Henry VII was the father of Henry VIII and grandfather of Elizabeth 1, who ruled England at the time Henry VI was written. This Tudor interpretation of events was popularized in a history of England, Anglica Historia, written by Polydore Vergil in 1513. It has also been attributed to Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns. Historians point out that the red and white roses were adopted as symbols retrospective by the Tudors to suppport the myth that they were responsible for uniting the quarreling families. But even if they didn't call it such, Shakespeare's audiences would have been familiar with the references to the Wars of the Roses.
Historians also disagree on the nature of the conflict itself.
The earliest chroniclers color 15th century England as a bleak era of death, plague, famine, and lawlessness, and the Wars of the Roses or whatever it was called as 30 years of appalling slaughter that resulted in the extermination of entire noble families, three kings, and a third of the English aristocracy. Many modem historians, on the other hand, view the Wars of the Roses as a conflict confined largely to the warring families and irrelevant to the general population. A playwright, and not a historian, Shakespeare shaped his source material to artistic ends and was not always faithful to the annals of history. Whatever the historical truth of the Wars of the Roses, Shakespeare has established dramatic truth in the play. He has created characters of dimension who exist in a world of extreme conditions.