5 GREATEST MYSTERIES BEHIND THE WARS OF THE ROSES
WHAT WAS WRONG WITH KING HENRY VI?
Henry VI was comfortably the most incompetent king of the whole Plantagenet line, and his benign but ultimately disastrous rule began the Wars of the Roses.
The crisis broke in 1453 when the 31-year-old Henry appears to have suffered a near-complete mental collapse. For a period of 18 months, he stopped responding to other people; struggled to recognise his own wife or newborn son, Edward; and went through lengthy spells when he was completely helpless and utterly withdrawn from the world. One contemporary described the king as “smitten with a frenzy and his wit and reason withdrawn”.
The obvious comparison was with Henry’s grandfather, Charles VI of France, who had suffered similarly long bouts of mental illness in which he attacked his courtiers, smeared himself in his own waste and screamed that he felt thousands of sharp needles piercing his flesh.
