Niece of the queen of France and wife of Henry VI, who took charge of the Lancastrian cause when her husband's illness left the throne defenceless, fought the Yorkists for sixteen years, and lost husband, son and crown in 1471.
Margaret of Anjou was queen of England from 1445 to 1461, and again briefly in 1470–1471, as the wife of Henry VI of England. Married at fifteen to seal a truce in the Hundred Years' War, she became the effective leader of the House of Lancaster when her husband suffered a mental collapse in 1453, the year their only son, Edward of Westminster, was born.
For sixteen years she fought the Yorkist claim to the throne, raising armies, bargaining with Scotland and France, and finally allying with her old enemy the Earl of Warwick. Her cause ended at Tewkesbury in May 1471, where her son was killed; her husband died in the Tower of London days later, and she spent her last years in poverty in France.
Margaret was born at Pont-à-Mousson in Lorraine on 23 March 1430, the daughter of René of Anjou, titular king of Naples, Sicily and Jerusalem, and Isabella, Duchess of Lorraine; her aunt Marie of Anjou was the wife of Charles VII of France. René was a prisoner of the Duke of Burgundy for much of her childhood, and her mother governed and fought for his lands. Her marriage to Henry VI was arranged by the Earl of Suffolk at the truce of Tours in 1444, with a secret promise that England would surrender Maine, and she married Henry at Titchfield Abbey on 23 April 1445.
Margaret's reputation was made by her enemies. Yorkist propaganda spread rumours that her son was not Henry's, and the Tudor chroniclers and Shakespeare, who called her a she-wolf of France, turned her into a vengeful foreign virago responsible for civil war. Accounts written closer to events give a different picture: a young queen who until 1453 played the conventional part of intercessor and patron, founding Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1448.
After 1453 she proved a determined, able and ruthless politician. With her husband incapable, she claimed the regency in 1454, organised the court party against Richard, Duke of York, raised support in the north and in Scotland, and pursued the war with a persistence Henry never showed. Modern historians such as Helen Maurer present her as a queen forced into a political role for which the conventions of queenship left no legitimate place.
Margaret arrived in England as the symbol of an unpopular peace, and the surrender of Maine in 1448 and the loss of Normandy after the Battle of Formigny in 1450 were blamed on the men who had arranged her marriage; Suffolk was murdered at sea in 1450. In August 1453 Henry VI fell into a stupor that lasted more than a year, and in October Margaret gave birth to their son, Edward. When the Duke of York was made Protector in 1454, her bid for the regency was rejected, and after Henry's recovery she led the court's opposition to York.
Fighting began at St Albans in 1455. After the Yorkist lords were attainted in 1459 and Henry was captured at Northampton in July 1460, Parliament recognised York as heir, disinheriting Margaret's son. The queen's supporters raised an army in the north that killed York at Wakefield in December 1460 and defeated Warwick at St Albans in February 1461, recovering the king, but London shut its gates, York's son was proclaimed Edward IV, and the Lancastrian army was destroyed at Towton in March 1461. Margaret fled to Scotland.
In exile in Scotland and then France she sought foreign help for a decade. In 1470 Louis XI brokered her alliance with Warwick, who had broken with Edward IV; Warwick restored Henry VI, but Margaret delayed her crossing, and when she landed at Weymouth on 14 April 1471 Warwick had been killed at Barnet that same day. At Tewkesbury on 4 May the Yorkists destroyed her army and killed Edward of Westminster, and on 21 May Henry VI died in the Tower, almost certainly murdered.
Margaret was captured after Tewkesbury and held in England until Louis XI ransomed her in 1475 under the Treaty of Picquigny, in return for her surrender of her claims to her father's lands. She lived in Anjou as a pensioner of the French king, died at the château of Dampierre on 25 August 1482, and was buried beside her parents in Angers Cathedral.