Elizabeth of Lancaster, Duchess of Exeter

Elizabeth of Lancaster was a daughter of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster and therefore a sister of the future Henry IV of England. Her marriages connected the Lancastrian royal family to several powerful noble houses, most notably through John Holland, Duke of Exeter.

After Holland was executed for taking part in the Epiphany Rising against Henry IV in 1400, Elizabeth married Sir John Cornwall, later Baron Fanhope. She remained a prominent member of the extended Lancastrian dynasty through the turbulent transition from Richard II to her brother’s rule.

Anne O’Brien’s The King’s Sister tells the political upheavals of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries through Elizabeth of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt and sister of Henry IV. Her marriages and family loyalties place her inside the transition from Richard II to the Lancastrian monarchy, allowing the novel to show how a royal woman could be both beneficiary of her brother’s seizure of the crown and vulnerable to the feuds and rebellions that followed it.