Beaufort, played with wild-eyed intensity by Amanda Hale, whose son Henry VII would become the first Tudor monarch. A co-production with the BBC, the project fit in nicely with Starz's lineup of historical dramas "Spartacus" and "DaVinci's Demons," but also represented something of a departure - not just for the network, but for premium cable more broadly.