Abstract
"And here I prophesy: this brawl today, Grown to this faction in the Temple garden, Shall send, between the Red Rose and the White, A thousand souls to death and deadly night.": this is how the Earl of Warwick announces the War of the Roses in Shakespeare's Henry VI. Indeed, from 1455 to 1485, the English nobility was divided by a series of civil wars, today known as the War of the Roses. The belligerents, the House of York and the House of Lancaster, which were both branches of the House of Plantagenet and descendants of Edward III, fought over the gain of the throne of England. Even if this war had firstly been a limited quarrel between powerful nobles, and did not really affect the population, it had become part of a certain myth of the Middle-Ages, and has become a legendary war. Nevertheless, if the War is seen as the embodiment of the Age of Chivalry, it also revealed the deep crisis the English monarchy went through during the Middle-Ages: we may thus wonder which have been the causes and consequences of the War of the Roses? How can it be considered as a symbol for the weakening of the Middle-Age monarchy?
