Shakespeare English History/War of the Roses Family Tree: Unnatural Deaths

in ,

Taking a quick break from coverage of The Crown season 3 (don’t worry, I’ll have another post up later today!) to get back to Wars of the Roses for a minute. I’ve heard it said before that a lot of Tudor history was influenced by the Wars for the purely practical reason that most of the nobles with a claim to the throne were killed off. Really, Henry VII had a pretty weak claim to the throne, and a big reason Henry VIII’s daughters were allowed to take the crown was because there really weren’t any viable male alternatives. I decided to test this out myself by simply crossing off all the people on my family tree who were killed “unnaturally,” that is, not dying of old age or illness. I may have missed a few side people here, as my history knowledge gets shakier the further back we go or the more Scottish we get, so please let me know if you see anyone I’ve missed!

If you missed seeing the original Shakespeare English History Royal Family Tree, it’s over here.

My Obsessive Shakespeare English History Play Family Tree (from Richard II, Henry IVs, Henry V, Henry VIs, Richard III, AND NOW HENRY VIII))

in ,

Originally published October 21, 2019

Things I should have blogged about today: Six the Musical costumes (still working on it!), things I learned at the Emerging Writers Festival, the authors I met at the National Book Festival, TudorCon (just got back!), More #ShakespearesPlaylist

Things I actually worked on today: An overly detailed family tree of English monarchs involved in the Hundred Years’ War and the Cousins’ War (also known as the War of the Roses), as portrayed in various Shakespeare plays, including Richard II, Henry IV Part 1 and 2, Henry V, Henry VI Part 1, 2, and 3, and Richard III. This started as a way for me to sort out my own thoughts and for eventual distribution to the cast members of the Richard III production for which I’m stage managing, but it may have gotten a little too obsessive to be helpful at this point, lol.

Updated on 10/22 to add in the Woodvilles- while not royal, they are very important! I’m going to keep editing and working on this to make it more comprehensive and also to clear up some of the more obscured names on here.

I started with the wonderful family tree over at The History of England Podcast website (Thank you very much!) and modified it in a lot of ways, erasing some descendants that aren’t mentioned in the plays or super relevant, adding in others that are, etc. I also added in various notes to indicate “who killed whom” (or was ultimately responsible for the death) according to Shakespeare and “who had an affair with whom” (according to Shakespeare or historical fact or rumor). [NOTE: a lot of these deaths and affairs are not at all confirmed in history and I am in no way saying it actually happened that way, don’t at me.]

My conclusion is that everyone’s related (thus, the cousins’ war!), no one has ANY IMAGINATION WHATSOEVER when it comes to naming, and everyone killed everyone else’s relatives in some way.

Did I miss someone important? It’s totally possible! Half of these people have the same damn names!

Shakespeare has a whole bit in Richard III Act IV Scene 4 poking a little fun at that. I’ve put in notations to indicate which one is being talked about at which point because it is DAMN CONFUSING.

Queen Margaret. (speaking to Elizabeth Woodville)
Tell o'er your woes again by viewing mine:
I had an Edward (Edward, Prince of Wales [son of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou]), till a Richard kill'd him; (Richard, Duke of Gloucester/Richard III)
I had a Harry (Henry VI), till a Richard kill'd him: (Gloucester/R 3)
Thou hadst an Edward (Edward V [son of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville]), till a Richard kill'd him; (Gloucester/R 3)
Thou hadst a Richard (Richard, Duke of York [son of Edward IV’s and Elizabeth Woodville), till a Richard killed him; (Gloucester/R 3)

Duchess of York. I had a Richard too, and thou didst kill him; (Richard, Duke of York [father of Edward IV, Clarence, and Gloucester/R 3; also Duchess of York’s late husband])
I had a Rutland too, thou holp'st to kill him.

Anyway, If I DID miss someone or got something wrong in this family tree, please let me know; it would be most appreciated!

UPDATED NOVEMBER 11, 2019

I added a few more generations and cleaned up a lot of the more illegible names. : ) This goes far beyond anything mentioned in Shakespeare’s history plays, but I wanted to add in all the relevant potential heirs under Elizabeth I.

I also reformatted and cleaned it up a lot. I printed out a big copy of this and mounted it on foam-board for demonstration purposes at Richard III rehearsal. I got to teach all about the wars of the roses and history and it was so much fun. :D Please feel free to download it and use it for your own purposes! But if you do so, please comment and let me know what you’re doing with it, I’d love to know!

If you’d like to download the family tree, you can do that here.