Welcome to the My Favorite Murder episode of Monarcast! We talk about the most famous cold case in English royal history, the princes in the tower. Who killed them? How did they die? Why did Edward V’s Uncle Richard seize the crown? Shakespeare didn’t even have to try to make this stuff up!

And now we get to the Wars of the Roses! You know it through the life of Elizabeth Woodville, but this time we are telling the side of the men. Spoiler alert: they mostly die! We start with King Henry VI, whose poor rule and mental illness lead his nobles to frustration, and ultimately, to a deadly conk on the head. 

Did Richard II cause the Wars of the Roses generations later? No…but kinda? We open up our fifth series with that question as we go through the bumpy reign of Richard II and his ultimate removal from the throne.

Elizabeth Woodville, Cinderella story? This week, we talk about England’s first “commoner queen” and her marriage to Edward VI. She’s got a bad reputation, but is it earned? Her politics and family connections were messy, but how much of that is due to a grasping woman trying to improve her station in life or to events beyond her control? Whatever the case, she became matriarch to an impressive royal lineage, not bad for a woman with few connections doing the best she could during the Wars of the Roses.