The actual Wars of the Roses were a series of civil wars between 1455 and 1485 which were fought for the throne of England by the House of York and the House of Lancaster, two competing branches of the Plantagenet family, which was first established on the throne of England by King Henry III in 1216.
The seeds of the War of the Roses—named for white rose, which was the emblem of the House of York, and the red rose, emblem of the House of Lancaster—were sown when Henry of Bolingbroke, later King Henry IV, usurped the throne of King Richard II in 1399—events recounted in Shakespeare's Richard II.
Resentments between the two branches of the family didn't rise to the level of armed conflict until the reign of King Henry VI, which resulted in the throne changing hands from the House of Lancaster (Henry VI), to the House of...
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York (Edward IV), back to the House of Lancaster (Henry VI again), and once again to the House of York (Edward IV, Edward V—one of the princes in the Tower allegedly killed byRichard III—and Richard III).
As the result of the death of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, Henry Tudor assumed the throne as Henry VII, and the warfare between the House of York and the House of Lancaster ceased. Henry VII's marriage to Elizabeth of York in 1486 united the white rose with the red, and ended the Wars of the Roses between the Houses of York and Lancaster.
The cycle of Shakespeare's plays referred to as TheWars of the Roses includes his early history play, Henry VI, Part 1, written in 1591—which begins at the funeral of Henry V, at whose death his nine-month-old son became Henry VI—and continues through Henry VI, Part 2 and Henry VI, Part 3, also written in 1591, and concludes with the death of King Richard in Richard III, likely written in 1593.
Occasionally, these four plays are performed as a cycle of the complete plays, but more often all four of the plays are adapted and condensed into one play, often entitled The Wars of the Roses, or, less often, the Henry VI plays are combined into one play and performed with an abridged version of Richard III.