Margaret Beaufort: Facial Reconstructions & History of the Woman Who Made her Son King

Thank you Wildgrain for sponsoring. Visit http://wildgrain.com/royaltynow and use code ROYALTYNOW at checkout to receive $30 off your first box PLUS free Croissants for life! She was thirteen, widowed, and pregnant. Fifty years later, she had put her son on the throne of England. Margaret Beaufort is one of the most consequential women in English history - and one of the least recognized. Born into a bloodline that was both her fortune and her curse, she was orphaned at one, married at three, married again at twelve, and widowed at thirteen while seven months pregnant. The birth nearly killed her and almost certainly left her infertile. The child survived. His name was Henry Tudor. From that January morning in 1457, Margaret's life had a single organizing purpose. This video traces her extraordinary story: the wardships and forced marriages, the exile of her son, her secret alliance with her supposed enemy Elizabeth Woodville, the messages smuggled through a shared physician, Buckingham's Rebellion, house arrest - and finally, Bosworth Field, where her husband's betrayal of Richard III handed the crown to her son. Then we turn to her face. There is no reliable portrait of Margaret as a young woman. The one panel that raised hopes turned out to be a forgery - x-rays revealed a portrait of an unknown woman covered in fine linen and overpainted with a 1490s hood and coat of arms to make a sale. But we do have two genuine likenesses: the Meynnart Wewyck portrait at St John's College, Cambridge, confirmed in 2019 through archival research and tree-ring dating, and Pietro Torrigiano's bronze tomb effigy - almost certainly worked from a death mask taken after her embalming. Using Torrigiano's effigy, I've reconstructed Margaret as she was at sixty-six. And because the thirteen-year-old girl who changed England was never painted, I've also built an educated-guess reconstruction of her as a young woman. Stay to the end to see both! 0:00 Intro 0:46 Margaret’s Life & History 11:13 Portrait Analysis 13:54 Facial Reconstructions Revealed Royalty Now is a human-crafted channel, backed by research and vigilance. While we use generative AI for small bits of our images, they are primarily crafted in Photoshop and NEVER pulled directly from any generative AI engine. Real research, real artistry. Find us here: Instagram: @Royalty_Now_ X: @Royalty_Now Tik Tok: @RoyaltyNow RoyaltyNowStudios.com This video creation and final image are ©Royalty Now.