The Wars of the Roses: How England's Aristocracy Killed Itself in 30 Years

Podcast: The Jeremy Ryan Slate Show · Jeremy Ryan Slate

Opublikowano: 2026-07-01

History tells us the Wars of the Roses was a chivalric struggle between two great houses that ended with Henry Tudor's victory at Bosworth and the dawn of the Tudor age. That's the cover story. What actually happened across 30 years — between 1455 and 1487 — was something much darker. Two cousin lineages of the same royal family, Lancaster and York, fought a sequence of battles that didn't just transfer the crown. They systematically destroyed the English aristocracy. In 1450, England had roughly 200 noble houses with the wealth and military power to shape the kingdom. By 1490, half of them were...