Elizabeth Woodville
Elizabeth Woodville married a king in secret, watched her sons disappear, and put her daughter on the throne anyway. She was the daughter of a knight and a duchess of Luxembourg, and the widow of a Lancastrian killed fighting Edward IV's side - which made her an implausible queen twice over. Edward married her privately in 1464 and concealed it for months while Warwick negotiated a French match, and the revelation humiliated the man who had made him king. The promotion of her large family into marriages and offices is the standard explanation for the aristocratic resentment that drove Warwick into rebellion; whether the Woodvilles were unusually grasping or simply new is still argued. She took sanctuary at Westminster twice. The first time, in 1470, she gave birth there to the future Edward V while her husband was in exile; the second, in 1483, she went in with her younger son and was persuaded to release him to his uncle. Both boys went into the Tower and were not seen again. Richard III had her marriage declared invalid and her children declared bastards on the claim of a precontract. She then agreed with Margaret Beaufort that Henry Tudor should marry her eldest daughter, which is the arrangement that ended the wars: their son was Henry VIII. Henry VII stripped her of her lands in 1487 and she retired to Bermondsey Abbey, where she died in 1492 asking for a burial without pomp, being unable to pay for one. Whether the retirement was chosen or imposed is one of the standing questions of the reign.
- Lived: 1437 CE – 1492 CE
- Nationality: English
- Roles: queen, noblewoman
