Blanche of Lancaster

Blanche of Lancaster was the daughter and co-heiress of Henry of Grosmont, Duke of Lancaster, and the first wife of John of Gaunt. Their marriage brought a vast inheritance into the royal Plantagenet family and made Gaunt one of the greatest landholders in England. Blanche was the mother of the future Henry IV but died in 1368, probably during an outbreak of plague. Geoffrey Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess is widely associated with Gaunt’s mourning for her.

Blanche is an important remembered presence in Anya Seton’s Katherine, which follows John of Gaunt’s later relationship with Katherine Swynford. Historical novels generally portray Blanche as a loved and politically significant first wife rather than as a rival to Katherine, and her early death shapes the emotional and dynastic world that follows. Because little direct evidence survives about her personality, fiction often draws heavily on the idealised image of Chaucer’s elegy.