What are the 5 greatest mysteries behind the Wars of the Roses?
Brent Cooper · Originally Answered: What are the 5 greatest mysteries behind the War of the Roses? Here are the 5 greatest mysteries as determined by Dan Jones, author of The Hollow Crown. 1 What was really wrong with King Henry VI? “Henry VI (1422–60 and 1470–71) was comfortably the most incompetent king of the whole Plantagenet line, and his benign but ultimately disastrous rule began the series of conflicts that we now call the Wars of the Roses.“ “The crisis broke in 1453 when Henry appears to have suffered a near-complete mental collapse. He stopped responding to other people; he didn’t recognise his own wife or newborn son; and for several months he was completely helpless and utterly withdrawn from the world. One contemporary said the king was “smitten with a frenzy”. “The obvious comparison was with Henry’s grandfather Charles VI of France, who had suffered similarly long bouts of madness in which he attacked his courtiers, smeared himself in his own waste and s...