Today in History—August 22: The Wars of the Roses: A Flowery Face-Off Ends
England’s houses of Lancaster and York—both descended from the same royal line—had feuded and backstabbed for three decades, as each struggled to claim the throne.
On this day in 1485, they met in their final battle, and the Wars of the Roses were over. (Why roses? York’s heraldic badge was a white rose, Lancaster’s a red one.)
The incumbent king, Richard III, a York, was killed on the battlefield, and Henry Tudor ascended the throne as Henry VII.
A Lancastrian on his mother’s side, Henry joined the rival branches of the family through his marriage to Elizabeth of York. Tudor rule was thus begun in England—and it would last for more than a century.
The civil war had not only split the two royal lines but also divided the kingdom’s most powerful nobles into opposing camps. Ruthless scheming and betrayal ensued.
The wars began when the Yorkists revolted against the unstable Lancastrian king, Henry VI, forcing him to disinherit his son and accept a York as his successor. Despite resistance from Henry VI’s queen, Margaret, the Yorks were ultimately successful, and Edward IV became king in 1461.
Game of Thrones was heavily inspired by the Wars of the Roses.
Within a few years, Edward and some of the York nobles were at odds, and the throne briefly returned to Henry VI. But Edward won it back and ensured the deaths of Henry VI and his son.
Edward’s rule was relatively secure, but after his death in 1483, his brother Richard III usurped the throne, claiming Edward’s marriage—and therefore his children—was illegitimate.
Richard’s rule crumbled as key Yorkist nobles turned on him and switched sides to support the exiled Henry Tudor, who planned to invade England. It all came to a head in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field, which Henry won.
The Tudors’ new emblem was the Tudor Rose, a fusion of the red of Lancaster and the white of York.
- 18 months: Time Henry VI was incapacitated after a mental breakdown in 1453
- ~28,000: Casualties at Battle of Towton, the largest battle of the civil war
- ~11: Major battles of the civil war
- 1851: America’s Cup yacht race won by the American yacht, America
- 1932: The BBC begins its first experimental broadcast programming
- 2004: A version of The Scream by Edvard Munch is stolen (not to be confused with the 1994 theft of a different version)
