Hope you don’t mind, but here’s some write-up on how I envisaged the “new” additions to the Plantagenet line.
Edmund Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Aumale and 1st Earl of Rutland KG
“Iron Edmund” (Grim, scarred across the face and a noted infantry fighter)
Traditional Yorkist
Summary
Edmund fought at the Battle of Wakefield at the age of seventeen as the 1st Earl of Rutland, where he saw his father executed by Lancastrians, only managing to escape across Wakefield Bridge by managing to disable Lord Clifford by catching Clifford’s sword through his hand as Clifford tried to execute him, using the opportunity to kick Clifford in the gentleman’s area. However, Clifford managed to inflict a grievous enough wound on Edmund’s face to scar him and a wound to the right arm would render it largely useless without exceptional effort below the elbow.
He managed to survive his wounds to become one of the major field commanders of the Yorkist cause, fighting at Mortimer’s Cross and Towton but became highly withdrawn personally because of his injuries and the heavy fighting; nonetheless, he developed a massive hatred of Queen Margaret of Anjou, whom he blamed for the death of his father and the turmoil enveloping England from even before the start of hostilities. While he was never a major driver behind his brother’s claim to the English throne, he never opposed it either. After Edward IV’s coronation he was made the Duke of Aumale, harking back to their great-uncle, Edward of Norwich, Duke of Aumale and Earl of Rutland before he was Duke of York, and who fell defending Henry V at Agincourt. In late 1461 Edmund married Lady Alice de Vere, the daughter of the Lancastrian stalwart John de Vere, 12th Earl of Oxford, as part of the reconciliation plan both he and Edward intended to unite the country. Within a year Aumale’s father and eldest brother-in-law had been found guilty of treason and executed, and some of Oxford’s estates ended up in Edmund’s hands, the rest to his brother Richard.
The early years of Edward IV’s reign found Edmund serving his brother as best he could with competence and brusqueness, but stringently opposed Edward IV’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville for political grounds and was dragged off to the Tower, though he was quickly released (albeit deprived of the title of Duke of Aumale), retiring to his estates in disgrace. With Warwick’s rebellion in 1469 and subsequent invasion of England in late 1470 Rutland remained an Edwardian loyalist after it was clear Henry VI was incapable. After Edward’s return in 1471 Rutland fought at Barnet, facing off on the field, against his brother-in-law John, 13th Earl of Oxford, on the Yorkist left, where they fought to a stalemate isolated from the rest of the armies due to the fog. When both sides fell back to rest (partly because the Yorkist troops connecting the left and centre under Lord Hastings had disappeared entirely under Oxford’s assault), Oxford ran into the back of the Lancastrian centre who mistook them for Yorkists as Rutland’s men hit them from the opposite direction. In the resulting chaos the Lancastrians were destroyed but the Earl of Rutland fell in battle defending his brother the King.
Edward was distraught at the death of his brother and allowed the Earldom of Rutland to pass to his son, but not the Dukedom of Aumale. French arms had supported Warwick, and Edward wanted to reach a détente with King Louis and believed that giving his nephew a Dukedom named after a place in France wouldn’t help.
Alice de Vere, Duchess-consort of Aumale and Countess-consort of Rutland
“Lady Sun and Star” (Sun = Yorkist, Star = de Vere)
Crypto-Lancastrian turned Rutland/Familial Loyalist
Summary
Alice de Vere knew the value of family. Her grandfather, Richard, 11th Earl of Oxford, suffered from the forfeitures of his forebears and had followed Henry V to France, having served on the jury against the Southampton Plotters. Her father, John, 12th Earl of Oxford, had tried to keep clear of the court politics but later cast his lot in with the Lancastrians. With the coronation of Edward IV she had been married to the eldest of the King’s brothers, the horrifically scarred Edmund of Rutland, in an attempt to reconcile the warring factions. For the rest of 1461 there was hope that the Act of Accord would be fulfilled, and England would be at peace. She had warned her relatives that such proximity to the King would make any plotting so soon after his coronation impossible.
Within a year her eldest brother, Aubrey, a favourite of Queen Margaret’s, had been convicted and executed for high treason. Within a week her father, quite apolitical before hostilities started and not really a schemer, had followed, bound, disembowelled and castrated before being thrown into the fire. Edmund had attempted to comfort her, as best he could: he had seen his father executed by Lancastrians, after all. He himself had asked Lord Clifford for mercy, been refused it and promptly had to fight his way out.
Yet King Edward IV spoke of peace, and her other elder brother, John, succeeded her father as Earl of Oxford. If her husband had ever interceded on his behalf, she never knew. Alice knew her brother would be conspiring against the King, but he would not be caught for it. Her husband had warned her, of course: Edward’s rule remained secure while Warwick remained on side, and Margaret of Anjou was no great soldier. Then her husband ended up in the Tower for insulting the Queen, and it became brutally clear that nobody was safe regardless of family ties, and she swore that her son and as much of her family would not end up on the block.
For the decade they were married Alice and Edmund gradually grew into something resembling a love match. The bitterly sardonic Edmund of Rutland had observed some of the hardest fighting of the war – fighting on foot, as was his personal preference – and saw no reason to keep any sort of pretence in front of his wife. In 1468, even after her brother had been caught conspiring against the King Edmund had interceded on his behalf and had him released. In the civil strife of 1467-1470 her brother had fled to France and returned following the turncoat Earl of Warwick and her brother-in-law, George, Duke of Clarence. Edmund had stayed out of it, short of trying to restore order, but with Edward IV’s deposition Edmund chose to stay in England. In the bluntness characteristic of their marriage Alice told him that he was suicidal, since his scars had made him so distinguishable.
Edmund stayed to oppose Warwick and Clarence, though not in arms. When Edward IV returned he left to join his brother, apologising to his wife beforehand: they both knew that her brother would be with the Lancastrians, and Edmund would not tolerate Margaret of Anjou leading the country again. Edmund died at Barnet against Oxford’s men, and Oxford fled to Scotland. Alice remained regent for the young John, now 2nd Earl of Rutland, with any attempts at removing her foiled by King Edward in his brother’s memory. For the rest of his reign she would attend Court and attempt to spend as much time at the Rutland estates for as much she could, privately despairing as her brothers seemed to pop up everywhere with failed Lancastrian landings.
She had been appointed Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Elizabeth Woodville after Edmund had been released from the Tower and used this opportunity to strengthen her own position and to stop Lord Hastings’ attempts to control the Midlands (and whom Alice blamed for her husband’s death at Barnet). Though she was no real friend of the Woodvilles Alice had befriended the Queen quickly enough due to their similar circumstances (Lancastrians married to senior Yorkists); this only strengthened after Edmund’s death, and she quickly became a major private advisor to the Queen and in the process became affiliated with the wife of Baron Stanley, the also-Lancastrian widow Margaret Beaufort.
With Edward IV’s death and Richard of Gloucester’s seizure of power, Alice was not in the capital, but advised her son to flee. This he did, along with his household. While privately guilty at leaving her friend the Queen Dowager behind, she would serve as a go-between for correspondence between Elizabeth Woodville and Henry Tudor to see union of the Lancastrian and Yorkist lines. She would advise against her son’s return to England with Henry, but John survived Henry’s invasion in 1485. With Tudor ascension she chose to minimise her role, and most of the rest of her life in Rutland advising her son and helping administer his estates.
John Plantagenet, 2nd Earl of Rutland
“Lord Rattleman” (Born with arthritis, a person from Rutland is a ‘Raddleman’)
Edwardian Yorkist turned Tudorite
Summary
Named after John of Bedford, whom his father admired, and privately named after his mother’s father and brother, both named John de Vere, John of Rutland was born weak, but became Earl of Rutland without major objections. Raised by his pious battleaxe of a mother, he remained a solid Yorkist during Edward IV’s reign despite his mother’s Lancastrian heritage, and remained generally above suspicion. A poet and writer at heart, he did not often attend court though did serve in minor administrative roles under his uncle. Nonetheless, he stringently rebuffed any attempts to strip his mother of her titles.
With the death of Edward IV and Richard of Gloucester’s seizure of power from the Woodvilles John learned through his mother’s networks that he might very well be next. He was no friend of the Woodvilles, but he was also the other remaining male Plantagenet apart from Edward IV’s sons. Hearing of rumours that Richard was putting in plans to consider the children of Edward IV illegitimate, he promptly took his mother’s advice and ran for France in 1483 after the execution of Lord Hastings and the confinement of the Princes in the Tower. Richard considered this proof of guilt and had Rutland attainted and declared the son of a daughter of a traitor and thus removed from the English succession.
In Brittany Rutland ended up joining the growing alliance of Lancastrians and Edwardian Yorkists gathering under the banner of Henry Tudor (even if he thought Tudor’s claim was rather poor), including his maternal uncle the 13th Earl of Oxford, recently escaped from imprisonment in Calais, and Edward IV’s bodyguard, John, Baron Cheyne. The Earl of Rutland fought at Bosworth in the centre alongside the Earl of Oxford. After Bosworth Rutland’s lands were restored and he was rewarded with seized Yorkist estates but not the Dukedom of Aumale, to prevent him from getting higher aspirations. He married the pragmatic Lady Catherine Berkeley, one of the heiresses of the highly-contested Berkeley lands concentrated in Gloucestershire, and gained some of the Berkeley lands from the Crown as compensation for the return of de Vere lands to the Earl of Oxford.
Despite the Yorkist uprisings against Henry VII Rutland remained loyal and generally passive, just as Henry wanted him; he was also intelligent enough to keep out of it all of his own accord. Nonetheless, as de Veres rose in power at the Tudor court so did John’s prestige fall even more. A failed attempt to intercede on the behalf of his cousin Edward, 17th Earl of Warwick and son of George, Duke of Clarence, caused him to withdraw even further to his estates. His reluctance to support Yorkist uprisings won him very little respect among the Yorkists left, and the Rutlands’ financial situation was further exacerbated by increasing paranoia on the part of Henry VII. As the most prominent claimant still in England, the Rutlands were squeezed heavily by taxation but John refused to quarrel further.
Catherine Berkeley, Countess-consort of Rutland
“Waste-not” (Her father, the Marquess of Berkeley, was called ‘Waste-all’)
Pragmatist
Summary
The Berkeleys were once among the most prominent landowners in the Midlands if not England, but the Wars of the Roses ended that. Catherine Berkeley was born the only daughter of the newly-created Earl of Nottingham, William Berkeley, who was a strident Yorkist who turned coat and was created Marquess of Berkeley by Henry VII. Before that her father had decided to waste their money and retainers fighting Viscount Lisle in 1469 over an inheritance duel in a battle that had been decided like a duel by the quarrelling parties [Not making this up, look up the Battle of Nibley Green].
When William, Marquess of Berkeley died in 1492, he had disinherited both his daughter (he had no male issue) and his brother, who had supported him at Nibley Green [this is true too], instead deciding to name Henry VII as his rightful heir. Catherine thus lived out the late period of the Wars of the Roses and the Tudor ascendancy with a very dim view of everyone involved.
Since John, Earl of Rutland was unmarried his mother, the Dowager Countess Alice, decided to arrange a marriage between the Berkeley heiress and the Earl of Rutland, gaining Rutland estates in Gloucestershire as part of Catherine’s Berkeley claims. Thanks to her father’s wastrel tendencies, running their family’s legacy into the ground on account of disinheriting her uncle due to her uncle marrying below his station, Catherine became an extremely pragmatic woman who assisted her husband’s survival throughout the reign of Henry VII. Frugal as she might have been, she was not shy about spending to defend her family.
After a sequence of unsuccessful petitions to King Henry to regain the rest of her father’s estates, Catherine remained in Rutland to assist her ailing husband in administering their estates and improving them as best they could.
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Due to marrying into the third?-most prominent Lancastrian family, the de Veres, the Rutlands end up quite well as a result of how the Wars of the Roses turn out, combined with an early defection to Henry Tudor (before the Buckingham revolt). The Countess Alice being quite a force to be reckoned with (here I’ve described her as a friend of Margaret Beaufort’s and Elizabeth Woodville) and some work from Elizabeth of York probably secured their survival too. The Berkeleys are Yorkists, but they got quite heavily hit by Henry VII. However I couldn’t find any Lancastrian barons on Wikipedia, so there you go. However, they add potential additional titles that the MC could potentially get: Baron Berkeley (via their mother’s claim), Marquess Berkeley (via their mother’s claim), Duke of Albemarle (Aumale, via their grandfather), Duke of Rutland (new creation). Potentially also the Earldom of Salisbury after the Countess of Salisbury gets executed/dies via their great-uncle the Duke of Clarence.
Alice de Vere is fictional, though her father and siblings are real; I suppose you could widow one of her sisters or something if you didn’t want another OC. Catherine Berkeley is apparently real, but I don’t know what happened to her. Through the marriage alliances the MC here would mainly be connected to the de Veres (Earls of Oxford).
), however it seems that you can spam the choice, i tried it one hour ago, and after repeating atleast 6 times, i can get very high relations with either the Hapsburg or French (around 85%) without major consequence, can you please fix this?