Elizabeth Woodville exercised influence through queenship, patronage, and dynastic negotiation during the Wars of the Roses. Widowed after her first husband, John Grey, died fighting for the Lancastrians, she secretly married the Yorkist king Edward IV in 1464. The marriage disrupted his advisers' plans for a foreign alliance and made the advancement of her extensive family a major issue at court.

Crowned queen in 1465, Elizabeth secured offices and advantageous marriages for relatives and supported religious and educational institutions, including Queens' College, Cambridge. Woodville advancement aggravated hostility from Warwick and other nobles. Her father and brother John were executed in 1469 during the struggle against Edward. When the king fled England the following year, she sought sanctuary at Westminster Abbey, where she gave birth to their son Edward.

Edward IV's restoration in 1471 returned Elizabeth to court, but his death in 1483 exposed her family's position. His brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, took custody of the young Edward V and arrested leading Woodville allies. Elizabeth again entered sanctuary with her younger children. Her brother Anthony Woodville and her son Richard Grey were executed. Parliament subsequently declared her marriage invalid, excluding her children from succession, and Gloucester became Richard III. Her two royal sons disappeared from public view in the Tower; their precise fate remains disputed.

Elizabeth then participated in arrangements connecting her daughter Elizabeth of York with Henry Tudor, in cooperation with Henry's mother, Margaret Beaufort. Henry's victory at Bosworth in 1485 and marriage to Elizabeth of York in 1486 joined rival dynastic claims. The former queen spent her later years at Bermondsey Abbey, entering the community in 1487. Whether this retreat reflected her own wishes, financial circumstances, or political pressure remains uncertain. She died in 1492 and was buried beside Edward IV at Windsor.