Eleanor Brandon

Catherine of Valois was a French princess who became queen of England as the wife of Henry V and, by her second marriage, the grandmother of Henry VII. Born in Paris in 1401, the youngest daughter of Charles VI of France and Isabeau of Bavaria, she was married to Henry V in 1420 under the Treaty of Troyes, which was meant to settle the Hundred Years' War by making her husband heir to the French throne. Their only child succeeded as Henry VI of England at the age of nine months. Widowed at twenty, Catherine formed a lasting union with Owen Tudor, a Welshman of her household, and their sons Edmund and Jasper Tudor grew up under the protection of their royal half-brother. She died in 1437 and was buried at Westminster Abbey.

John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, was an English nobleman and soldier of the Lancastrian royal house and the father of Lady Margaret Beaufort. Born in 1404, he was a grandson of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, through Gaunt's marriage to Katherine Swynford, whose children were legitimated by parliament but later barred from the succession by a clause of doubtful authority. Captured in France as a young man at the Battle of Bauge, he spent some seventeen years as a prisoner of war before being ransomed. He was created Duke of Somerset in 1443 and given command of an expensive expedition to France that achieved nothing and ended in his disgrace at court. He died in 1444, leaving his infant daughter Margaret as his heiress and, through her, the Tudor line.

Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, was the English magnate whose claim to the throne opened the Wars of the Roses and whose sons became Edward IV and Richard III. Born in 1411, he inherited vast estates and a double descent from Edward III, through his father Richard of Conisburgh and his mother Anne Mortimer. He served as the king's lieutenant in France and in Ireland and twice as Lord Protector during the incapacity of Henry VI, pressing his case against the court party led by Queen Margaret of Anjou. In October 1460 parliament recognised him as heir to the throne in place of the king's son, but he died at the Battle of Wakefield that December. Through his granddaughter Elizabeth of York his blood passed into the Tudor line.

Edward IV was king of England from 1461 to 1470 and again from 1471 to 1483, the first monarch of the House of York and the maternal grandfather of Henry VIII. Born at Rouen in 1442, the eldest surviving son of Richard, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, he took the throne as a teenager after his father's death in the Wars of the Roses and won decisive victories at Towton, Barnet and Tewkesbury. His secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville in 1464 alienated his chief ally, the Earl of Warwick, and drove him briefly into exile. His second reign brought England relative peace, a revived royal revenue and a fashionable court. He died in 1483, and three years later his eldest daughter Elizabeth of York married Henry VII.

Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby, was the mother of Henry VII and the source of the Lancastrian claim that put the Tudors on the English throne. Born at Bletsoe Castle in Bedfordshire in 1443, the only surviving child of John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, she was a great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt. Married to Edmund Tudor at twelve and widowed within a year, she gave birth to her only child at Pembroke Castle in 1457. Through the Yorkist decades she worked steadily for her exiled son's cause, helping to arrange the understanding with the Woodvilles that preceded Bosworth. As the king's mother she was a formidable landowner, a patron of printing and learning, and the founder of Christ's College and St John's College, Cambridge. She died in 1509.

George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, was an English prince of the House of York, a younger brother of Edward IV and Richard III and the father of Margaret Pole. Born at Dublin Castle in 1449 while his father served as the king's lieutenant in Ireland, he was created Duke of Clarence at his brother's coronation in 1461. In 1469 he married Isabel Neville, elder daughter of the Earl of Warwick, and joined his father-in-law's rebellion against the king before changing sides again and being reconciled. Relations with Edward IV broke down once more after Isabel's death, and he was attainted by parliament and died in the Tower of London in February 1478. His daughter Margaret carried the Plantagenet bloodline into the Tudor century.

Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, was an English noblewoman and one of the last of the House of Plantagenet, a first cousin of Elizabeth of York and for many years a trusted figure at the court of Henry VIII. Born in 1473 to George, Duke of Clarence, and Isabel Neville, she was married to Sir Richard Pole, a loyal servant of Henry VII, and bore five children, among them Cardinal Reginald Pole. Henry VIII restored her to the earldom of Salisbury in her own right in 1513, a rare distinction for a woman, and appointed her governess to Princess Mary, to whom she remained devoted through the years of Mary's disgrace. Her family's opposition to the king's religious policy brought her attainder in 1539 and her death at the Tower of London in 1541.

Arthur, Prince of Wales, was the eldest son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York and heir to the English throne until his death at fifteen. Born at Winchester in September 1486, less than a year after his parents' marriage, he was named to evoke the legendary British king and to advertise the new dynasty's ambitions. He was betrothed in infancy to Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, and the two were married at St Paul's Cathedral in November 1501 in a match that anchored England's alliance with Spain. The couple were sent to Ludlow Castle to head the council of the Welsh Marches, and Arthur died there in April 1502. His younger brother became Henry VIII and in 1509 married his widow.

Margaret Tudor was queen of Scots as the wife of James IV and the grandmother of Mary, Queen of Scots, the link through which the Stuarts eventually inherited the English throne. Born at the Palace of Westminster in 1489, the eldest daughter of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, she was married to James IV in 1503 under the settlement known as the Treaty of Perpetual Peace. Widowed at Flodden in 1513, she served briefly as regent for her infant son James V, then married Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, by whom she had a daughter, Margaret Douglas. Scottish politics for the next two decades turned largely on the rivalry between her, the Douglases and the Duke of Albany. She died at Methven Castle in 1541.

Henry VIII was king of England from 1509 to 1547, the second Tudor monarch and the one whose break with Rome reshaped English religion and government. Born at Greenwich in 1491, the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, he became heir on the death of his elder brother Arthur and succeeded at seventeen, marrying Arthur's widow Catherine of Aragon. When the papacy would not annul that marriage he broke with Rome, was declared Supreme Head of the Church of England, and dissolved the monasteries, transferring their lands and wealth to the crown. He married six times, and his three surviving children, Mary, Elizabeth and Edward, each reigned in turn. A lavish patron, palace builder and founder of a standing navy, he died at Whitehall in January 1547.

James V was king of Scots from 1513 to 1542, the son of James IV and Margaret Tudor and the father of Mary, Queen of Scots. Born at Linlithgow Palace in 1512, he succeeded before his second birthday and spent his minority under a succession of regents and, from 1525, in the custody of his stepfather the Earl of Angus, from whom he escaped in 1528 to rule in his own right. He rebuilt royal finances, kept Scotland aligned with France and with Rome against the reformation pursued by his uncle Henry VIII, and remodelled the palaces of Falkland and Stirling in the new Renaissance style. His first wife, Madeleine of Valois, died soon after their marriage; his second, Mary of Guise, bore him a daughter six days before his own death at Falkland Palace in December 1542.