Margaret of York

Margaret of York was an English princess of the House of York and, through marriage to Charles the Bold in 1468, duchess of Burgundy. Born in 1446, she was the sister of Edward IV and Richard III and entered one of Europe’s wealthiest courts at a moment when Burgundian politics were closely intertwined with England, France and the Low Countries. Her marriage brought no children, but she developed substantial political, cultural and dynastic influence.

After Charles the Bold’s death in 1477, Margaret supported her stepdaughter Mary of Burgundy and later Mary’s Habsburg heirs. The Tudor accession in England made Margaret a persistent opponent of Henry VII, and she offered support to Yorkist exiles and pretenders including Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck. Her court at Mechelen became a centre of patronage and dynastic memory. Margaret died in 1503, having outlived all three of her royal brothers and witnessed the Yorkist cause collapse.

Sarah Gristwood’s Blood Sisters follows Margaret of Anjou, Cecily Neville, Margaret Beaufort, Elizabeth Woodville, Elizabeth of York, Anne Neville and Margaret of York as they navigated deposition, sanctuary, widowhood and shifting dynastic allegiance. In Anne Easter Smith’s Daughter of York, Margaret of York grows up amid the victories and reversals that place her brother Edward IV on the English throne. Margaret of York is treated fictionally in Anne Easter Smith’s The King’s Grace, Ethan Bale’s The Knight’s Redemption, and Alison Weir’s The Pretender’s Wife.