Hello and welcome to the Queens of England podcast. Episode 28, Margaret Vang-Jou, a great and strong laboured woman.

Last time, I ended the show by saying how the birth of Margaret Vanjou's son Edward and the incapacitation of her husband by mental illness

brought home to the queen that it would have to be her that would ensure her son's right to the throne was protected.

She would have known what happened in her native France when its king, Charles VI, had suffered a mental collapse. It fell into

vicious internoble fighting, and almost led to it being entirely overrun by the English.

Looking at her pitiful husband and his catatonic state, she knew it was only a matter of time

before the same thing happened to England. In she knew it was only a matter of time before the same

thing happened to England. In France, it had been the support of the then-Dofan Charles' stepmother

Yolanda of Aragon, Margaret's grandmother, that had led him to gaining his royal inheritance.

Margaret knew that. She was raised by Yolanda. Now it was her turn to protect and defend her son and ensure that one day

he would become king. The speed at which England fell into civil war is quite incredible, though,

as I said in the last episode, there were signs. The loss of England's French territory

left royal prestige in tatters and disinherited a great number of its nobles.

For murder of Gloucester and then Suffolk, men who rule the kingdom in the name of its incapable

king, left a great power vacuum that squabbling nobles wished to fill. And the uncertain nature

of the succession meant that the great men of England had a chance to dream of wearing the crown.

I introduced the runners and writers last time as well,

Somerset and Exeter, the first two descendants of John of Gaunt, who amongst other things was Duke of Lancaster,

and York, who was a descendant of two other sons of Eddard III, one of whom was the first Duke of York.

Now of course, we know this conflict as the Wars of the

Roses, but this is not what it was known as at the time. In fact, it was Shakespeare that helped

popularise this moniker, thanks to a scene in his play, Henry VI. Here is an extract from it in the BBC's

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