Why did Edward IV believe his claim to the throne was stronger than that of Henry VI?
Henry IV usurped Richard II from the throne. As a result the crown passed from the York line of the Plantagenet’s, to the Lancaster line. So from the point of view of Edward IV, the Lancaster’s were usurpers, and his side of the dynasty were the right full kings. Henry V, faced a plot (Southampton Plot) by Yorkists to assassinate him and replace him with Edmund Mortimer, when he was about to set sail to France on the expedition that culminated in the Battle of Agincourt, and he became the Regent of France. Henry V died of dysentery when Henry VI was still an infant. Henry VI was a weak king, and he ultimately lost the Hundred Years War. Henry VI weakness and unpopularity as king, droves of newly unemployed soldiers returning to England, and half of the Plantagenet dynasty still brooding over the usurpation and murder of Richard II, meant the conditions in England were ideal for a civil war, hence the opportunity for the Yorkists to make their claim had come.
