Margaret of Anjou
Margaret of Anjou was married to Henry VI of England as the price of a truce, found herself the wife of a king who fell into a stupor and the mother of an heir the Duke of York said was not the king's, and fought the Wars of the Roses in person for sixteen years until her son was killed at Tewkesbury. She was born in 1430, the daughter of René of Anjou, a duke with more titles than lands, and was married at fifteen in 1445 to Henry, who was twenty-three, under a treaty by which England secretly gave up Maine; when that came out she was blamed for it, and for the loss of Normandy that followed. For eight years she had no child, and in 1453, in the months in which she was at last pregnant, Henry lost his mind and Richard of York was made protector. She bore Edward in October, presented him to a father who did not know him, and from then on the court was hers. When Henry recovered in 1455 she had York dismissed, and York took up arms at St Albans that May. The war ran on her will. She raised the north, saw York killed at Wakefield in December 1460 and his head set on the gate of the city with a paper crown, won at St Albans again in 1461 and got her husband back, and then lost everything at Towton in a snowstorm, the bloodiest day fought in England, and fled with the boy to Scotland and to France. Louis XI kept her for nine years and in 1470 made her shake hands with Warwick, the man who had put Edward IV on the throne and now took him off it. She landed at Weymouth on the day Warwick was killed at Barnet, marched for Wales, and was caught at Tewkesbury on 4 May 1471. Her son, seventeen, was killed after the battle, her husband was killed in the Tower three weeks later, and she was a prisoner for four years until Louis ransomed her for her rights to her father's lands. She died in Anjou in 1482, poor. Shakespeare gave her the best lines in the tetralogy and York's curse, the she-wolf of France.
- Lived: 1430 CE – 1482 CE
- Nationality: French
- Roles: queen, consort, general
