Why Were They Called the Wars of the Roses?
For three decades between 1455 and 1487, the House of Lancaster and the House of York vied for control of the English throne. Originating in a period of instability during the reign of King Henry VI, whose struggles with mental illness left the throne vulnerable, this series of civil wars lasted for more than 30 years, though there were only about 15 months of active battle. The country was nonetheless mired in civil strife throughout the Wars of the Roses. The two rival houses were actually branches of the same family, the Plantagenet dynasty, and the power shifted back and forth over the years of fighting.
In 1485, at the Battle at Bosworth, the final battle of the conflict, Henry Tudor — a tenuous descendant of the Lancastrian house through his mother, Margaret Beaufort — defeated Richard III of the House of York. He was crowned King Henry VII, effectively ending the wars and establishing the transformative Tudor dynasty. Centuries later, a romanticized vision of the dynastic struggle continues to influence literature, film, and television, including George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones series and its wildly popular television adaptation, which follows the warring houses of Stark and Lannister (sound familiar?). The question is: How exactly did this tumultuous period in English history come to be named after a beautiful and sweet-smelling flower?
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Dueling Roses
Like many of history’s wars, the Wars of the Roses weren’t named until many years after the conflict ended. The moniker refers to the symbols of the two houses: a white rose for the House of York and a red rose for the House of Lancaster, although roses weren’t the only heraldic imagery used at the time of the fighting. Yorkists, for instance, were also known to sport Richard III’s white boar badge before and during his brief reign as king (1483-1485). Lancastrian monarch Henry VI featured an antelope on his royal badge, and when Henry VII won the Battle of Bosworth, he carried a banner featuring the family’s red dragon crest on a white and green background.
While the white rose was just one of many badges used by the Yorks, the red rose may have been absent during the civil wars altogether. Before 1485, red roses appeared only minimally in distant Lancaster heraldic imagery. Historians believe the image was only made a prominent Lancastrian symbol by Henry VII and his advisors after his victory. Seeking to unify the nation — and to strengthen his shaky familial claim to the throne — Henry married a York princess, Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth, six months after the Wars of the Roses had ended. Manuscripts from this era show that he purposefully resurrected the seldom-used red rose and, in a strategic move, combined it with the Yorkists’ white rose.
Together, the two roses made what came to be known as the Tudor rose, a prominent symbol of the Tudor dynasty. It was not only a powerful piece of political imagery, but also a symbol of unity and reconciliation. The Tudor rose became an enduring emblem and spread throughout England, often incorporated into architecture and decor throughout the country. Today, red and white roses — as well as red dragons — appear in the garden at the Hampton Court Palace, a historical Tudor court.
A War by Any Other Name
The Tudor rose was firmly entrenched as a symbol of the English civil wars by the late 1400s, but the conflict’s modern name didn’t become common for another 400 years. Much of its popularity is attributed to the 19th-century writer Walter Scott, who, in his 1829 novel Anne of Geierstein, referred to the civil wars as “the wars of the White and Red Roses.” Scott was a famous novelist at the time, and his work resonated with the wider public and bolstered the Wars of the Roses’ name through the 19th century and beyond. He wasn’t the first to make the literary link, however. In his late-1500s Henry VI trilogy, William Shakespeare famously dramatized a scene in which characters pluck red and white roses to signify their loyalties. Influential Scottish philosopher David Hume also helped cement the connection. In a 1775 version of his bestselling book The History of England, Hume referred to the period as “the quarrel between the two roses.”
