The Wars of the Roses is the name given to a series of 15th-century battles between the houses of York and Lancaster for the crown of England. It was a domestic drama, with the Plantagenet family locked in years of in-fighting over control of the country. The story usually focuses on the men who fought and died on the battlefield or survived to take the crown. But there is another story here, one of wives and mothers and sisters—the women of the Wars of the Roses.
This conflict was essentially a personality-driven battle, and some of the main personalities were queens, princesses, and duchesses. The royal rivalries were managed by remarkable women who publicly and privately exerted the influence and wielded the power that shaped the conflict. Their tales are filled with intimacy and intrigue, love and betrayal.
Tudor and Renaissance scholar Carol Ann Lloyd-Stanger introduces seven women who helped spin and shred the web of conspiracies that blanketed the English throne: Margaret of Burgundy, Marguerite of Anjou, Margaret Beaufort, Cecily and Anne Neville, Elizabeth Woodville, and Elizabeth of York.
Lloyd-Stanger is former manager of visitor education at the Folger Shakespeare Library and author of The Tudors by Numbers and the new Courting the Virgin Queen, published by Pen and Sword Books.
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