The Wars of the Roses were a turbulent period in English history when one branch of the royal family fought with another for the greatest prize in the kingdom—the throne of England. But what gave the winner of these brutal and complex wars, Henry Tudor, the right to claim the crown? What made his mother, a Beaufort, heir to the crown of medieval England, and how exactly did a family born out of wedlock challenge the English monarchy? While the houses of York and Lancaster fought bitterly for the crown, other noble families of the kingdom also played a huge role in the dynastic wars; The Howards, the Mowbrays, the Nevilles and the Percys, were closely involved in the conflict, but none of these families symbolized the changing nature of the period as much as the House of Beaufort. Their rise, fall and rise again is the story of 15th-century England, a dramatic century of war, intrigue and scandal both at home and abroad. Many books have been written about individual members of the dynasty, but never before has the entire family been considered as a single whole. This book tells how the Beauforts went from being the bastards of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, to being respected companions of their nephew Henry V, the famous winner of the Battle of Agincourt, and how they fell along with the House of Lancaster in the 1460s and 1470s. The hopes and fate of the family gradually fell on the shoulders of the widow Margaret Beaufort and her young son Henry. From Margaret sprang the house of Tudor, the most famous of all the royal houses of England, a dynasty that owed its crown to the blood of its ancestors, from the house of Beaufort. From bastards to princes, the Beauforts are the most captivating family of medieval England.