Queen Margaret fuelled anti-Yorkist sentiment at court. The Duke of York was re-appointed Protector, then dismissed again in 1456. A Yorkist victory during which the Duke of Somerset (one of the Lancastrian leaders) was killed. There was tremendous bloodshed as defeated forces on both sides were brutally murdered by the victors. In 1455, just two years after the end of the Hundred Years War, this dynastic civil war broke out. Each side chose a badge: the Red Rose for Lancaster and the White Rose for York. Many soldiers had just returned from the Hundred Years War in France, so recruiting trained men to fight was easy. The weak, sick king was unable to control his ambitious queen on one side, and the Yorkist Earl of Warwick, the ‘kingmaker’, on the other side.īoth sides started to recruit soldiers and prepare for war. The King recovered some months later and York was summarily dismissed. His first act was to dismiss some of the Queen’s Lancastrian advisors which caused great bad feeling. During one of these periods in 1454, Richard of York was appointed ‘Protector of the Realm’. Henry VI suffered from periods of insanity. The party of nobles who opposed the Queen and the Lancastrians was led by Richard, Duke of York, Henry’s cousin, who was also descended from King Edward III and therefore also had a claim to the throne of England. The Queen and her circle of nobles were known as Lancastrians after Henry’s surname of Lancaster. At this time, there was a complex series of rivalries and jealousies at court between powerful noble families. The Plantaganet King Henry VI was a weak king, married to an ambitious French princess, Margaret of Anjou.
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