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Bizarre British Monarchy Facts That Sound Fake

Khalid Elhassan September 13, 2023 32 min

Monarch - England's royal swans — England's royal swans. The New York Times

The Family War for the British Monarchy

Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York, father of kings Edward IV and Richard III, circa 1445. British Library

The Wars of the Roses raged for 32 years from 1455 to 1487. They began when Richard, Duke of York, supported by the powerful Neville family, tried to seize the crown from his cousin, the feeble and mentally incapacitated King Henry VI. However, the attempt failed. The Duke of York was slain in battle along with his ally Richard Neville, 5^th Earl of Salisbury and father of Richard Neville, the 16^th Earl of Warwick.

The feud then passed on to the next generation of Yorkists, led by Warwick and the Duke of York’s son, Edward. Warwick was instrumental in securing victory for the Yorkists, who crushed the Lancastrians at the Battle of Towton in 1461. Henry VI was deposed and imprisoned, and his place was taken by the slain Duke of York’s son, who was crowned as King Edward IV.

Edward was a great warrior, but was uninterested in government. So Warwick governed the realm on his behalf. It did not end well, and led to yet another twist in the family feud. The relationship between the monarch and his chief lieutenant soured when Edward impulsively married a commoner.

That ruined years of negotiations by Warwick for a treaty between England and France, which would have been sealed by Edward’s marriage to a French princess. Things came to a head in 1470 when Warwick, aided by King Edward’s younger brother, George Plantagenet, 1^st Duke of Clarence – who had married Warwick’s daughter and thus became his son-in-law – deposed Edward.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.