The Wars of the Roses

1455–1487 CE — British Isles, England

Today: England

England came home from losing the Hundred Years' War with a mentally incapacitated king, a treasury in ruins, and a surplus of armed, unemployed nobles with private retinues and French campaign experience. Two branches of the royal family fought over the throne for thirty years. The nobility largely destroyed itself — by the end, most of the old great houses were extinct in the male line — and a distant claimant named Henry Tudor won at Bosworth and married the rival house. A weak king plus too many armed elites with nothing to do produced a generation of civil war, and the survivors accepted a strong monarchy because they were exhausted.

Worth knowing: The Tudors invented the red-and-white rose to symbolize the union of the two houses, and the name 'Wars of the Roses' was popularized by Walter Scott in 1829. Almost nobody who fought them would have recognized either.

Pattern: Elite overproduction — More aspirants to elite positions are produced than there are seats; surplus elites turn to factional conflict.

Entry 151 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.