Cecily Neville Duchess of York | The Woman Who Survived the Wars of the Roses | The Mother of Kings

From History Calling

CECILY NEVILLE, Duchess of York, was a Plantagenet matriarch, the mother of Kings Edward IV and Richard III and the woman who survived the Wars of the Roses from start to finish, living long enough to see her descendants take the ultimate power, only to lose it three times over, culminating in the conquest of England by Henry Tudor and the end of the Plantagenet dynasty. Indeed the story of her sons and her tragic grandsons, the Princes in the Tower, is an abject lesson not just in how to take a throne, but in how to lose a throne and in what it was like to be monarch in 15th century England when whoever wore the crown was constantly a King under threat. In this documentary from History Calling, we’ll look at roughly the first half of the life of Cecily Neville, including her birth, her child marriage to Richard, Duke of York and the difficulties they had in having children before their ultimately large family arrived. The video will cover the Duchess’s time in France and Ireland, her relationship with Queen Margaret of Anjou, the wife of Henry VI, her dramatic capture after the Battle of Ludford Bridge and finally her reaction to the disaster which befell her family at the end of 1460 when her husband and second son, Edmund, Earl of Rutland, were slain at the Battle of Wakefield. If you’ve ever wondered, what were the Wars of the Roses (or indeed what was the Cousins’ War, which another name given to this conflict), Cecily’s story is an excellent entry point into this complicated saga and this video will also cover many of the early events in this long-running conflict. This is the first entry in a series on the women of the Wars of the Roses.