Elizabeth of York

The marriage of Elizabeth of York to Henry VII in January 1486 joined the rival houses of York and Lancaster and gave the new Tudor dynasty much of its claim to legitimacy. Born at Westminster in 1466, Elizabeth was the eldest child of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. In her childhood she was betrothed under the Treaty of Picquigny to the Dauphin Charles of France, but the French abandoned the match, an episode that embittered her father's final years.

Edward IV's death in 1483 transformed her position. With her brothers held in the Tower of London, she and her sisters took sanctuary at Westminster with their mother, and under Richard III an act of parliament declared Edward IV's marriage invalid and his children illegitimate. After her brothers disappeared, Elizabeth became the focus of opposition hopes: at Rennes on Christmas Day 1483 the exiled Henry Tudor publicly swore to marry her once he had gained the crown, an undertaking that united Yorkist dissidents behind the Lancastrian claimant.

Henry defeated Richard III at Bosworth in August 1485, had the act of illegitimacy repealed, and married Elizabeth the following January; she was crowned queen in 1487. The union was commemorated in the Tudor rose, combining the white rose of York with the red rose adopted by the new dynasty. Contemporary accounts describe the marriage as harmonious, and Elizabeth played the conventional role of queen consort, devoting herself to her household, charitable patronage, and her children, while her formidable mother-in-law Margaret Beaufort remained prominent at court.

Her children carried the dynasty's alliances abroad. Her eldest son Arthur, Prince of Wales, married Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, in 1501, but died the following spring; Catherine later married Elizabeth's second son, the future Henry VIII. Her daughter Margaret was betrothed to James IV of Scotland, a marriage celebrated in 1503 from which the Stuart claim to the English throne descended, while her younger daughter Mary later briefly became queen of France. Elizabeth died at the Tower of London on 11 February 1503, her thirty-seventh birthday, nine days after giving birth to a short-lived daughter, and was buried in Henry VII's new chapel at Westminster Abbey.