JK Rowling pens a Harry Potter prequel / War of Roses

[a_svirn]

> catlady:

> Wikipedia helpfully told me that John of Gaunt was given the title
> Duke of Lancaster by his father Edward III in 1362, after he had
> inherited ownership of Lancaster (the real estate and a title Earl
of
> Lancaster) from his father-in-law in 1361. The very same article
calls
> John of Gaunt the 1st Duke of Lancaster and calls his father-in-law
> Henry of Grosmont the 1st Duke of Lancaster (given the title in
1351).
> All these things one finds when merely checking whether the House of
> Lancaster had any connection with Lancaster besides the name. Did
the
> House of York have any connection with York?

a_svirn:
Not much. The Duke of York political and financial influence was
inherited from his maternal Uncle, the Earl of March – together with
his claim to the crown of England (and France) and his heraldic white
rose. York's own badge was falcon and fetterlock, not the rose.
March's estates were mostly in the Welsh March as well as Wales and
Ireland. When York's eldest son (the future king Edward IV) was
created the Earl of March he adopted the white rose as his badge. As
for the red rose, it was a later Tudor invention. The Tudors kind of
united both houses and came up (for propaganda purposes) with
the "Tudor Rose" a combination of the white rose of York and the
almost entirely fictional the red rose of Lancaster. (The heraldic
device of the House of Lancaster was a chain of interlinked SS, not
the rose.) The symbolism of white and red roses proved appealing and
was popularised by Shakespeare in his famous scene in the Temple
Garden (King Herny IV-First Part), and much later Walter Scott coined
the term "the war of Roses".
a_svirn