Royal Family: Children of Edward III

An appropriate subtitle for this post might be "where it all began", since it was from the various lines of Edward III's children that the competing families of York and Lancaster would originate and battle for their various claims to the throne.  Here, then, are the underpinnings of the Wars of the Roses.

Edward III married Philippa of Hainault, an area of what is now Belgium, in 1328.  She would bear him 13 children, of whom 9 lived to grow up.  The four unfortunate ones were William of Hatfield (b and d 1337), Blanche (b and d 1342), Thomas of Windsor (b 1347-d 1348, another plague victim), and William (b and d 1348).  Their sons were Edward, the Black Prince (1330-1376), whose only surviving son Richard II we'll deal with in a later post.  Lionel of Antwerp (1338-1368), whose only daughter Philippa married into the powerful Mortimer family, who will play their parts in the ensuing drama.  John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (1340-1399), whose son Henry of Bolingbroke became Henry IV, the first of the Lancastrian kings.  John of Gaunt had a large family of both legitimate and illegitimate children, some of whom will also factor in later, particularly the Tudor family.  Edmund of Langley, Duke of York (1341-1402), ancestor of Edward IV (and sons) and Richard III, and also ancestor of the Tudors through his great-granddaughter Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII.  And, finally, Thomas of Woodstock (1355-1397), whose daughter married into the Stratford family.  All of these men and their descendants would either launch their own competing claims for the throne, or marry into families close enough to the royal line to be a threat. 

Edward's daughters also carried his bloodline and their own potential claims, which fortunately for the main lines of the Plantagenet dynasty, none of them had the opportunity to exploit.  Isabella (1332-1382).  Her daughter, Marie de Coucy, became ancestress of several European royal dynasties, including the Bourbons and, through Mary of Scotland, every English King or Queen since James I.  Joan (1334-1348), affianced to Pedro of Castile but died of plague before they could marry and beget children.  Also Mary (1344-1362), who married John IV of Brittany, and Margaret (1346-1361), who married in the Hastings family of the Earls of Pembroke.  Neither of these two had children, or at least any children who survived.