Henry VI: England’s mad, meek, goodhearted Lancastrian king, content to live a monk’s chaste life of prayer. His marriage to Marguerite d’Anjou seals his fate.

Marguerite d’Anjou: England’s fiery French queen. Wed at fifteen to mad King Henry VI of Lancaster, lonely in a foreign land, all her love and future hopes dwell in Edward, her only child. For him she will fight to the death.

Edward of March, later King Edward IV: Richard Duke of York’s warrior son Brave, golden and wanton, courage wins him a crown, and love loses him a kingdom.

Elizabeth Woodville: Edward IV’s ambitious and detested Yorkist queen. Gilt-haired, cunning and vindictive, she has a heart as dark as her face is fair.

Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester: Isobel Ingoldesthorpe’s uncle. Renowned scholar; man of piety; he leaves England to avoid taking sides in the Wars of the Roses, and returns a hardened admirer of Vlad Dracula, Prince of Transylvania.

Edward V:
“Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child!”  ~  Ecclesiastes x. 6.
Often quoted in Latin, Voe terris ubi rex est puer.

The Pretender, Perkin Warbeck: Is he a “feigned boy” as Tudor claims, or the younger of the two princes in the Tower, and the true king — Richard of England?

Richard III: Compassionate, noble, a champion of the people, his crown costs him everything he has ever cherished. Grieving and bereft, he has no heart to keep what Fate has bestowed.

Anne Neville: Anne, the Kingmaker's beautiful daughter. She is Richard's only love, his light, his life  . . .

Mary of Burgundy: Daughter of Charles the Bold, and beloved step-daughter of Richard III's childless sister, Margaret of York.

Charles the Bold: His name is often translated Charles the Rash for his love of waging war recklessly, and his irrational behavior, which ended the Golden Age of Burgundy.

Margaret of York: According to Henry Tudor's historian, Margaret of York pursued Henry VII like a Juno “with insatiable hatred and fiery wrath.” She lived long enough to see all her family dead and the throne of her valiant Plantagenet forbears usurped by the first of the Tudors.

Elizabeth of York: Daughter of a king; sister of a king; niece of a king: wed to a king and mother of a king, she embodies every virtue of womanhood, is beloved by her husband and by her people. But what of her own heart?

Henry Tudor: the first of the Tudors, King Henry VII. Cold, calculating, avaricious, determined, he gambles everything on a single roll of the dice, and wins a throne.

Margaret Beaufort: Shrewd, conniving and supremely ambitious, she is a master of deceit who will commit any deed, no matter how vile, to give her son everything she wants . . .