The Genealogy of the Wars of the Roses

Edward III and his Dutch born Queen, Philippa of Hainaut, had thirteen children.  For the the sake of this genealogical run through, we're only concerned about four of them.

• Edward, the Black Prince
• Lionel, the Duke of Clarence
• John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster
• Edmund, Duke of York

Listed above in order of succession, it is their descendants who would plunge Britain into a very unstable place during the 15th century.

The House of Lancaster may have only just considered it politically expedient to latch onto a family member, but the House of York had been quite busy.

By the time they were strong enough to challenge the claim of Henry Bolingbroke, little Edmund Mortimer was dead, thus out of the running. However, his marriage had caused some controversy and a hefty fine, as he'd married his cousin Anne Stafford.

Edmund Mortimer had no children, but he had a sister. Anne Mortimer had three children.

By the laws of succession - if we ignore the large army of Henry IV - the monarch should have been her only surviving son, Richard, Duke of York.

He was a descendant of Edward and Philippa on both sides of his family, as his mother had married her cousin too. Her husband, Richard, Earl of Cambridge, was the son of her great-great uncle, Edmund, Prince of York. 

In short, both Mortimer children (legally the monarchs, if not in actuality) had bolstered family loyalties with weddings.

Did you keep your eye on Anne Neville?  This was the second time she had married one of her cousins. Both weddings were within a couple of years of each other too!

Her marriage to Edward of Westminster occurred in 1470. This was while the Warwick family were in exile in France.  It was also on the very eve of an invasion of England, in order to reclaim the crown for his father Henry VI.

The result was the Battle of Tewkesbury, which Anne Neville witnessed.  Edward was executed and Anne taken into house arrest by George, Duke of Clarence.

She escaped the house and fled to Richard, who quickly married her in 1472. 

Five months after Henry Tudor was crowned King of England, he married his cousin Elizabeth of York.  She was the eldest daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville.  As her brothers were both missing, presumed murdered, she was the legal monarch anyway.

Thus the Wars of the Roses were ended by all branches either intermingling, attainted or dying out. The final, successful family tree looks like this.

The children of Elizabeth of York and Henry Tudor could claim their lineage back to Edward III through five different routes.  Elizabeth's was the stronger line, a fact which annoyed Henry VII no end.

But the strangled, legally dodgy way in which he'd attained the throne also left Henry Tudor very vulnerable to potential usurpers himself. Not to mention his unpopularity in a nation left raw and wounded by the decades of regal struggles which proceeded him.