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#the wars of the roses
eve-to-adam · 5 months
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Elizabeth of York, fashion character design, c. 1472-1473.
The fleur-de-lys on the dress make me think of the moment when Elizabeth was engaged to Charles, the Dauphin of France.
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threesonsofyorks · 25 days
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VEERLE BEATENS and FAYE MARSAY as MARGARET OF ANJOU and ANNE NEVILLE THE WHITE QUEEN (2013) | 1x05 "War at First Hand"
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bythequeenmargaret · 4 months
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I found this by complete chance here around a year ago before promptly proceeding to lose it like a dumbass when I got a new phone. I rediscovered it while going through some old messages with a friend, so I'm posting it here for posterity.
"Written at Saint Michael, in bare, with my own hand, that you may see how good a writer I am." is especially adorable.
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liviasdrusillas · 21 days
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"Lies, gossip and character assassination by enemies, both personal and political, slandered this woman [Elizabeth Woodville] who lived during one of the most troubled and violent eras of human history. In fifteenth-century England, this woman fought for family and life with intelligence and persistence against men who used swords, power and propaganda to annihilate their enemies. Her victories were few; her losses eternal.
elizabeth: england's slandered queen, arlene, okerlund
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mrsstrangewinter · 20 days
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I do not know if this one was mentioned already by anyone here but,
All the first names of the Greek Class are also names of the Royal Family. And I cannot stop thinking of Shakespeare's Wars of the Roses. Do you know how much Henry VI and Richard III connected in this one and how their relationship went... Especially how it was shown in the 2nd season of The Hollow Crown and that anime adaptation, Requiem of the Rose King?
What I am trying to point out is that Henry and Richard in TSH mirrored Shakespeare's characters (including their relationship) in utter opposites. When Henry VI was very saintly, Henry Winter isn't. Same goes with Richard III. Although, we are aware of Richard Papen's impulsive thoughts and how he almost acted like Tom Riddle for that one thing he'd done as a kid while recalling his childhood.
For some reason, even when Henry Winter and Richard Papen only knew each other for a short time, I can't help but confirm that somehow their friendship established that unbreakable bond, although it was not as established like Henry's relationship with Julian or Camilla, or even Bunny. Henry trusted Richard a great deal even though it can be considered aloof at some moments in the novel. He was even planning on giving his BMW to Richard as Mrs. Winter mentioned when he was in the hospital. I think Henry was already aware of Richard lying about his social status (all of the Greek Class were not even oblivious of that for sure as well) and yet, he stayed.
You can actually mirror their relationship with Henry VI and Richard III in Requiem of the Rose King, and the personalities I have mentioned beforehand. I do not know if Tartt did this on purpose by connecting it with Shakespeare's, but I think... she did. It paralleled somehow and everything went in sync merely because of their first names.
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inmyworldblr · 1 year
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Dame Peggy Ashcroft as Margaret of Anjou in “The Wars of the Roses” (1963)
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catherinesvalois · 2 years
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CATHERINE OF VALOIS ❀ QUEEN CONSORT OF ENGLAND
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juanatrastamara · 7 months
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the white queen ten year anniversary: twq characters + ruelle songs
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On this day in history, 8th of June 1492, Elizabeth Woodville, queen consort of Edward IV, died at Bermondsey Abbey aged about 55.
The cause of her death is not known, it is commonly suggested however that her health was failing in the last year since she made her will on the 10th of April 1492.  
«Except for brief excursions, Elizabeth Wydeville spent the rest of her life in Bermondsey convent. At the age of fifty, she had retreated from the swirling, murderous world of court politics. Experience had taught her the futility of vanity and the imperative of faith, a conclusion supported by her lifelong piety…A bucolic retreat with extensive gardens, Bermondsey convent had long harboured royal guests seeking shelter from the outside world. The current abbot, John de Marlow, had officiated as a Deacon at the funeral of Edward IV and would witness Elizabeth’s will two months before her death.
The funeral procession to Windsor Castle, where Elizabeth Wydeville was buried in St George’s Chapel as requested beside her beloved husband, Edward IV, could not have contrasted more starkly with the elaborate processions of her queenly days. The scanty attendance and truncated funeral rites paled beside the elaborate ceremonies at the reburial of Richard, Duke of York – and even the funeral rites for her daughter Mary in 1482. The shabby hearse, the few mourners, the inferior tapers and the slight attention paid by church authorities discomforted the scribe who recorded the events» - “Elizabeth. England’s Slandered Queen” by  Arlene Okerlund
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wonder-worker · 6 months
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It is of course possible that Richard (III) only advanced his own claim to the throne after he was informed by a deeply troubled Bishop Stillington that Edward V and his brother were illegitimate. It is possible, but highly implausible. The case finally put together concerning the bastardy of the princes, and enrolled in a parliamentary statute of January 1484, is theologically sound. It was that Edward IV had entered a pre-contract of marriage with Eleanor Butler before he had married Elizabeth Woodville and that this rendered his children by her illegitimate. Under canon law, had Edward IV entered a pre-contract of marriage with Eleanor Butler, all the children born of a later union, before or after Eleanor’s death, even if Elizabeth Woodville had been ignorant of the previous liaison, would have been illegitimate. In this respect the fact that Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville had married clandestinely made matters worse. Moreover, it was perfectly acceptable in law to raise objection on these grounds several years after the event. The pre-contract story, in its final form, presented a strong legal case.
There are, however, several sound reasons for doubting its truth. While it is the case that parliament was a proper body to adjudicate on matters of inheritance that resulted from illegitimacy, in England in the later-fifteenth century an ecclesiastical court should have heard the original charge. And if it were true, why was it not put before such a court so as to remove all doubts? Moreover, even if it had been proved that Edward V and his brother were illegitimate, deposition was not the only course open to the protector. The stain of illegitimacy could have been removed by the ritual of coronation. Edward V, like Elizabeth I later, could have been declared legitimate and all doubts removed. Above all, the revelation of the princes’ bastardy was so timely and convenient as to leave little doubt in the minds of contemporaries that it was but the colour for an act of usurpation.
There is, too, a suspicious degree of confusion over the precise detail of the charge of illegitimacy as it was first advanced in June. Mancini’s account of the sermons and speeches hints at a change in the story. At first the charge appeared to be that Edward IV himself was a bastard; two days later it seems that the princes were. The first official government statement appears in a letter dated 28 June to the captain of Calais informing him that his oath of loyalty to Edward V was no longer valid. Many people, he was assured, had made similar oaths in ignorance of Richard III’s true title which had been shown and declared in a petition presented by the lords spiritual and temporal and the commons on 26 June, a copy of which was to be sent to Calais for publication. Unfortunately that copy has not survived. The earliest surviving version is, therefore, that transcribed as part of the parliamentary act settling the throne on Richard. This purports to reproduce that petition verbatim, but doubts have been cast on its veracity. It is possible that the final, official version, had been subsequently amended. Even so, there is no reason to doubt that the substance of the original petition of 26 June was the same as that reproduced in January: namely that ‘all the issue of the said King Edward been bastards’
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Richard III usurped the throne in June 1483. Perhaps in retrospect what happened appears more controlled and more deliberate than was in fact the case. We tend to favour a conspiratorial view of the past, where often a ‘cock-up’ theory might be more applicable. Did Richard III mastermind a brilliantly conceived and skilfully executed coup d’état? Or did it all happen in confusion, ignorance and fear? Richard might well have had a plan to take the throne by one means, but found that he had to change it as events developed.
... We should not assume that the usurpation was conducted according to a timetable; but there are nevertheless several observations that can be made with some certainty. The first is that Richard took and never surrendered the initiative. It is hard to sustain the idea that he was forced into usurpation by circumstances or by his rivals’ actions. He did not need to seize Rivers and his companions at Stony Stratford; he did not need to execute Hastings on 13 June. On both these occasions experienced politicians walked unsuspectingly into a trap. None of Richard’s victims in the summer of 1483 anticipated the fate awaiting them. In modern jargon, Richard was proactive, not reactive. The second observation is that Richard acted with unprecedented ruthlessness. His enemies were executed without trial. They were not in arms against their sovereign; they were not taken after battle and slain even under the colour of the law of arms. There was no pretence of lawful process. They were murdered in cold blood. The third observation is that Richard faced little opposition. Potential opposition was removed by pre-emptive strikes. The fourth observation is that he deposed a boy of twelve, his nephew, who on his own insistence had been placed in his trust.
The magnitude of what (Richard III) did should not be played down. Edward V was not of an age to have caused personal political offence. He could not be accused of tyranny, like Richard II, or gross incompetence, like Henry VI. He had begun to reign, but he had not yet ruled. The usurpation of 1483 was of a fundamentally different order to those of 1399, 1461, or even 1485. Those, whether justifiable or not, were acts of the last resort. In 1483, uniquely, deposition was used as a weapon of first resort.
-A.J Pollard, "Richard III and the Princes in the Tower"
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If you HAD to choose!
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eve-to-adam · 1 month
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Elizabeth of York, fashion character design c. 1473-1474.
If you dare to think that I have developed some kind of obsession with little Elizabeth of York, I must tell you...
… you are right.
P.S. My mom told me she looks like a historical Tinkerbell and now I can't stop thinking about it lol
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seethemflying · 6 months
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at some point in my life, i need an eight season adaptation of the wars of the roses. give me baby henry vi, the heir to two crumbling kingdoms. give me charles vi, made of glass. give me john and his art collections, jeanne d'arc and gilles de rais (saint and sinner), humphrey and eleanor and the witchcraft accusations. give me queen catherine and her widowhood, forbidden from being a wife. give me the secret marriage to the man so lowborn no one would suspect a thing (who bears the name tudor).
give me henry's majority and his cut-price wife (margaret, marguerite, the she-wolf of france). give me henry's piety, his quietness, his madness, his catatonic state. give me margaret's affairs (supposed), her hatred of york (actual), and her beloved baby son who ruins dreams of kingship. give me the yorks, york's severed head wearing a paper crown, cecily playing favourites with her three sons and sending them to take their revenge, a nineteen-year-old king. give me margaret beaufort, thirteen-years-old, a baby boy in her arms who will never be king. give me jasper, a man made old for love of his nephew. give me children playing grown-up games.
give me edward, george, and richard. give me the woodville woman. give me warwick, jealous that the new queen won't find husbands for his daughters. give me bona of savoy's pettiness for being overlooked for a knight's daughter. give me warwick switching sides, bringing george with him. give me isabel and anne, passed around by their father in the hope one will be queen. give me the attempted rebellion and the birth of the stillborn baby in calais harbour. give me henry vi's brief return, the murder of his seventeen year old heir in a church, and queen margaret's final heartbreak. give me anne neville, a teenaged yorkist stuck with a lancastrian queen's grief, forcibly married to her dead son.
give me george's paranoia, george's jealousy of his brother, his grief at isabel's death. give me the astrologers predicting the death of the king, and the barrel of malmsey wine that dooms his brother. give me richard, loyal richard, who would never do anyone any harm. give me edward's spring chill, his sudden death, and the two small boys put into their uncle's care.
give me richard trying to rule: jane shore's walk of shame, the death of his only son, the death of his wife, and the foreboding sense he might be cursed. give me elizabeth woodville and margaret beaufort, signing their pact with a marriage. give me elizabeth of york, silent, choosing her path. give me henry tudor, arriving a bosworth, ending geoffrey of anjou's last male heir. a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.
give me the new dynasty, the tudors, and the old dynasty coming back in ghostly forms. give me henry and elizabeth, the most unlikely love story, and margaret beaufort countenancing no other queen than she. give me a spanish princess and a prince of wales, maybe possibly perhaps on their wedding night. give me the sweating sickness and a young man's death which drains all joy from his father. give me the overlooked second born son, eyeing up the first of his six wives.
give me a tyrant's death in his mother's arms. give me her death a month later. and give sir thomas more celebrating the rising of a new sun and the end of war. good king henry viii will bring peace, surely?
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wishesofeternity · 9 months
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“Warwick launched his final bid at kingmaking, this time in alliance with Margaret of Anjou to restore Henry VI. He and Clarence landed in Devon while the King was in Yorkshire. Elizabeth (Woodville)’s initial reaction was to prepare for a siege in the Tower of London where she had already retired in expectation of the imminent birth of another child. But on 1 October news reached the capital that the King was preparing to set sail from Bishop’s Lynn, abandoning his kingdom. With no hope of imminent rescue, Elizabeth moved swiftly into the Sanctuary of Westminster Abbey with her mother and her daughters. She sent Abbot Thomas Millyng to advise the Mayor and Aldermen that she was surrendering the Tower, and consequently Henry VI, into their custody.
- J.L Laynesmith,  “Elizabeth Woodville: The Knight’s Widow” in “Later Plantagenet and Wars of the Roses Consorts” / “The Last Medieval Queens, English Queenship 1445-1503″
"Elizabeth (Woodville) at first fortified the Tower of London against the approaching Lancastrians, but then decided instead to hand over custody of the Tower to the mayor and aldermen of London while she went into sanctuary at Westminster Abbey. It was a move which not only protected her daughters, who were with her, but also saved London from attack, which perhaps explains some of the praise she later received. The author of 'The Historic of the Arrival of Edward IV, who claimed to have witnessed much of what he recorded, stressed
the right great trowble, sorow, and hevines, whiche [the queen] sustayned with all manar pacience that belonged to eny creature, and as constantly as hathe bene sene at any tyme any of so highe estate to endure; in the whiche season natheles she had browght into this worldc, to the Kyngs grcatystc joy, a fayrc son.
...When Edward (IV) arrived, there was a scene of family bliss, in which the queen's vulnerability and domesticity could be contrasted with his heroism.  The king was thus presented in an unusually human guise, which might appeal to readers familiar with such partings themselves throughout the civil wars:
The king comfortid the quene, and other ladyes ckc;  His swete babis ful tendurly he did kys;  The yonge prynce he behelde, and in his armys did bere. Thus his bale turnyd hym to blis.
#historicwomendaily#elizabeth woodville#history#edward iv#mine#the wars of the roses#i have a major issue with the way this is viewed by the vast majority of people tbh#for one: so many people conveniently forget that she was the one who controlled and was apparently fortifying the ToL#(which included the captive Henry VI btw)#while she was literally 8 months pregnant#she only gave it up after she learned that edward iv was also fleeing. it's SO important and interesting#and yet most people either don't know about it or conveniently flash forward to when she entered sanctuary#and my second issue: SO MANY PEOPLE INCLUDING HISTORIANS tend to treat her flight to sanctuary as some kind of indication of her personalit#when the truth of the matter is that SHE HAD NO OTHER CHOICE#as david baldwin rightly pointed out -as an englishwoman of the gentry she did not have foreign resources shelter or support at her disposa#the way every queen before her (in theory for lots of them as it wasn't required) possessed#nor was elizabeth a valuable heiress (like anne Neville or her own daughter eoy)#not to mention the very obvious fact that she was heavily pregnant (and gave birth just a month later) with three very young daughters#like. literally what else was she supposed to do? where else was she supposes to go?#her vulnerability was unprecedentedly horrific and people & historians don't emphasize the comparative degree of it as much as they should#at that point elizabeth literally didn't have any other options other than sanctuary. it wasn't much of a choice#it's strange because elizabeth's status has been discussed a lot in theory but rarely discussed in terms of how it affected her in PRACTISE#and this is a key example of that#among many others
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liviasdrusillas · 21 days
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"It was not lust but love that compelled Edward IV to marry Elizabeth Woodville, a love that persisted through nineteen years of trauma and tragedies that would have destroyed less devoted relationships—and lesser women."
elizabeth: england's slandered queen, arlene okerlund
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travllingbunny · 2 months
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Hi! I don't know how much you're interested in the subject today, but considering how i really adored a lot of your opinions/views of the Wars of the Roses and some people involved, especially Richard III, i was wondering how you think a scenerio where Richard remained King for more time or simply won Bosworth would be
Thank you for the teresting question.
Contrary to historical fiction works that portray him as desperate at the Battle of Bosworth, I think it's more likely Richard was hoping to get rid of Henry Tudor quickly and saw him as just a temporary nuisance. If only the battle had happened a couple of days later, when Richard got reinforcements from the North, or if William Stanley had not made the decision to definitely switch sides to Henry, the battle would've probably gone completely differently.
Below is my speculation of what happens if Richard wins:
The immediate outcome seems relatively clear - we know now that Richard was in the middle of secret negotiations with the royal family of Portugal for a double marriage between him and Infanta Joanna, and Elizabeth of York and King's 16-year old cousin Manuel, Duke of Beja, which were apparently going very well. It seems unlikely that Joanna, who had been refusing to get married for so long, would accept, but supposedly the negotiations were going well. We know Richard had sent her a personal letter, so it's fun to speculate what he said that would make her reconsider. I'm thinking he may have talked about religion (as they were both known to be pious) and pitched the marriage in terms of a partnership, and how she could do good for peace and the people of England through charity work (which she was known to do) and maybe even assured her that she wouldn't have to keep having children after she gave birth to an heir? Richard was expected to remarry and have a son after his only legitimate son and his wife died, but going by his choice of bride, he was looking for a great Queen and political partner above all, and not a broodmare - I can't imagine Joanna, who wanted to be a nun and was against marriage, agreeing to keep popping up a child every year or two until she hits menopause. He also may not have been two concerned because he had an heir and spares already, even though not 'of his body'- - his adult nephew John de La Pole and his younger brothers William, Edmund and Richard. The Portugal double marriage would've been a genius political move for many reasons: it would allow Richard to claim that he was ending the York/Lancaster rift for good by marrying Joanna, since the Portuguese royal family were through the female line the main surviving Lancastrian branch; it would fulfil his promise to Elizabeth Woodville that he would find good matches for her daughters in spite of their new 'bastard' status - and how! a Portuguese royal marriage was worthy of a princess* - and could be seen as healing the rift between the Yorkists too (and would at the same time make it impossible for Henry Tudor or anyone else to try to claim the throne of England by marrying her); and it would give England a great, intelligent and respectable Queen, who had experience in ruling as regent and could rule in RIchard's absence when he spent time abroad in wars, and whose reputation for piety and charity for people would help restore his tarnished reputation.
One interesting consequence of his marriage alliance is that Elizabeth of York would eventually have become a Queen Consort, but of Portugal, as Manuel eventually became King.Manuel I in 1495.
Once the situation became more stable, Richard would've probably focused on the things he had already started to do during his short reign - legal reforms aimed mostly at bettering the judiciary and the status of common people, and he would no doubt also want to curtail the power of major noblemen of questionable loyalty such as the Stanleys - and things he is known to have enthusiastically talked about planning to do, such as trying to convince other European countries to mount a campaign to stop the Ottoman Empire's conquests in Europe. (France would be an unlikely ally, Portugal and Burgundy would be obvious ones, and he'd no doubt try to pitch it to the Holy Roman Empire.)
I don't know whether he'd be successful at that, or how long he would live, but a few most obvious historical consequences would be:
the way the previous few decades were remembered in history would be very different, and no one would ever call them the "Wars of the Roses" - which was a name given by Walter Scott in the 19th century based on the fact that Henry VII used the red-white Tudor rose as his sigil, promoting it as a sign of supposed unity between the Lancaster and York dynasties - in spite of the fact that the Lancasters didn't actually use a red rose, or any kind of rose, as their sigil. Henry VII also presented the conflicts that had gone on as a part of one ongoing conflict that he ended with the Battle of Bosworth and by marrying Elizabeth of York. In reality, these were a few conflicts separated by years or even decades in between, and before the battle of Bosworth, the last actual armed conflict fought over the throne of England had been 14 years earlier, when Edward IV won his second and decisive war over the Lancasters. The conflict between the two Yorkist factions after Edward's death did not result in any actual battle (in 1783, Buckingham failed to ignite a rebellion, and his ally Henry turned back to France, realizing the war was lost before it began), so Henry basically 'ended the Wars of the Roses' only after he restarted them in 1485. (Not to mention that Henry had to fight another battle two years later against the Yorkists led by Jon de la Pole, which is always conveniently left out in history books, and had to catch, exile or execute various Yorkist pretenders throughout his reign.) If Henry loses the battle, he becomes only a footnote in history. Edward IV remains considered the one who ended the Lancaster-York conflicts with his decisive victory in 1471. Richard probably manages to be popular and respected king (much more than Henry was with his notorious tax laws) and would likely have claimed to have 'united the York and Lancaster branches' with his marriage to Joanna (though he probably wouldn't have made a huge deal out of it as Henry did, since Henry was promoting himself as the founder of a new dynasty that would start a new era). But what of the Princes in the Tower? Well, we don't know what happened to them and Richard may be suspected to have murdered them, but Henry definitely did imprison 11 year old Edward of Warwick and keep him locked up in the Tower until he was 25 and then executed him on trumped up treason charges just because he was another pretender to the throne, but barely anyone talks about it or cares, so... (insert something about history being written by the winners)
Scotland and England remain separate independent countries. It's very unlikely that the same chain of events would happen where the daughter of a king of England marries a king of Scotland, and then a century later her descendant becomes not just the king of Scotland but also the heir to the throne of England because the ruling dynasty of England died out. There is never a Tudor dynasty, never a Stuart dynasty, never a Hanover dynasty. And there's never a United Kingdom.
There is never such a thing as Anglicanism/the Church of England, with the monarch as its head. Mind you, this doesn't necessarily mean that England remains fully or predominantly Catholic - Protestantism was gaining popularity not just in England (even when Henry was still a devout Catholic) but also in Scotland, which didn't have a Henry VIII splitting with the Pope so he could annul his marriage. It's impossible to tell how exactly the Reformation and Counter-reformation would've affected England under different monarchs and a different dynasty, since so much of the religious strife in the 16th century was linked to Henry's decisions, his break from the Pope, his marriages and annulments and his succession issues, and then with the personalities and backgrounds of his children: Edward as a staunch Protestant (just like his mother's family), Mary as a staunch Catholic (completely unsurprising with her background and the fact that her father broke from the Pope so he could annul his marriage to her mother, proclaiming her a bastard), and then Elizabeth, who couldn't be tolerant to Catholics even if she didn't care about religion, since the Pope and therefore all Catholics considered her a bastard and an illegitimate monarch. How would elderly Richard, and/or his heirs, treat Protestants? What would they think of Martin Luther, or of William Tyndale? It's impossible to tell. He was a devout Catholic, but Protestantism didn't exist at the time, and would he (who was the first of English kings to publish official state documents in English) hate the idea of translating the Bible into English so ordinary people could understand it without the help of clergy? I really don't know, and it's even harder to tell what his heirs would be like in that regard. Would there be more religious tolerance in England? For all we know, it might even be less if a particularly fanatical monarch ended up on a throne... but at least I think I can say with some certainty that English monarchs of this hypothetical York dynasty would have no personal and dynastic reasons to persecute either Protestants or Catholics the way monarchs of the Tudor dynasty had due to their specific circumstances.
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