The War of the Roses family tree of Lancaster, York and Tudor

Edward III reigned from 1327 to 1377 and was succeeded by his grandson Richard II.¹ Both houses on the War of the Roses family tree descend from his younger sons. The house of Lancaster descends from John of Gaunt, his third surviving son.⁹ The Yorkist claim, unlike the Lancastrian one, rested on a female line, from Lionel of Antwerp, the second surviving son, through his daughter Philippa and the Mortimer family.⁹

In 1460 Richard, Duke of York, claimed the throne through his mother from Lionel. The Royal Family calls the wars a struggle over whether the crown could pass through women.⁴

John of Gaunt married Blanche of Lancaster at Reading Abbey in 1359, and their son Henry IV was born in 1367.^11,12 Henry took the crown in 1399 and died at Westminster in 1413.²

Henry V won at Agincourt in 1415, married Catherine, a daughter of Charles VI of France, and died at Vincennes in 1422.³ Their son Henry VI was born at Windsor and became king before his first birthday.⁴

Henry VI married Margaret of Anjou at Titchfield Abbey in 1445.²⁴ Civil war broke out in 1455. After Towton in 1461 the king and queen fled to Scotland, and Warwick and the queen restored Henry in 1470. Their son Edward of Westminster was killed at Tewkesbury in 1471, and Henry was put to death in the Tower soon after.⁴ That ended the male line of Lancaster.

John of Gaunt had four children with Katherine Swynford before marrying her in 1396. A papal bull of 1396 and Richard II in 1397 made the children legitimate. In 1407 Henry IV confirmed the act with a clause that excepted the royal dignity, which barred the Beauforts from the crown.¹³ The authority of that clause is called dubious.¹¹

The eldest, John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, died in 1410.¹⁴ His son John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, died in 1444 and left one legitimate child, Margaret Beaufort, born in 1443.¹⁵ Cecily Neville, mother of Edward IV and Richard III, was also a granddaughter of Gaunt and Swynford.²⁰

Edmund of Langley, the fourth son of Edward III, was the first Duke of York.¹⁶ His son Richard of Conisburgh married Anne Mortimer early in 1408. She was a great-granddaughter of Lionel of Antwerp and died in 1411, soon after their son Richard was born. Her husband was beheaded in 1415 for a plot against Henry V.^18,17

Richard, Duke of York, married Cecily Neville by 1429 and was killed at Wakefield in 1460.^19,4 His son Edward IV took the throne after Towton in 1461, lost it in 1470 and regained it in 1471.⁵ He married Elizabeth Woodville and died in 1483.⁵

Edward V was a minor when his father died, and his uncle Richard of Gloucester was made Protector. In June 1483 Richard took the throne as Richard III. Edward and his brother Richard were declared illegitimate on the ground of an earlier marriage contract of Edward IV, taken to the Tower and never seen again.⁶

The date of their deaths is not known, and historians debate whether Richard III or Henry VII was responsible.^6,7 Two skeletons found at the Tower in 1674 have not been proven to be theirs.³⁰ The War of the Roses family tree gives each boy no year of death.

Richard married Anne Neville, widow of Edward of Westminster, in 1472. Their only son died in 1484 and Anne in 1485.^26,7 Richard was killed at Bosworth on 22 August 1485, the last English king to die in battle.^7,27

The widowed Catherine of Valois married Owen Tudor at a date nobody knows.²² Their son Edmund Tudor married Margaret Beaufort, and Owen was beheaded at Hereford in 1461.²³ So Henry Tudor was a half-nephew of Henry VI through his father and a great-great-grandson of John of Gaunt through his mother.^22,15,7

Henry landed at Milford Haven in August 1485 and won at Bosworth.⁷ In 1486 he married Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter of Edward IV, uniting the houses of York and Lancaster.⁸ The wars ended at Stoke Field in 1487, and the two roses were joined in the Tudor rose.⁹

Their son is the centre of the King Henry VIII family tree, and the Tudor family tree follows the dynasty to Elizabeth I.