All language subtitles for 2hjhjh22

1953.

A coronation fit for a king.

But it's a young queen
who's about to be crowned.

And the crowd
roars its approval.

The fact that she's a woman
attracts no comment

and she will go on to reign
over us for 6 decades.

But England's queens
haven't always been greeted

with such adoration.

The 1st woman who sought to be
crowned queen in her own right,

here in Westminster,
800 years earlier,

received a very
different response.

She wasn't met by
cheering crowds.

Instead, she was chased away
from the capital

by an angry mob.

That's because
throughout our history,

women and power have made
an uneasy combination.

Never more so than the Middle
Ages, when a king was a warrior

who had to fight to win power,
then battle to keep it.

But despite everything
that stood in their way,

a handful of extraordinary women
did attempt to rule

Medieval England.

This series is about the queens
who challenged male power

and the fierce
reactions they provoked.

When they pursued
power like kings,

these royal women were
criticised and condemned.

Most graphically of all,

they've been vilified as
She-Wolves.

These are the stories of
the She-Wolves of England.

And to explore them is to
realise just how far we've come,

and how little has changed.

In 1308, a 12-year-old girl,
Isabella of France,

became Queen of England when
she married the English king.

A century and a half later,
another young French girl,

Margaret of Anjou,
followed in her footsteps.

These are the stories of 2 women
who were thrust

into a violent and dysfunctional
foreign country.

And as their new lives unfolded,

they each felt driven
to take control

of the kingdom themselves.

At their weddings,
Isabella and Margaret

were little more
than pawns

in the power play between
England and France.

But as they grew into women,

they became queens
who dominated the board.

It was Margaret's
violent pursuit of power

that inspired Shakespeare
to name her

"The She-Wolf of France".

Another poet, Thomas Gray,

later gave Isabella
the same title.

But there was no hint
of the She-Wolf

when Isabella first arrived
in England at the age of 12.

Today this seems an
extraordinarily young age

to be married off,
but as a princess,

Isabella had been prepared
from the cradle

for such a royal match.

As daughter
of the King of France,

Isabella came to her marriage

as the living embodiment
of an Anglo-French alliance.

She had grown up
amid the sophistication

of the Parisian court,

watching her mother
act as consort

to one of the most powerful
kings in Europe.

She had a keen sense
of her own majesty,

and she knew exactly what should
await her as Queen of England.

What she found was
quite different.

The signs were there from her
very 1st public appearance,

the Royal couple's
coronation.

Isabella should have been
centre-stage,

but her place was taken
by a handsome young man

named Piers Gaveston.

He carried the king's crown
into the Abbey,

and sat with Edward
at the coronation banquet.

Gaveston was so magnificently
dressed, one observer noted,

that "he more resembled the god
Mars than an ordinary mortal".

Isabella was only 12,

but she knew how a king's wife
should be treated.

And it was clear that her
rightful place at Edward's side

had already been taken
by Gaveston.

Isabella wasn't the only one
who noticed the relationship

between Edward and Piers.

Her French uncles
went home in a rage,

insulted that Edward had given

some of their wedding presents
to Gaveston.

A chronicler of the time
wrote...

"I do not remember to have heard
that one man so loved another."

Not only was Isabella finding
that there were 3 people

in her marriage, but Gaveston's
preening and waspish presence

was having
an equally corrosive effect

on the king's relationship
with his nobles.

A king couldn't rule without the
support of his powerful nobles.

They would help him
keep order in the kingdom

and defend it from attack,

while the king himself offered
leadership and security.

But that's just what the nobles
thought Edward wasn't doing.

His father,
the great warrior King Edward I,

had defended the country

and earned the title
"Hammer of the Scots"

for his ferocious attempt
to conquer Scotland.

But these hard-won gains were
now being lost by his son

and the nobles laid the blame
on his obsession with Gaveston.

Eventually,
seeing no other option,

a group of nobles came to
Parliament, armed and angry.

They demanded that
Gaveston be banished,

and forced Edward to agree

that 21 of them should rule
on his behalf.

This was not
what Isabella had signed up for

when she married
the King of England.

But she was still
little more than a child,

and she was powerless
to stop the conflict.

And to make matters worse,

Edward wouldn't accept
Gaveston's exile.

Within 2 months,
they were back together again.

Isabella had, though,
clearly spent at least one night

with her husband.

By the spring of 1312,

she was 16, and pregnant
for the first time.

But instead of relishing
her new status

as the future mother
of England's heir,

she found herself following
Edward and Gaveston

round the north of England,

with a hostile army of
lords in hot pursuit.

Isabella was dragged
around the country

as Edward tried
to keep his lover safe.

But the group of lords
chasing them,

led by the Earl of Lancaster,

were determined
to capture Gaveston

and end this destructive
relationship for ever.

They got their chance when
the royal party was separated.

Gaveston took refuge
in Scarborough,

and Edward and Isabella,
alone for once,

headed for the fortified city
of York.

They were here
at York Castle

when they heard
the dramatic news

that Gaveston had been
starved out

of the fortress
at Scarborough

and was now a
prisoner of the lords.

Edward was consumed
with anxiety

about the fate of his favourite.

Isabella's reaction
isn't recorded,

but we might assume it
was rather different.

Isabella thought
Gaveston's removal

might allow her to take
her rightful place

at her husband's side.

But it was becoming clear
that only death would separate

Gaveston from Edward
once and for all.

Isabella was still here at York
with her husband

when word came
of a bloody drama

that had played itself out
100 miles further south.

Some of the lords, led by the
powerful Earl of Lancaster,

had seized Gaveston

and sentenced him to death
in a show trial.

Gaveston was taken out onto
a sunny hillside near Warwick

and his head hacked
from his body.

Isabella's rival was gone,

and now her position was
about to become even stronger.

On 12th of November 1312,
Isabella went into labour.

Shortly before 6
the next morning,

she gave birth to a boy.

The 17-year-old queen
kept her own counsel,

but she had already
learned a great deal.

Her husband,
she now knew,

had much passion
and little judgment.

His nobles were men
to be reckoned with.

And now,
with her son in her arms,

Isabella herself held the key

that would transform
her power as queen.

As a young bride,
she'd been little more

than a decorative accessory
to a diplomatic alliance,

but as the mother of the
future king of England,

she had the possibility
of real power.

But what Isabella was
seeking at this time

was no more than the
conventional role of a queen.

Not power for herself,
but to support her husband.

Tradition gave the queen a
formal role as a peacemaker.

Even a warrior king
could show mercy

if his consort knelt before
him in public to beg for peace.

Isabella's husband
was no warrior king,

but she was a peacemaking queen,

and now she helped to
forge a brittle truce

between Edward and his nobles.

But almost immediately

her husband undermined
her efforts.

In 1314,

the army he led suffered
the most humiliating defeat

of any English king,
at the hands of the Scots.

At Bannockburn, Robert
Bruce routed Edward's army.

England had lost
its hold on Scotland.

Its borders were now
overrun by Scot's raids

and they couldn't be defended

without the help
from the Earl of Lancaster,

the man who had murdered
Edward's beloved Gaveston.

The threat of the Scots
and the rift

between
Edward and Lancaster

made England a profoundly
dysfunctional kingdom,

and for Isabella it was a
thankless task to be its queen.

But her unhappy situation was
about to become much worse.

A new favourite was
emerging at Edward's court,

who would be more
of a threat to Isabella

than Gaveston had ever been.

Hugh Despenser was a
political predator.

He had known Edward
since his teens,

but unlike Gaveston, Despenser
doesn't seem to have been

the king's lover.

But this was small comfort
to Isabella.

While she was still loyally
performing her royal duty

by giving birth
to 2 more children,

she watched as Despenser
set about using his influence

with the king to build up
his own wealth and power

to dizzying heights, no matter
how illegal his methods

or who stood in his way.

By 1321,
the lords had had enough.

They marched on London

and threatened violence
against Edward

and his new favourite.

In the attempt
to prevent civil war,

Isabella took action
to support her husband

in the way only a queen could.

Isabella had just given
birth to her 4th child,

and yet again she had
to go down on her knees

in the ritual
of queenly intervention,

to persuade Edward
to banish Despenser.

She won a temporary truce,

but little more
than 2 months later,

with terrible irony,
it was Isabella herself

who precipitated the country
into civil war.

In October 1321,

Isabella was on her way to
Canterbury on pilgrimage.

At the end
of a hard day's ride,

she found herself at the
gates of Leeds Castle,

a mighty stronghold built
near the Kent coast,

seeking shelter for the night.

To welcome the queen as a guest
would normally be an honour,

but the castle's lord,
Bartholomew Badlesmere,

was one of the rebels who
had marched on London.

His wife, left to keep
the castle in his absence,

was alarmed by Isabella's
sudden arrival,

and refused to let her in.

Isabella was left out
in the cold,

and she was furious.

She never lacked a sense
of her own majesty,

and now she ordered her
men to force their way in.

In response, the archers on the
castle walls began to shoot,

and within minutes, 6 of
Isabella's soldiers lay dead.

Isabella's
confrontation at Leeds

gave her husband the chance
to send a message

to all the rebel lords.

The violent reception of his
queen, Edward said, was treason,

and he sent troops and siege
engines to attack the castle.

And when Lady Badlesmere
threw open the gates

to appeal for mercy,

she and her young children
were dispatched as prisoners

to the Tower,

while her men were hanged
from the castle walls.

From this moment,

the lords who opposed Edward
could be in no doubt

that the king intended
the conflict

to be a fight to the death.

And in March 1322,
at Boroughbridge in Yorkshire,

Edward finally got his revenge
for the years of humiliation

when his army defeated and
captured the Earl of Lancaster.

As the greatest chronicler
of the reign recalled,

"The Earl of Lancaster once
cut off Piers Gaveston's head,

and now, by the king's command,

the Earl himself
had lost his head."

"Thus, perhaps not unjustly,

the Earl received
measure for measure."

Isabella's husband
was making very clear

the dreadful penalties
that now faced anyone

who dared to oppose him.

England's prisons filled with
the wives and children

of the rebels,
while aristocratic corpses

were left to rot on gallows
across the country.

With the ruthless
Despenser at his side,

Edward had found a way to
eradicate all opposition

by turning his rule into a
grasping and paranoid tyranny.

Isabella had done everything she
could to be the perfect queen.

But now, to her horror,

she found that she too would
be a victim of the new regime.

And it was Isabella's
French heritage

which left her
acutely vulnerable.

In the summer of 1324,

a crisis erupted between
England and France.

England still held Gascony
in the south of the country

but Isabella's brother,

the French king,
was threatening to take it.

It seemed war with
France was imminent.

Edward ordered that
all Frenchmen and women

living in England should be
arrested as enemy aliens.

And his favourite, Despenser,

seized on the opportunity
to take Isabella's possessions,

intern her French servants

and separate her
from her children.

Now Isabella's feelings for
her husband and Despenser

turned from mistrust
to loathing.

But there was one glimmer
of hope.

The French king was
willing to negotiate.

So Isabella cleverly put herself
at her husband's disposal

as the perfect emissary
to her brother,

the king of France.

She had been so patient
in the face of provocation

that Edward and Despenser
seized on this solution,

believing she could be trusted
to return like a loyal lapdog.

And so, on 9th March 1325,

Isabella left England for Paris.

Isabella successfully
negotiated a truce

between England and France.

Then she persuaded Edward

that their 12-year-old son,
the heir to the throne,

should be sent to Paris
to seal the agreement

by paying homage
to the French King.

This was the moment Isabella
had been waiting for.

When her son arrived
on French soil,

her position was transformed.

As Edward's consort,

there had been little
she could do.

But with her son beside her,
she could speak and act

as the mother
of the heir to the throne

in the face of her
husband's tyranny.

She'd been waiting for her
chance and now she took it.

With his son,
Edward sent an instruction

that his wife
should return home.

But Isabella had no intention
of doing any such thing.

And we know exactly
the reason she gave.

The manuscript of the greatest
chronicle of the reign,

the "Vita Edwardi Secundi",
is long lost,

but its text has been
passed down

through the centuries.

And here,
in this modern translation,

we hear Isabella's voice
speaking for the 1st time.

Until now, she'd been
a supporting player

in the unfolding drama.

But now, she moved to
the centre of the stage,

as she replied to her husband
with open defiance.

"I feel that marriage is a
union of a man and a woman

and someone has come
between my husband and myself

and is trying to break
this bond."

"I declare
that I will not return

until this intruder is removed."

Isabella's game plan was to
present herself to the world

as a wronged wife.
And until now,

she'd seemed more than justified
in doing so.

But another player was
about to enter the scene,

who would change forever

the picture the world would have
of Isabella.

Roger Mortimer was 38 years old,
a soldier

and a politician of
skill and experience.

He had joined the rebels
against Edward in 1321

and escaped into
exile in France.

And within weeks of Isabella
and Mortimer's meeting in Paris

rumours circulated

that their partnership
was more than political.

There's tantalisingly little
evidence of the private dynamics

of Isabella and
Mortimer's relationship.

But it was clearly an
all-consuming passion,

not least
because of the danger

into which they'd precipitated
themselves.

Adultery, for a queen,
was sin and treason combined.

But for Isabella there were
no longer any safe options.

With her knight at her side

and the most valuable
pawn of all,

her son, under her control,

what move
would the queen make?

Isabella took a
momentous decision.

It was no longer enough
to remove Despenser.

She needed to remove
her husband too.

She intended to do something
unprecedented

in English history:
depose an anointed king.

Could she, as a woman,
achieve this?

She certainly
couldn't do it alone.

She needed an army.

And how she got one

reveals a great deal
about the woman she'd become.

Now she was an independent
player on the European stage.

And she arranged the marriage
of her son to Philippa,

daughter of the
count of Hainault,

who brought troops and
ships as her dowry.

On 22nd September 1326,

at the head of a 100 ships
filled with soldiers,

Isabella, Mortimer and Prince
Edward set sail for England.

When Isabella stepped
onto the Suffolk coast,

she was taking up arms
against her king and husband.

She could hardly have
been more openly defying

the conventions
of female virtue.

And yet she wasn't met with
outrage and vilification.

Instead,
she was greeted with open arms.

While there was no
alternative to Edward's rule,

his people hadn't
known how to resist.

Isabella wasn't challenging
him in her own name.

She, after all,
had no right to the throne.

But in the name of their
13-year-old son, Prince Edward.

He was too young to act alone

and so Isabella acted for him.

And, with the promise
of a new young king

and his capable mother,

her husband's power
simply melted away.

Isabella might have been
an unfaithful wife

and a rebel queen,
but she was also

England's champion
against Edward's tyranny.

No she-wolf, but the saviour
of her adopted country.

When news of the queen's
triumphal progress

reached Edward and Despenser,

they were gripped with panic.

They packed their saddlebags
with gold and fled west,

where they were captured,

bedraggled figures
in the Welsh rain.

Isabella had Despenser
brought before her.

There's no question that she
relished her moment of revenge.

Despenser was hanged,
then disembowelled

and castrated
when he was still alive.

The supportive queen
had been transformed

into a very different figure.

Now Isabella was acting
as if she were a king,

inflicting brutal punishments
on her enemies.

Which of course
raised the question

of what she would do
with her own king.

In January 1327,

in a carefully stage-managed
piece of political theatre,

it was declared in Parliament

that Edward had forfeited
the allegiance of his people,

and that now his son
should wear the crown

in his place.

In just 4 short months,

Isabella had achieved
the unthinkable.

She, a queen,
had seized power

to depose a crowned
and anointed king

for the first time
in English history.

To undo a coronation
was no easy task.

Parliament had given the act
a legal gloss, but,

to make doubly sure,
Edward was forced

to sign his own abdication
here at Kenilworth.

Now the deed was done,

but could Isabella rule
in her son's name

while her husband still lived?

The new King Edward III
was still just a teenager,

so Isabella was running
his government for him.

But never before had
England had to contend

with the existence
of an ex-king, alive and well,

while a new king,
or in this case a king's mother,

ruled the country.

Isabella had Edward imprisoned

in Berkeley Castle,
in Gloucestershire.

But she knew that
while he remained alive,

he was the obvious focus
for any rebellion.

Within a year,

3 plots to liberate him
had already been uncovered.

These documents here
in Berkeley Castle

give us a sense
of the extraordinary difficulty

of keeping an ex-king
in custody.

We can see here, from the
provisions bought for him,

which included 280 eggs,
or "ova" in Latin,

in just 3 months,

that at first he was
kept in some comfort.

But this account tells us of
the reinforcement of the castle

with bolts and great
bars and other ironwork

after Edward escaped
from his guards

in the summer of 1327.

It was obvious how dangerous

his continued existence
was to the new regime.

We can't know just how closely
Isabella was involved

in planning Edward's murder.

By its very nature,
his end was a grim business

done in secrecy and shadows.

His death was announced,
but not explained.

And, in the absence
of an explanation,

legend has it
that he was killed

with a red-hot poker
thrust into his anus

to burn his intestines
from the inside.

This violent detail
was immortalised

more than 200 years later
by Christopher Marlowe

in his play of Edward's life,

when he called Isabella

"that unnatural queen,
false Isabel".

What's certain is
that it was Edward's death,

a murder that supposedly
took place

in this room at Berkeley,

that sealed Isabella's
reputation as a she-wolf.

Just 30 years later,

the chronicler
Geoffrey le Baker

portrayed Edward as
a Christ-like figure,

betrayed and destroyed
by a wife

who was like the biblical
Jezebel,

a tyrannical and
sexually corrupt queen

manipulating
her husband and son

to impose evil
on the kingdom.

But these opinions
were formed in hindsight.

When Isabella knelt
in prayer

at her husband's funeral,

she was still seen as the
saviour of the nation.

But though Isabella was
a political animal

through and through,

there were limits
to her political understanding.

And now her overwhelming
sense of entitlement

began to blunt her vision.

Like so many rulers
before and since,

she started to run the country
for her own enrichment.

Very few of the objects that
Isabella owned still survive.

But one that does is
this exquisite casket.

It's delicately engraved
with the arms

of England and France,
and it may have been

a wedding present
from her mother-in-law.

It gives us a tiny glimpse
of the extraordinary luxury

with which Isabella
surrounded herself.

That, of course,
was appropriate for a queen.

But the problem was

that Isabella didn't know
where to stop.

At the helm
of English government,

Isabella and Mortimer
rewarded themselves

not just with silver trinkets,

but with vast estates

and the contents
of the royal treasury.

But now they were behaving

exactly like Edward and
Despenser before them.

For 2 years, Isabella and
her lover ruled the country

with a vice-like grip,

meeting opposition
with brutal suppression.

And all the time
Isabella kept her son,

King Edward III,

closely by her side,

monitoring his friends

and allowing him
no freedom to act alone.

Marlowe would later
describe Isabella's son

as "a lamb,
encompassed by wolves".

But by 1330,
Edward was 17,

and the she-wolf
was about to discover

that her offspring
had claws of his own.

Isabella's day of reckoning

came at Nottingham Castle.

She had already
become suspicious

that her son was beginning
to resist her control.

So when the royal party
took up residence here

they had the guards
redoubled about them.

But Edward's plans
had been well laid.

Under cover of darkness,

a group of young knights
made their way

through these secret tunnels
into the castle.

Mortimer and Isabella
were surrounded

before they knew
what was happening.

Isabella was forced back
into her bedchamber

and Mortimer was disarmed
and overpowered

in a matter of moments.

After 3 years,

the rule of Isabella
and her consort was over.

There was no doubt
about Mortimer's fate.

He was sentenced
to a traitor's death

for killing the last king

and usurping the power
of the new one.

He was hanged at Tyburn
like a common thief.

More than 20 years
of brutal political experience

told Isabella that Mortimer's
fate was inevitable.

But what would hers be?

She was, after all,
the King's mother.

And, once Mortimer was dead,
the story could be spun

that she had been diverted
from her royal duty

by his machinations.

Presumably
she mourned for him,

but she'd always been
a realist

and she took care to leave no
public traces of her grief.

Her son might have acted
against her

because of the way
she'd ruled,

but Isabella was still
his mother.

She had to surrender
her vast estates,

but Edward gave her an income
of 3,000 pounds a year.

She could no longer
intervene in politics

but she would have
a sumptuous,

if compulsory, retirement.

Isabella had
an extraordinary life.

She showed, for a brief moment,

that female leadership
could represent

the legitimacy of the Crown

forcefully enough to
depose an anointed king.

But the exercise of power
by a woman

turned out to be
a different matter.

And particularly
a woman like Isabella,

who enriched herself rather
than nurturing her people.

In retrospect,

the death of her husband
came to define Isabella

not as the saviour of England,

but, in the words of
the poet Thomas Gray,

as the "She-wolf of France,
with unrelenting fangs

that tear'st the bowels
of thy mangled mate".

This is how Isabella
has been remembered.

Certainly many of her actions
were violent and self-serving.

But then, so were those
of the men around her.

And the vitriol heaped
on her by history

draws on an image
of female power

as grotesque,
savage and immoral.

Over the next 100 years,

England and France were
almost constantly at war.

And out of this conflict
emerged the woman

that Shakespeare dubbed
a she-wolf.

By 1444,

the English were
on the back foot

and ready to make a truce.

All hopes for peace

rested on the young shoulders
of Margaret,

daughter of the Duke of Anjou.

She would marry
the English King,

Henry VI,

and seal a treaty
between the warring countries.

Margaret grew up
in this impressive castle

in Angers.

And her childhood here
gave her a useful lesson

in the limitations
of royal power.

Margaret's father
had many grand titles.

In theory,
he was king of Sicily,

Naples and Jerusalem,

and he spent most
of her childhood

fighting to turn those paper
crowns into real power.

In the meantime,
Margaret, here in Anjou,

was brought up
by her formidable mother

and grandmother.

The message to
Margaret was clear:

royal power had
to be fought for,

and a woman could rule
if a man was absent.

When Margaret left Angers
at the age of 15

to marry a man she'd never met,

she couldn't have known

how valuable these lessons
would prove to be.

23-year-old Henry

probably struck Margaret
as a reassuring presence.

He had an unworldly,
childlike air,

more a naive innocent
than a grim-faced soldier.

But, if that made him
a gentle husband,

Margaret was about to discover

that it also made him
a disastrous king.

Henry VI
had come to the throne

as a 9-month-old baby

and England
had been governed

by a council of noblemen.

But now,
at the age of 23,

Henry seemed
no more capable of ruling

than he had as a baby.

It's not clear exactly
when Margaret realised

how utterly incapable
her husband was.

But what happened
7 years into their marriage

left no room for doubt.

To Margaret's delight,
in 1453

she gave birth
to her first child,

a healthy boy named Edward.

But Henry took no part
in the celebrations.

Ten weeks before the birth,

his fragile mental faculties
had disintegrated completely

and he'd fallen into
a catatonic trance.

Henry was oblivious
to their son's arrival,

but Margaret had good reason
to be jubilant.

With the heir to the throne
in her arms,

she discovered,
just like Isabella before her,

that she had a direct stake

in the power play
that surrounded her.

The question now was how far
she would go in using it.

The answer wasn't
slow in coming.

Just 3 months
after her son's birth,

a well-informed observer
in London

reported that the Queen...

"desires to have the
whole rule of this land

as well as the right to
appoint all other officers

that the King should make."

Margaret was proposing

that she should act
as Regent

for her helpless husband.

This dramatic piece
of self-assertion

was the 1st step on a road
that would eventually lead

to Shakespeare's lacerating
portrait of Margaret

as the "She-Wolf of France".

But, if we look
behind the caricature,

there was much more
to Margaret's position

than unthinking aggression.

The times invited her to act.

Margaret stepped onto
the political stage

as the country stood on
the brink of civil war.

After years without
royal leadership,

English politics
was in the grip

of a destructive rivalry

between the 2 most
powerful nobles

in England.

This was the beginning

of what would become known,
thanks to Shakespeare,

and later art and literature,

as the Wars of the Roses.

Margaret watched as
the nobles divided.

On one side
was the Duke of York,

the King's cousin,
who claimed to speak

for the good
of the whole country.

On the other
was the Duke of Somerset,

who acted
for the House of Lancaster,

the line from which
Henry descended.

Both claimed the right to rule
in the King's absence.

And now their rivalry
threatened to spill

onto the battlefield.

It was amid this tension
and fear

that Margaret made her bid
to rule.

From Margaret's
own perspective,

she was
the obvious candidate

to safeguard
her husband's kingdom,

just as her mother
had governed Anjou

in her father's absence.

But Henry was only mentally,
not physically, absent,

and to the English nobles

it seemed as though
their French-born queen

was trying to exceed
her proper powers.

To Margaret's distress,

the nobles turned to a council
of their own,

under the leadership
of the Duke of York.

On his orders, his rival,

the Duke of Somerset,

was confined to the
Tower of London.

But on Christmas Day
1454,

Margaret was suddenly presented
with a way forward.

16 months after
he had last shown any sign

of knowing
who or where he was,

King Henry suddenly
returned to his senses,

such as they'd ever been.

As Margaret introduced
her toddling son

to his astounded father
for the first time,

the Duke of York's
caretaker regime fell apart.

Somerset was released
from the Tower

and it seemed that
the political merry-go-round

was turning once again.

But, by this time,

York and Somerset's rivalry

had become a deadly enmity.

Margaret believed that
Somerset supported her husband

and for the moment he
had the King by his side.

But York was intent on having
the King under his control.

And now the other great noble
families were taking sides.

And in May 1455,

when the 2 armies
came face to face

in the unassuming
market town of St Albans,

political confrontation
finally became civil war.

The 1st battle of the
Wars of the Roses

was fought
through the streets

and houses of the town.

In these confined spaces,

probably 100 men died.

King Henry took no part

in the
Battle of St Albans.

He just sat under his
banner in the market square

while his greatest nobles
fought to the death

in these streets
all around him.

Nothing could have
made it clearer

that he was only a pawn

in this increasingly
brutal and dangerous game.

When the fighting was over,
it became clear

that the Duke of York's army
had won the day.

And his enemy,
the Duke of Somerset,

was dead.

Henry was now
in York's control.

The battle changed
everything.

And for Margaret,
it was a turning point.

York still claimed to be
Henry's loyal subject.

But, in Margaret's view,

loyal subjects didn't set out

to capture their king
in battle.

And York's closeness to the
royal line of succession

now made him a
threat to her son.

If Henry wasn't able to
fight for their son's future,

then Margaret would do it
for him.

But Margaret knew
that her next move

would have to be made
carefully.

For now, she left London
for her castle

at Tutbury,
in Staffordshire.

But this wasn't a retreat
from the political frontline.

Instead, it was an attempt
to match the Duke of York

with a territorial
power base of her own.

Margaret had the castle at
Tutbury enlarged and improved.

It was an imposing residence

for an increasingly
imposing queen.

Margaret
was clearly demonstrating

to anyone who cared to look

that she was prepared
to fight

to defend her husband
and son.

But in doing so,
she provoked a reaction.

And, as ever,
a woman in power

was vulnerable to sexual
as well as political slurs.

Rumours began to speak
of the little Prince

as a bastard or a changeling,

and to suggest that,
in private,

Henry's queen might not be
as loyal as she seemed.

The implication was that
unnatural impulses were at work,

both inside and outside
the royal bedchamber.

Margaret knew
that York's supporters

were taking every opportunity
to slander her,

but she was made
of stern stuff.

It would take more than
words to defeat her.

By the summer of 1456,

it was clear where the fulcrum
of power now lay.

A contemporary wrote...

"My Lord of York
waits on the Queen,

and she upon him."

Despite attempts
to find a lasting peace,

the country divided
behind Margaret and York.

For Margaret,
this meant raising an army

in the name of her
husband and son.

This beautiful object,

known as
the Dunstable Swan Jewel,

probably dates
from about 1400.

The swan
was one of the emblems

of the Prince of Wales,

and so it was a badge
with this image

of a swan with a
crown around its neck,

that Margaret began
to distribute

to her loyal supporters

in the name of her small son.

She was determined
to defend the rights

of her husband and son
by any means necessary.

Margaret saw no middle
ground in this conflict.

Anyone who wasn't with her,

she believed
was an enemy of the Crown.

But that didn't mean
her task would be easy.

In September 1459,

the two sides met
at Blore Heath,

in Staffordshire.

After 4 hours
of bloody fighting,

2,000 men lay dead
on the battlefield.

The Yorkists
had defeated an army,

which was supposedly
King Henry's.

But everyone knew
where the power really lay.

One chronicler described it

as an army of the
"Queen's gallants".

But 3 weeks later
the 2 sides met again

and this time it was York's
army that was defeated.

Margaret's enemies,
the Duke of York,

his son, Edward,
and nephew, the Earl of Warwick,

scattered to Ireland
and France.

In their absence,
Margaret seized her moment

to declare her enemies
guilty of treason.

But they were not yet
destroyed in person,

and Margaret now found
that the power base

she'd built for herself
in the North

had alienated her husband's
subjects in the South.

And in July 1460,

when York's son Edward
and nephew Warwick

returned with troops
to face her army

at Northampton,

the result, for Margaret,
was a calamity.

She lost both the battle
and the person of the king.

Margaret was left helpless,

as the Duke of York took
her husband as a prisoner

to London.

The Pope later observed
that the King was...

"More timorous than a woman,

utterly devoid
of wit and spirit."

The contrast with his
forceful wife was obvious.

News reached Margaret

that York was now claiming
the crown for himself.

He argued that his
royal line of descent

made him the rightful king,
rather than Henry.

It was a convenient version
of history,

but for the moment

he couldn't get the nobles
to back him.

Instead,
a compromise was reached.

Henry would keep his crown,

but, when he died,
York would succeed him.

For Margaret,
this was no settlement,

but a nightmare.

Her son, for whose rights
she'd fought

since the moment
of his birth,

would be disinherited.

She threw herself
into the task

of raising support
from Scotland

and the English lords
still loyal to her.

Now,
this was a fight to the death.

Success for Margaret
came much more swiftly

than she could ever
have hoped,

when the Duke of York
was ambushed

and killed
by Margaret's troops

at Wakefield, in Yorkshire,

in December 1460.

She ordered that his head
be set on a spike

on Micklegate Bar in York,

dressed in a paper crown to
mock his pretensions of majesty.

Now Margaret's
greatest enemy was dead,

but victory was not yet hers.

There were still
men prepared to fight

for the Yorkist cause

and York's son Edward

and nephew Warwick
wanted revenge.

It was once again at St
Albans that the 2 sides met.

While Margaret's army
fought Warwick's,

the Queen waited impatiently
for news

here in the abbey.

The outcome was a triumph.

The Yorkists were defeated,

and their prisoner,
King Henry, was released,

and reunited with Margaret.

Husband and wife
were back together,

but this was hardly
a romantic reunion.

Margaret's triumph
lay in the fact

that the power
of the royal triumvirate,

King, Queen and Prince,

was once again at her disposal.

But the war wasn't yet won.

Margaret had now been
fighting for 8 long years.

She, a woman alone,
had kept the royal cause alive.

Henry might be
a hopeless case,

but if she could keep fighting

then surely their
son would one day

get his chance to
become a glorious king.

But, even though
her greatest enemy,

the Duke of York, was dead,

it turned out that she now
faced an even greater threat:

his 18-year-old son, Edward.

Edward was tall, handsome,

charismatic
and precociously able.

He looked more like a king
than anyone had seen in years

and a king was exactly
what he was claiming to be.

Just as his father
had done before him,

he argued that his royal
descent trumped Henry's own.

The difference was that
this time London agreed

and rapturously acclaimed
him as King Edward IV.

9 days later his forces set out
to defeat Margaret

once and for all.

The two sides met at
Towton in Yorkshire.

And Margaret, Henry and
their 7-year-old son

took refuge
behind the city walls at York.

This 15th-century
screen at York Minster

shows all the kings
of England

from William the Conqueror

to Margaret's husband,
Henry VI.

For Margaret,

the last 8 years
had been devoted

to securing her son's place
in this unbroken line.

And now she could do nothing

but pace restlessly,
here at York,

while her soldiers
did their work.

8 hours later,

thousands upon thousands
of men were dead

and it was Margaret's army
that had shattered.

As the light began to fade on
this bloodiest of battlefields,

Edward of York
stood unchallenged,

now King of England in
fact as well as name.

And Margaret,
her husband and son fled north,

no longer the Royal Family
but hunted fugitives.

It was the bitterest of blows.

Margaret had invested
every ounce of her strength

to animate the cause
of an inert king.

But, as a woman,
she couldn't simply inhabit

the role her husband had left
so damagingly vacant.

Now she had to watch as Edward,

a golden boy in a golden crown,

occupied the throne as
if he'd been born to it.

But still she wouldn't give in.

She tried to raise support

from the Scots and the French.

But in England,
as a foreign-born queen,

Margaret was damned
twice over,

for the country of
her birth and her sex.

According to a
poem of the time...

"She and her wicked
affinity certain

intend utterly to
destroy this region."

Nor would she capitulate when
her husband was finally captured

and imprisoned
in the Tower of London

in the summer of 1465.

With nowhere else to turn,

Margaret and her son
fled across the Channel,

where the King of France
allowed her to set up

a tiny and impoverished court

in an obscure corner
of his kingdom.

Margaret's son was 10
when they moved to France

and, as he grew into manhood,
Margaret doggedly fought on

in the attempt to secure his
future as King of England.

She watched hawkishly for any
chink in the Yorkist regime

and constantly petitioned
the crowned heads of Europe

for help,
but it was a fruitless task.

For Margaret and her little band
of loyalists,

the outlook was bleak.

Margaret never gave up,

but well-informed observers
knew her cause was hopeless.

That, however, was to reckon
without the Yorkist regime's

extraordinary capacity
for self-destruction.

Edward's cousin,
the Earl of Warwick,

is known to history
as the Kingmaker.

And that, it turned out,
was how he saw himself.

He had been the driving force

behind Edward's campaign
for the throne.

But now Edward was king,
Warwick discovered

he couldn't control him

and they'd fallen into
a bitter rivalry.

To bring down this Yorkist king,

Warwick needed another
candidate to wear the crown

and the only
viable alternative

was the House of Lancaster:

Margaret,
her husband and son.

This was the moment

for which Margaret had been
waiting 9 long years.

But it came at a terrible price.

To seize this chance to
regain her son's inheritance,

Margaret had to take the
hand of the Earl of Warwick,

a man she despised
and mistrusted.

For Margaret this was
an agonising decision.

Warwick had been one of the
architects of her husband's fall

and the disinheritance
of her son.

He'd led armies against
her on bloody battlefields.

But now he offered Margaret
her only chance

to ensure her son's future.

On the 22nd July 1470,

here at Angers,

Margaret came face to face
with Warwick.

They were enemies divided
by a river of blood,

but now they were
about to become allies.

Margaret's distaste was such

that she kept Warwick
on his knees in front of her

for 15 minutes.

But the deal was done.

It was a treaty
sealed with a kiss,

when Margaret's
17-year-old son

married Warwick's daughter.

In return for this stake
in the royal dynasty,

Warwick set sail for England,
to challenge Edward

and restore Henry to the throne.

Margaret stayed in France,

waiting to hear
that England was won

before she or her son stepped
on English soil again.

And good news reached
her startlingly quickly.

Edward was surprised
by Warwick's attack.

With his forces unprepared,

he fled to the Netherlands,

leaving Warwick to free
the bewildered King Henry

from the Tower.

With her husband
back on the throne

and her son ready to
step into his shoes,

England was once again
within Margaret's grasp.

So on Easter Sunday,
the 14th April 1471,

after a difficult voyage,

Margaret and her son
at last set foot

on the English coast.

And at that moment,
their world fell apart.

Their timing was disastrous!

Edward too had returned
to England

with a small band of soldiers,

and just hours before
Margaret landed,

in a bitterly fought battle
at Barnet,

north of London,

Edward defeated
and killed Warwick.

Suddenly Margaret found
herself exposed and vulnerable.

All her carefully laid plans
were falling apart

and now, once again,

the future would be decided
on a battlefield.

Margaret had support
and reinforcements

in the west of the country,

and she made her way
to join them.

Edward set out
to intercept her,

warning that death
would be the penalty

for anyone
who helped Margaret.

Everything now depended

on this race
across the country.

The two armies met
at Tewkesbury,

and it was here,
in this beautiful abbey,

that Margaret was once again
left to wait for news.

But this time, she was alone.

For the very first time,
at the age of 17,

her son was on the battlefield.

Today, he would either
win his father's crown,

or lose his life.

The end, when it came,
was quick.

Margaret's son died
where he fell,

in the rout
of the Lancastrian army.

Margaret didn't try to run.

She had nowhere to go,

and no-one left to fight for.

And when Edward made his
victorious entry into London,

the captive queen
followed in a chariot,

straight-backed
and blank-faced,

staring at nothing.

The following day,

King Henry's body was
brought out of the Tower.

The Londoners were told
he had died

of "pure displeasure
and melancholy"

at the news of his son's death,

but few doubted that Edward
had ordered his killing.

Margaret was 41.

And, without her husband
and son,

her life was over.

She was no longer
a threat to Edward,

so he had no need
to kill her.

Instead, he imprisoned her
for 4 years in England

before allowing her
to return to France,

penniless and purposeless.

And when she died
at age of 51,

her death went unnoticed

by the crowned heads
of Europe.

Margaret and Isabella
had each stepped forward

to become a queen
who dominated

the political chessboard.

Their forceful leadership

shaped the power play
around them,

but it also exposed them
to vitriolic criticism.

Their self-assertion, that would
have seemed natural in a man,

was deemed unnatural,
even monstrous, in a woman.

As a result,
they've gone down in History

condemned as She-Wolves.

In the next programme,

we'll see what happened
when England was faced

not with inadequate kings,
but no kings at all.

When Edward died,
there was no-one left

to claim the title
of King of England.

For the first time
in English history,

all the contenders
for his crown were female.

So would the Tudor queens
succeed

as England's first female kings?

Would England finally accept
the rule of a woman alone?