Margaret of Anjou was born on 23 March 1430, the second legitimate daughter of René, King of Naples and his wife, Isabella, Duchess of Lorraine.
The 15 year old Margaret was married to King Henry VI 23 April 1445, and was crowned Queen Consort a few weeks later. She did her best to be a good wife and queen. She seems to have loved her husband in spite of his mental illness, been loyal to her retainers, and fiercely devoted to her son Edward. Her efforts to prevent Richard of York, the 3rd Duke of York and father of King Edward IV and Richard III, from taking the crown away from her husband and son were heroic, and the reason she was unfairly dubbed a “she-wolf”.
Richard of York served as regent whenever Henry IV was mentally unable to perform his duties as king, and the king’s years of childlessness led York to expect that either himself or his eldest son would become king once Henry died. Imagine York’s unhappiness when Margaret had a healthy little boy on 13 October 1453. Henry became completely unable to rule shortly thereafter, which left York in charge. York liked the crown, and decided he should keep it.
York and the Yorkist faction immediately began questioning Edward’s legitimacy, declaring that Henry couldn’t have possibly fathered the boy. Margaret, getting wind that York was wooing powerful nobles to back him as king even though Henry was still alive and had an heir, literally went on the warpath to protect her husband and son. Some historians have criticized her for her decision to defend the rights of her spouse and legacy of their child.
The Duke of York was powerful; Henry’s advisers corrupt; Henry himself trusting, pliable, and increasingly unstable; Margaret defiantly unpopular, grimly and gallantly determined to maintain the English crown for her progeny. Yet at least one scholar [Paul Murray Kendall] identifies the source of the eventual Lancastrian downfall not as York’s ambitions nearly so much as Margaret’s ill-judged enmity toward York and her over-indulgence in unpopular allies.
Seriously, according to Paul Murray Kendall (who wrote the very well researched yet very, VERY pro-Yorkist book Richard the Third) the whole War of the Roses was because that bitch Margaret of Anjou wouldn’t lie down and let Richard of York cake-walk into a monarchy that was her son’s by rights.
Huh.
It is as though the murder of Margaret and Henry’s friend and ally, William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, by Yorkist supporters, the Duke of York’s bullying his way into goverment power after Suffolk’s death, and the constant rumours by the York camp that Edward of Westminster was a bastard shouldn’t have made Margaret angry and worried that York was after her child’s throne. She shouldn’t have ‘provoked’ York by trying to stop him from taking Edward’s heritage before York fully announced his intentions of usurpation. She shouldn’t have acted all manly by fighting against political shenanigans when they were right under her nose.
Huh.
Although Richard of York was slain in battle, the Yorkists eventually won, killing Margaret and Henry’s seventeen year old son at the Battle of Teweksbury. Henry VI died suddenly and conveniently after the Battle of Tewkesbury, and and Richard of York’s eldest son took the throne as Edward IV. Once in power, the Yorkists got to write most of the “official” historical record and It is a bit biased in their favor. They certainly demonized Margaret of Anjou, and those myths about her show up repeatedly in historical fiction.
The Yorkists were, in the end, unable to hold on to the crown they had stolen from Henry VI and his heir. Edward VI died young, and in a fit of historical irony (or karma), his young sons would also be killed so that an alternate claimant – Edward’s brother, who became Richard III – could take the throne. Edward’s queen, Elizabeth Woodville, then conspired with Margaret Beaufort to overthrow Richard and to place Margaret’s son, Henry Tudor, on the throne.
If Margaret of Anjou had been alive at the time, would she have laughed at the downfall of the Yorks? Or would the pain of her losses be too great for any perceived justice to soothe?