Profiles the tumultuous era of the Wars of the Roses, the brutal 15th-century struggle to decide which branch of the royal family would win the crown of England, through the stories of five major players: William Hastings, a brave Yorkist soldier and charming courtier who rose from relative obscurity to become one of King Edward's closest advisers (and his pimp); the head of England's most ancient noble family, John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who was determined to win the crown back for the Lancastrians; Lady Margaret Beaufort, the richest woman in England, a pious but dangerous noblewoman of royal descent and the mother of the future Henry VII; John Morton, a brilliant priest-lawyer and political genius who was skillful enough to be relied on by both Yorkist and Lancastrian kings to handle important state matters; and the beautiful daughter of a rich London merchant and sometime mistress of kings, Jane Shore.