The marriage greatly enriched Elizabeth's siblings and children, but their advancement incurred the hostility of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, "The Kingmaker", and his various alliances with the most senior figures in the increasingly divided royal family.

After the death of her husband in 1483, Elizabeth remained politically influential even after her son, briefly proclaimed King Edward V, was deposed by her brother-in-law, Richard III.

Elizabeth was forced to yield pre-eminence to Henry VII's mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort; her influence on events in these years, and her eventual departure from court into retirement, remain obscure.

She was the firstborn child of a socially unequal marriage between Richard Woodville and Jacquetta of Luxembourg, which briefly scandalised the English court.

Edward married her just over three years after he had assumed the English throne in the wake of his overwhelming victory over the Lancastrians, at the Battle of Towton, which resulted in the displacement of King Henry VI.

Edward introduced Elizabeth Woodville as his queen to the royal court at Reading Abbey on Michaelmas Day (29 September 1464).

In the early years of his reign, Edward IV's governance of England was dependent upon a small circle of supporters, most notably his cousin, Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick.

At around the time of Edward IV's secret marriage, Warwick was negotiating an alliance with France in an effort to thwart a similar arrangement being made by his sworn enemy Margaret of Anjou, wife of the deposed Henry VI.

The match was also badly received by the privy council, who according to Jean de Waurin told Edward with great frankness that "he must know that she was no wife for a prince such as himself".

Elizabeth's son, Thomas Grey, married firstly Anne Holland, a niece of Edward, and later Cecily Bonville, 7th Baroness Harington.

Such was Elizabeth's unpopularity that George, Duke of Clarence, rebellious brother of her husband, later even accused her of witchcraft in order to murder his wife Isabel Neville.

Her marriage to Edward IV produced a total of ten children, including another son, Richard, Duke of York, who would later join his brother as one of the Princes in the Tower.

Elizabeth Woodville engaged in acts of Christian piety in keeping with conventional expectations of a medieval queen consort.

Her acts included making pilgrimages, obtaining a papal indulgence for those who knelt and said the Angelus three times per day, and founding the chapel of St. Erasmus in Westminster Abbey.

[13] Following Edward IV's sudden death, possibly from pneumonia or being worn out from "high living",[14] in April 1483, Elizabeth Woodville became queen dowager.

[16] On 25 June 1483, Gloucester had Elizabeth Woodville's son Richard Grey and brother Anthony, Earl Rivers, executed in Pontefract Castle, Yorkshire.

One source, the Burgundian chronicler Philippe de Commines, says that Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, carried out an engagement ceremony between Edward IV and Lady Eleanor.

[19] Now referred to as Dame Elizabeth Grey,[6] she and Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham (a former close ally of Richard III and now probably seeking the throne for himself) allied themselves with Margaret Stanley (née Beaufort) and espoused the cause of Margaret's son Henry Tudor, a great-great-great-grandson of King Edward III,[20] the closest male heir of the Lancastrian claim to the throne with any degree of validity.

After the death of Richard III's wife Anne Neville, in March 1485, rumours arose that the newly widowed king was going to marry his niece Elizabeth of York.

As king, Henry VII married Elizabeth of York and had the Titulus Regius revoked and all found copies destroyed.

[26] Scholars differ about why Dowager Queen Elizabeth spent the last five years of her life living at Bermondsey Abbey, to which she retired on 12 February 1487.

[27] Another suggestion is that her retreat to Bermondsey was forced on her because she was in some way involved in the 1487 Yorkist rebellion of Lambert Simnel, or at least was seen as a potential ally of the rebels.

[31] A letter discovered in 2019, written in 1511 by Andrea Badoer, the Venetian ambassador in London, suggests that she had died of plague, which would explain the haste and lack of public ceremony.

[32][33] Elizabeth was laid to rest in the same chantry as her husband King Edward IV in St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.