1430-1482 - last Lancastrian queen of England. I'm kind of loving the crazy hat she has in the statue. Don't start this one unless you're settled in for a long story.
"If you don't respect a proscribed queen, respect an unhappy mother"
Poor Marguerite had one of the worst political lives of any woman here, and most of it had to do with being saddled with an insane and incompetent royal husband. Here we go.
Marguerite remains to this day the second most controversial British/English queen and it is somewhat difficult to find neutral sources of her. She appears to have had an unremarkable childhood as the daughter of a powerful French duke, so we'll skip that.
Instead, we'll go to the background of her husband, King Henry VI of England. He came from the Lancastrian dynasty of English royalty, who had been fighting the Hundred Years' War with France for quite some time. Under the reign of his father Henry V the English began to lose battles (especially to Joan of Arc) and the monarchy became increasingly unpopular, with their close family members, the Yorkists, gaining popularity.
Henry V died with Henry VI was just nine months old. He was raised by uncles and other family members who were powerful at court, had a council of regents his entire early life and was inadequately trained to become king himself. Additionally he was an extremely shy, religious, kind, and peaceful person who did not particularly want power for himself. Even after he came of age to rule for himself he was manipulated by advisers and hardly made any decisions himself.
In an extremely poor plan, his advisers married 24 year old Henry VI to the 15 year old Marguerite, and paid for the privilege. Because of that payment (loss of land to France) and her French identity she was immediately unpopular.
To complicate matters further, Marguerite was nearly the opposite of her husband: she was extremely defiant, strong-willed, proud, smart, quite secular, and reputedly very beautiful. She was also proud of her French origins and unwilling to compromise to become English as queens normally did, making her more unpopular with the people. However, she in fact developed an immediate and fierce loyalty to the family she married into.
With Henry's weak position it was imperative that the king and queen produce an heir, but that did not happen for quite some time. People snarkily gossiped that Henry was too pious and innocent to know how to beget a child - and to Marguerite's frustration he showed little interest in her besides friendship, anyway. Eight years after their marriage the queen was finally pregnant. This happiness was short lived, though, because two months before his son's birth Henry had a mental breakdown after hearing about a major battle loss. He is reported to have said their child couldn't possibly be his (although it is certain it was). It's interesting to note that Charles VI of France, whom I mentioned before, was Henry's grandfather, so it's possible this was an inherited condition.
This period of insanity and unresponsiveness lasted a full year, but by the time he came out of it many powerful nobles had already changed allegiance to his cousin, Richard, the Duke of York, who was pursuing his claim to the throne in the face of Henry's insanity. And thus began the Wars of the Roses, and more or less ended the Hundred Years' War.
Marguerite mostly lived quietly in London until the Yorkists became a very real threat to her husband's throne. From this time, about 1455 on, she became the undisputed head of the Lancastrian faction. Some historians go so far as to blame her for blowing this conflict up into a drawn out war due to a strong personal dislike between her and the Duke of York, but that seems overkill to me. In my inexpert opinion she realized that because Henry's advisers were remarkably corrupt and Henry himself out of it, she was the only one truly fighting for her son's place as the future king of England.
The first battle that she helped plan was a miserable defeat for her side, and the king was taken prisoner. As part of his capture the English Parliament agreed to pass the crown to the Duke of York's heir's after Henry's death. The royal family was forced to flee into Scotland, where Marguerite was ceaseless in her attempts to gain support in northern England. She had some success and by 1461 she had won a major victory at a battle where the Duke of York and his main ally were captured. Marguerite showed absolutely no mercy at this point and executed the duke; a few more victories followed, in which she executed two noble Yorkists who were prisoners, but to whom the king had promised clemency. Henry was basically playing no role in the war at this point because of his unstable state, and, if legend is to be believed, because he was simply too religious and kind to go along with the bloodshed.
The Duke of York's son had taken up the banner at this point and even had had himself coronated as king. He captured Henry and this time imprisoned him in the Tower of London. Marguerite was largely unsuccessful in gaining support until some powerful men changed sides against the Yorkist king and re-crowned Henry as king in 1470. However Henry had been hiding and imprisoned so long that he was completely unable to rule, and had mostly sunk into a peaceable insanity. His nobles ruled for him.
The wars continued until the devastating Battle of Tewksbury in 1471. By this time Marguerite's main powerful supporter had been killed and she had no other option than to actually lead the army herself (probably the only time an army was ever led into battle by a queen consort). It was a terrible defeat for her and her son, seventeen, was either killed in battle or executed afterwards. It was effectively the end of the Lancastrian line and the Yorkists were the undisputed rulers. Henry died just days after the battle in suspicious circumstances.
With the death of her family, Marguerite was forced into exile in France, where she was not supported financially by the king, her cousin. She had gained a reputation of being aggressive and ruthless (probably deserved), promiscuous and malicious (probably undeserved). Basically because of her actions during the war she was the epitome of an unwomanly woman, and being defeated would have brought shame on powerful men willing to take her in.
To this day historians are mostly either very sympathetic to her as an unusual woman of her time taking power and defending her son's inheritance, or very unsympathetic to her as an inept army leader and aggressor in the war. The above statue clearly is going for the sympathy angle, portraying her as a desperate mother. It is known that she traveled around the north of England tirelessly in her efforts to secure her family's legacy, and that she was a good mother, but there are also many recorded examples of her ruthlessness and coldheartedness towards her enemies. I'm undecided on her, but I think her role in the Wars of the Roses is fascinating and incredible.
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