Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales

Edward of Westminster was the only son of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou and the Lancastrian heir during the Wars of the Roses. Born in 1453 while his father suffered a mental collapse, he grew up amid civil war and exile. After the Lancastrian restoration failed, Edward returned to England with his mother in 1471 and was killed after the Battle of Tewkesbury at the age of seventeen. Accounts differ over whether he died in combat or was executed afterwards.

Edward appears in Sharon Kay Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour and in Conn Iggulden’s Wars of the Roses series. Historical novels often portray him through Yorkist accusations of cruelty or through Margaret of Anjou’s determination to preserve his inheritance. Because he left little direct evidence of his own character, fiction tends to make him either a threatening young prince or a tragic child shaped by the ambitions of adults.

Toby Clements’s Kingmaker: Kingdom Come is set in 1470. The alliance between Edward IV and Warwick collapses completely. Alison Weir’s Lancaster and York places Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales within a narrative shaped by court politics and dynastic power, military command and battlefield decision-making, and family, marriage and personal loyalty. Other novels featuring Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales include Anne O’Brien’s Virgin Widow.