Sonnet For The Roses' Scent Poem by Marieta Maglas

''The War of the Roses was a civil war in England that lasted from 1455-1487. These thirty years of warfare were even more destructive to England than the Hundred Years War had been in the previous century. (Most of the fighting in the Hundred Years War took place in France, which meant most of the military damage affected the French peasantry rather than the English. In the War of the Roses, most of the fighting occurred in England, and thus the loss of life and property was much greater for English citizens.) It was a struggle to claim the throne between the families descended from Edward III and the families descended from Henry IV. The last Angevin ruler, King Richard II died without an heir. He had been overthrown and murdered by Henry IV (Henry Bolingbroke, who was of the House of Lancaster through his father John of Gaunt) . Henry IV's descendants and their supporters were the Lancastrian faction. The other branch, descended from Edward IV, were associated with families in the North of England, particularly the House of York and Richard of York. They are called the Yorkist faction.What's All This Stuff About Flowers? The exact image of warring flowers was a late invention, and the general idea of each rose being a factional symbol originates in Shakespeare's day. In Renaissance literature, writers linked the House of York with a white rose and the House of Lancaster with a red rose.The struggle ended abruptly at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 when the Lancastrian faction won a decisive victory. Henry Tudor, an obscure Welsh prince, raised an army to fight Richard III. The Tudors had blood-ties to the House of Lancaster, and Henry Tudor had a strong claim to the throne since most of the major Lancastrian and Yorkist candidates had killed each other during the thirty years of warfare. Henry Tudor declared himself King Henry VII. In the first few years of his reign, he eliminated all his rivals. He then married Edward IV's daughter Elizabeth to strengthen his descendant's claim to the throne. The marriage was a brilliant move politically; Elizabeth carried matrilineally the Yorkist claim to the throne, and Henry carried patrilineally the Lancastrian claim to the throne. Thus, Henry VII's children would have both Yorkist and Lancastrian blood. Their son became Henry VIII, and he in turn fathered Queen Elizabeth I, the illustrious monarch who ruled during Shakespeare's early career.''