This assumption of male dominance is as automatic as the one that saw Margaret Beaufort ignore her own claim to the throne in favour of her son, Henry Tudor, or as the heiress Anne Neville being passed between Lancaster and York as though she were as insentient as any other piece of property.<\/p>\n
Yet the actions of the women forged during the Wars of the Roses would, ultimately, prove to matter as much as the battlefields. Referred to as that \u201cgreat and strong-laboured woman\u201d by Sir John Bocking in 1456, Margaret of Anjou<\/a>, with her determination to hold onto the reins of power, played a vital part in pushing England into civil war. It was two other women, Margaret Beaufort<\/a> and Elizabeth Woodville<\/a>, who brokered the marriage that sealed the peace deal. From Henry VI\u2019s wife to Henry VII\u2019s mother, it was women who acted as midwives to the Tudor dynasty.<\/p>\n The women behind the so-called Wars of the Roses were playing a game of thrones.\u00a0The business of their lives was power; their sons and husbands the currency. The passion and pain of the lives echo through William Shakespeare<\/a>\u2019s history plays \u2013 and yet, those plays apart, most of us know very little about their extraordinary stories.<\/p>\n This is due, in part, to the patchy nature of the source material. The sources for this particular period are \u201cnotoriously intractable\u201d, as JR Lander, an expert on the Wars of the Roses, put it \u2013 and more so for women who fought on no battlefields and passed no laws. The detailed records \u2013 and the aristocratic letters you find even from the days of Henry VIII<\/a> less than 50 years later \u2013 are largely absent.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, the years that saw the disappearance of the princes in the Tower of London hold more than their fair share of insoluble mysteries and popular history has traditionally preferred to deal in certainties. But it is worth persevering and trying to unlock these women\u2019s stories. The more you look at their actions, their alliances and at the connections between them, the more you start to see an alternative engine of history.<\/p>\n Wife of Henry VI\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n When Margaret of Anjou was brought to England in 1445, to wed the Lancastrian king Henry VI<\/a>, she was widely regarded as little more than a pawn in a marriage contract designed to cement a truce in the long war with France. Within a matter of years, her single-mindedness would prove a major catalyst in sparking the Wars of the Roses. In fact, such was Margaret\u2019s impact upon her adopted nation that, a century or so after her death, Shakespeare immortalised her as a \u201cshe-wolf\u201d, with a \u201ctiger\u2019s heart wrapped in a woman\u2019s hide\u201d.<\/p>\n Despite Shakespeare\u2019s verdict, it\u2019s possible that Margaret would never have figured so prominently in the political arena if events had not forced her hand. In 1454 the queen (who was, to contemporaries, \u201ca manly woman, using to rule and not be ruled\u201d) made a bill of five articles \u2013 \u201cwhereof the first is that she desires to have the whole rule of the land\u201d, or so one correspondent said.<\/p>\n By then, just as she gave birth to Edward, their only son, her husband fell into a catatonic stupor. Margaret was desperate to prevent power falling entirely into the hands of Henry\u2019s cousin the Duke of York and his party, who she saw as dangerous rivals to royal authority.<\/p>\n As rivalry turned to armed conflict, the queen, as a woman, could only act through deputies. (Though 30 years before, legend had it, her grandmother Yolande of Aragon, a powerful protector to Joan of Arc<\/a>, had donned silver armour and led her own troops against the English.) But time and again, reports would speak of Margaret\u2019s Lancastrian forces \u2013 rather than of her husband\u2019s \u2013 and at the second battle of St Albans in 1461 one reporter, the Milanese Prospero di Camulio, seems to suggest that she was in the fray. \u201cThe Earl of Warwick decided to quit the field, and\u2026 pushed through right into Albano [St Albans], where the queen was with 30,000 men.\u201d<\/p>\n The chronicler Gregory wrote that in the midst of the battle, \u201cKing Harry went to his queen and forsook all his lords, and trust better to her party than to his own\u2026\u201d An anecdotal report of a speech once credited to Margaret is as heroic in its own way as Elizabeth I\u2019s at Tilbury. \u201cI have often broken [the English] battle line,\u201d she told her men. \u201cI have mowed down ranks far more stubborn than theirs are now. You who once followed a peasant girl [Joan of Arc] now follow a queen\u2026 I will either conquer or be conquered with you.\u201d<\/p>\n After Richard of York\u2019s heir, Edward IV<\/a>, captured Henry VI\u2019s crown in 1460, Margaret by no means ceased campaigning. The next decade saw her tirelessly touting for support around the continent and in Scotland, where she won help from another prominent woman, Mary of Guelders, ruling as regent for her infant son James. Indeed, it would be Margaret\u2019s unlikely alliance with a former Yorkist, the powerful Earl of Warwick, the \u2018Kingmaker<\/a>\u2019, (cemented by a marriage between her son and his daughter Anne Neville) that led to Henry VI\u2019s brief reinstatement in 1470. But the following spring, the deaths of her husband and son at Yorkist hands left Margaret no pieces to play on the political stage and she died in France impoverished and embittered.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Mother of Edward IV and Richard III<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Born the beautiful \u2018Rose of Raby\u2019, daughter of the powerful Earl of Westmorland, Cecily Neville was 15 years older than Margaret of Anjou, and already long married to Richard, Duke of York when Margaret, her sometime friend and rival, became queen.<\/p>\n Ironically, it was the death of Cecily\u2019s husband (and her second son) at the battle of Wakefield, a decisive Lancastrian victory fought in 1460, that gave her a political role. Only three months later, her eldest son took the throne as Edward IV and, in the early days of his reign, it was said of her that she, \u201cholds the king at her pleasure\u201d, to rule as she wished. Perhaps that perception did not last long; certainly it did not survive Edward\u2019s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville \u2013 but it is Cecily\u2019s subsequent role that has been a matter of most debate among historians.<\/p>\n Where, firstly, did she stand over the dissent between Edward IV and his younger brother Clarence? The dispute led ultimately to Clarence\u2019s execution \u2013 allegedly drowned in a butt of malmsey \u2013 in 1478. Even more importantly, what was her view of her son Richard\u2019s seizure of the throne and dispossession of her grandsons after King Edward\u2019s death in 1483?<\/p>\n How did she react to suspicions that Richard had murdered them in the Tower<\/a>?<\/p>\n One theory \u2013 that of historian Michael K Jones \u2013 suggests that Cecily supported Clarence\u2019s claim that his elder brother (Edward IV) was illegitimate, and that he himself was the rightful heir. She may even have been the guiding spirit behind Richard III\u2019s coup. It would be at her house that the meetings that prepared his takeover were planned.<\/p>\n Evidence is, however, somewhat scanty. It is possible that Cecily took a large step away from the spotlight in the years following Clarence\u2019s death. She was, after all, already in her sixties, which was old, by the standards of the day.<\/p>\n It would have been quite understandable if she were simply as punch drunk as any other old fighter, keeping herself out of the fray.<\/p>\n Cecily is perhaps the best example of the comparatively poor biographical legacy of the last Plantagenet women. Though her long life was beset by conflicts as shocking as can ever have rent any family, we cannot, rather frustratingly, be sure where her own strongest allegiance lay.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Wife of Richard III<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Born the daughter of the powerful Earl of Warwick, Anne Neville was first married off by her father, the \u2018Kingmaker\u2019, to the Lancastrian Prince of Wales, to cement an alliance with Margaret of Anjou, hitherto Warwick\u2019s bitter enemy.<\/p>\n After both the prince and Warwick himself were killed in a crushing Yorkist defeat of the Lancastrians at the 1471 battle of Barnet<\/a>, Anne (the great niece of Cecily Neville) passed into the hands of the Duke of Clarence. He, according to one contemporary chronicler, tried to keep her hidden, disguised as a kitchen maid, for fear her fortune should fall into his brother Richard\u2019s clutches. Clarence failed and in 1483, after a decade of largely obscure married life, Anne was crowned as Richard III<\/a>\u2019s queen.<\/p>\n Within two years she was dead amid rumours Richard had caused her demise either through poison or psychological warfare; a figure as tragic, if less scandalous, as Shakespeare imagined her in his Lady Anne (Richard III).<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Wife of Edward IV, mother of the princes in the Tower<\/em><\/p>\n When Elizabeth Woodville was wed in secret to the young Yorkist king, Edward IV, in 1464, she became the first English woman to be crowned queen consort since the Norman Conquest. She is said to have demanded marriage as the price of her virtue, just as Anne Boleyn would do to Elizabeth\u2019s grandson, Henry VIII.<\/p>\n The daughter of a minor peer (though her mother came from a royal European house), Elizabeth was the widow of a Lancastrian knight, with two children already to her name. The idea of a king making a love match with a commoner was itself controversial, and no less anger was aroused by the sudden rise to prominence of the whole Woodville family. Elizabeth Woodville has often been dismissed as a woman of almost unparalleled shallowness, yet the plots of her later years may tell a more complicated story.<\/p>\n After her husband died in 1483, news that Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III) had taken possession of her young son, Edward V, sent Elizabeth flying into sanctuary. Her behaviour in the following months has been extensively canvassed. Her decision to allow her younger son to join his brother in the Tower, where the boys disappeared from public view, and the fact that she allowed her daughters to leave sanctuary and go to dance at their uncle\u2019s court \u2013 the court of the man who may have murdered their brothers \u2013 has been scrutinised.<\/p>\n Probably she felt she had no other options, but generations of historians have struggled to explain a pragmatism that seems to verge on sheer insensibility. One theory goes so far as to suggest that at least the younger of the princes in the Tower may have been alive and secretly released into her care.<\/p>\n There was something else going on here. The 16th-century Italian historian Polydore Vergil relates how, only weeks into Richard III\u2019s reign, Elizabeth gave her consent to a joint conspiracy suggested by the Lancastrian heiress Margaret Beaufort and relayed to the dowager queen in sanctuary by Margaret\u2019s physician, the Welshman Lewis Caerleon. Vergil reports that Elizabeth promised Margaret that she would recruit all of Edward IV\u2019s friends if Henry Tudor would be sworn to take Elizabeth\u2019s daughter Elizabeth of York in marriage as soon as he had the crown. Although the 1483 rebellions failed to topple Richard from his throne, this was the deal that would ultimately produce the Tudor dynasty.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Sister of Edward IV and Richard III<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Youngest daughter of Cecily Neville, sister to Edward IV and Richard III, Margaret\u2019s childless marriage to Charles, Duke of Burgundy never deterred her from intervening in the affairs of her native country.<\/p>\n Once a mediator between her warring brothers Edward and Clarence, it was after Henry VII assumed the throne that Margaret plotted most actively as chief promoter of the pretender to Henry VII\u2019s throne Perkin Warbeck, as well as of his predecessor Lambert Simnel.<\/p>\n With more than a touch of the misogyny displayed by most contemporary commentators, Vergil claimed Margaret, driven by \u201cinsatiable hatred and fiery wrath\u201d, continually sought Henry\u2019s destruction \u2013 \u201cso ungovernable is a woman\u2019s nature especially when she is under the influence of envy\u201d.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Daughter of Edward IV & Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Henry VII, mother of Henry VIII<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n As the new Henry VII strove to confirm his rule after victory at Bosworth<\/a> and bring unity to the country, his own fragile claim to the throne from his mother\u2019s Lancastrian blood was immeasurably strengthened by marriage to the Yorkist heiress.<\/p>\n There seems to have been no thought, in the world of practical politics, that Elizabeth of York<\/a> might actually take the throne herself. A century on, Francis Bacon would nonetheless report that Henry feared he might be seen as ruling only though Elizabeth\u2019s right, and being \u201cbut a king at courtesy\u201d. Perhaps that is why she seems to have been sidelined by her cannier husband into anonymous domesticity and a string of pregnancies, the last of which caused her death in 1503. \u201cThe queen is beloved because she is powerless\u201d, one ambassador reported, damningly.<\/p>\n But once again there is a question mark \u2013 a hint of something stranger and stronger behind the placid facade. The 17th-century antiquary George Buck claimed to have seen a letter written by Elizabeth herself early in 1485, expressing her burning desire to marry her uncle Richard III, and her fear that his queen \u2013 that same Anne Neville who had once been married to a Lancastrian prince \u2013 \u201cwould never die\u201d. There are many question marks over Buck\u2019s alleged discovery of the letter, but there were indeed rumours that Richard wanted to marry his niece. He was forced to go into London and deny them publicly.<\/p>\n Whatever doubts may have remained, Elizabeth\u2019s marriage to Henry VII<\/a> seems to have been broadly happy. The union certainly fulfilled the main, dynastic imperative, producing the prince who would become Henry VIII.<\/p>\n Looking back to the sometimes turbulent lives of medieval queens it might almost be argued that a quieter and more predominantly domestic model for the consort\u2019s role was on the way. Except, of course, that Elizabeth of York was grandmother to two queens (Mary and Elizabeth) who did assume the throne in their own right; and that, too, is her legacy.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Mother of Henry VII<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Margaret Beaufort was England\u2019s wealthiest heiress when, at the age of 12, she was married to Edmund Tudor, who was a comparatively humble Welshman.<\/p>\nThe she-wolf: Margaret of Anjou (1430-83)<\/h3>\n
![\""Queen\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2012\/09\/GettyImages-578343548-eea333c.jpg?quality=90&resize=222%2C413"\" "\\"\"The\\"")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>The Rose of Raby: Cecily Neville (1415\u201395)<\/h3>\n
![\""Cecily\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2012\/09\/GettyImages-51244584-cd0dcf7.jpg?quality=90&resize=293%2C413"\" "\\"\"A\\"")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>The tragic lady: Anne Neville (1456\u201385)<\/h3>\n
![\""Anne\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2012\/09\/GettyImages-51243971-42c8cd9.jpg?quality=90&resize=228%2C413"\" "\\"\"Anne\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>The commoner queen: Elizabeth Woodville (c1437\u201392)<\/h3>\n
![\""Elizabeth\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2012\/09\/GettyImages-463971633-f38db3b.jpg?quality=90&resize=295%2C413"\" "\\"\"Elizabeth\\"")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>The fiery plotter: Margaret \u2018of Burgundy\u2019 (1446\u20131503)<\/h3>\n
![\""Margaret\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2012\/09\/GettyImages-2639204-1ef7811.jpg?quality=90&resize=277%2C413"\" "\\"\"Margaret\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>The unifier: Elizabeth of York (1466\u20131503)<\/h3>\n
![\""A\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2012\/09\/GettyImages-486781255-6f78d6c.jpg?quality=90&resize=296%2C413"\" "\\"\"A\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>The ambitious Tudor: Margaret Beaufort (1443\u20131509)<\/h3>\n
![\""A\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2012\/09\/GettyImages-113489560-0712bee.jpg?quality=90&resize=323%2C413"\" "\\"\"A\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>