The two sides met at Towton on March 29. Both sides had their numbers swelled. Chroniclers of the time trumpeted numbers in the hundreds of thousands; modern historians tend to estimate a total of 50,000 for both sides. Even that figure makes this the largest battle of the war.

Leading the Yorkist forces were Edward and Warwick. King Henry and Queen Margaret were not on the field, leaving the fighting to the 2nd Duke of Somerset and Sir Andrew Trollope. The battle took place on a plateau on which the Lancastrian forces had arrived first and claimed a position advantageous to them.

Weather played a key role in the early part of the battle. Snow was falling, and the wind was blowing. The wind was behind the Yorkist archers and helped their arrows go deep into the enemy lines; at the same time, the wind blew against the Lancastrian archers and blew snow into their faces, obscuring their aim and blunting their range. Because the Lancastrians were unsure of the effect of their arrows, they kept launching them, exhausting their supply. The Yorkist archers, meanwhile, held off after one fierce and devastating volley.

The superior numbers in the Lancastrian infantry nearly carried the day, as the hand-to-hand fighting slogged on for three hours. Edward personally hacked his way through wave after wave of enemy infantry, in an attempt to rally his men's spirits. The delayed arrival of another York ally, the Duke of Norfolk, turned the tide for Edward. The Lancastrian army eventually cracked. Some of them were so dispirited that they attempted to flee by removing their helmets and armor in order to increase their speed of flight; thus unencumbered, they were indeed faster in retreat but also unprotected against armed enemies. In fact, more Lancastrians died during retreat than died during the main phase of the battle. The meadow across which the Lancastrians fled became known as the Bloody Meadow. As well, the Yorkist pursuers were ruthless in cutting down their opponents. Fleeing Lancastrian soldiers found themselves having to cross the Cock Beck and became easy targets as the river slowed their progress. Increasing the carnage were Yorkist archers, their supply still strong, who rained down arrows on the hapless in retreat. Both sides had agreed to show no mercy before the battle began, and the Yorkist pursuers lived up to that promise in a particularly savage way. The number killed in total is conservatively estimated at 28,000, with Lancastrians making up about 20,000 of those. It was well and truly a decisive victory for Edward, who returned to London in triumph; Henry, meanwhile, fled to Scotland, where he spent the next few years. His wife and son went with him and continued to plot yet another return.

Edward was crowned King Edward IV on June 28. His hold on the country strong, he set about rooting out some of the remaining strongholds of Lancastrian sentiment. Other than a few battles in the far north and in Ireland, his reign was secure for the next few years.

Edward's hold on the throne was due mainly to his military victories and to the influence of his uncle, Richard Neville, whose family had substantial holdings and resources throughout the realm. Edward could ill afford to alienate Neville. However, while the latter was in France in 1464 negotiating a marriage between Edward and a daughter or sister-in-law of King Louis XI of France, Edward secretly married Elizabeth Woodville, who had been married to a Lancastrian knight, Sir John Grey of Groby. Neville was stunned, as were many other of Edward's supporters, who wanted him to marry someone of royal blood. At his new wife's urgings, Edward arranged marriage for many in her family. He also named her father head of the treasury.

These and various other actions suggested by the queen and taken by the king served to alienate two of his most powerful supporters, his brother George and Neville. The alienated pair joined forces and took up arms against Edward. The resulting Battle of Edgecote Moor was a stinging defeat for the king and resulted in his capture. A popular rebellion forced the king's release and Edward tried hard to reconcile with both his brother and with Neville. Neither was interested, and the pair stirred up a rebellion in Lincolnshire. Edward was up to the challenge and put down the rebellion. A defiant Warwick threw in his lot with Margaret, wife of the exiled Henry VI, agreeing to support the Lancastrian's reclamation of the throne. After hearing that Warwick had added his brother John to the anti-York faction, Edward fled to Flanders.

The Duke of Burgundy was Edward's brother-in-law, having married Edward's sister Margaret in 1468. (That Edward preferred an alliance with Burgundy and not with France, as was the preference of Warwick, was another element of the division between the two once allies.) Edward and Burgundy raised a small force to put at the back of Edward's return to England. Edward avoided capture, returning to the friendly confines of York, where he gathered armed supporters. Marching south, he gained followers and soldiers as he went; among those joining him were his brother George, back in the fold. Edward entered London unopposed and took Henry prisoner. A resurgent Edward and his reinvigorated supporters defeated Warwick's force at the Battle of Barnet, and Warwick was killed in the fray. The battle was fought in a thick fog, and some of Warwick's men attacked one another by mistake. Leading a division of the York forces at this battle was Edward's brother Richard, then just 18.

The two warring factions continued to strive to control territory and sentiment. Both still had many supporters, both in the armies and in the countryside. Margaret had returned from exile, landing in Dorsetshire, and had gathered an army, led by Somerset. They decided to march north in an attempt to link up with the forces of Jasper Tudor in Wales. Eventually divining the Lancastrians' intentions after a series of feints, Edward set out with an army in a march toward the West Country. The two sides met in open conflict near Tewkesbury, on May 4. The forces were much smaller than at Towton but were more emblematic of other battles in this civil war: Lancastrians numbered about 6,000, and Yorkists numbered about 5,000. The Lancastrians had arrived first and had arrayed their forces in order to take advantage of a nearby waterway and woods. Among the Lancastrian lines was Edward, Prince of Wales, then 17. King Edward himself commanded one third of his force. His 18-year-old brother Richard was in charge of the vanguard. Edward also sent a contingent of 200 spearmen into the woods at his left, in order to prevent a sneak flank attack by his enemies. Peppering the battlefield were banks and hedges, and it was slow going for the Yorkists in advance; they had better effect with their archers and artillery. Somerset led a number of men along the woods in which Edward had deployed his spearmen, who waited until the Lancastrians were well past their position before attacking, turning their flank and routing them. As before, several in retreat tried to cross a river to safety; as before, they were ruthlessly cut down. Mirroring the success that they had at Towton, the Yorkist forces again advanced in triumph, buoyed by the retreat of Somerset, who contributed to the loss of morale in his own troops by killing one of his fellow commanders. Lancastrians fled the battle in droves, and the victory was Edward's. Edward, Prince of Wales died that day, either in the battle or shortly thereafter. Some Lancastrian nobles had sought sanctuary in nearby Tewkesbury Abbey. Edward allowed them peace for a time but had them summarily executed a few days later.

Edward cemented his hold on the throne by winning the Battle of Tewkesbury. He nearly lost it again a few days afterward, when Margaret's ally Fauconberg landed with a large force and marched on London. However, a garrison of soldiers led by Edward's brother-in-law defended the city and forced Fauconberg into retreat; hearing of the defeat at Tewkesbury and Margaret's abandoning any further attempt at conquest, he held off any further attacks.

Henry himself died a few days later, some sources say at the hands of someone else and other sources say of a broken heart. He died on the same day that Edward rode through London in triumph, showing off the captured Queen Margaret.

Now firmly in control, Edward set about solidifying his support across the country. He arranged marriages for his two brothers, George marrying Isabel Neville and Richard marrying Anne Neville; both brides were daughters of Warwick, Edward's powerful ally.

Flexing his muscles, Edward raised an army and invaded France, landing at Calais in June 1475. The force was nowhere near enough to worry the French king, however; and, seeing that support from his ally the Duke of Burgundy wasn't forthcoming, Edward set about arranging a treaty.

Three years later, Edward's brother George again changed sides and set about plotting against his brother the king. Edward discovered evidence of the plot and imprisoned his brother in the Tower, eventually signing off on his execution for treason.

Weary from battle and intrigue, Edward began to battle for his health. He struggled in and out of illness and fell ill for the last time in the first half of 1483. He died on April 9 of that year and was buried in St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle. His 12-year-old son Edward was technically his successor but was never crowned. He and his brother disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The next to be crowned King of England was Edward's surviving brother, Richard, who became King Richard III.

Richard was on the throne for two years, agreeing to become at the behest of a large number of Londoners when it was widely believed that Edward's sons were illegitimate. Richard put down a few challenges to Edward's and then his own kingship and then rode out to the west in August of 1485 to confront Henry Tudor, who had amassed a large fighting force in France and Wales and had asserted that he, as the descendant of the wife of King Henry V, was the rightful ruler of the realm. The two armies clashed at the Battle of Bosworth Field on August 22. Richard's army was larger than Henry's, but a good margin, but two of Richard's key supporters abandoned him during the battle and Richard, in a desperate attempt to kill Tudor himself, was cut down and violently killed. Henry promised to marry Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV, in an attempt to unite the country and end the bloody civil war. He was accepted and was crowned King Henry VII. His victory at Bosworth Field is considered to be the end of the Wars of the Roses.

Many depictions of this conflict depict the Yorkist forces as fighting under the banner of the white rose and the Lancastrian forces as fighting under the banner of the red rose. Indeed, that is how this series of conflicts got its name (a name assigned years later). As well, the eventual victor, Henry VII, combined both roses in crafting the Tudor Rose, hoping to be viewed as the uniter of the two warring factions. However, while the wars were going on, the leaders of both factions, more often than not, marched under their own banners and had coats of arms or other symbols that did not involve a rose of any color. Richard, for example, marched under the banner of the White Boar.