Wars of the Roses

American  

noun

English History.

1. the civil struggle between the royal house of Lancaster, whose emblem was a red rose, and the royal house of York, whose emblem was a white rose, beginning in 1455 and ending with the accession of Henry VII in 1485 and the union of the two houses.

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Wars of the Roses British  

plural noun

1. the conflicts in England (1455–85) centred on the struggle for the throne between the house of York (symbolized by the white rose) and the house of Lancaster (of which one badge was the red rose)

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Example Sentences

The broad-strokes treatment, by turns suspenseful and rollicking, works well in an outdoor summer Shakespeare presentation that makes the Wars of the Roses seem Spielberg-ian in intrigue and suspense.

From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 15, 2024

It belonged to Lady Margaret Beaufort, who played a major role in the Wars of the Roses, a series of civil wars for the English throne.

From New York Times • May 26, 2024

The visuals are so rich that audiences will often remember the wonderful costumes, forgetting the the bloody details of the Wars of the Roses or the shady political machinations of royal court.

From Salon • May 31, 2021

But some of us are still playing catchup with her best work: the BBC’s 10-part Wars of the Roses drama, The White Queen, from 2013, in which she is fiercely affecting as Elizabeth Woodville.

From The Guardian • Jul. 19, 2018

This is a brilliant story of the stirring times of the beginning of the Wars of the Roses, when the Scotch, under Douglas, and the Welsh, under Owen Glendower, were attacking the English.

From A Roving Commission Or, Through the Black Insurrection at Hayti by Henty, G. A. (George Alfred)