However, the Lancastrians were defeated at the Battle of Towton and sent into exile or destroyed, while the York line, led by Richard’s son Edward IV took over, with great vigor of rule, lustiness of appetite and confinement of enemies. Henry’s wife, Queen Margaret, was not able to get rid of Richard, and she sheltered her young scion to the throne and directed allied armies (now called the Lancastrians) as civil war raged around them. With the warrior king Henry V’s death in 1422, his infant son became Henry VI, leaving the kingdom at the mercy of warring usurpers from France and the young king “beneath an almost crushing burden of expectation.” Indeed, Henry VI was not an effective king, and into the vacuum of leadership stepped traitorous aristocrats like the Earl of Suffolk and the Duke of Gloucester, as well as Richard, Duke of York, the king’s cousin, who became a dangerous rival.
In a follow-up to The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings Who Invented England (2012), British historian Jones authoritatively sets the scene for the next brutal act: the 15th-century succession crises.
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