The Elizabethan public waited expectantly for the great Lords of the Privy Council to sort out an altogether confused and insecure succession. It is hardly surprising, then, that the Henry VI plays, though set in the fifteenth century, are shaped and focused by a thoroughly late-sixteenth century concern the damage and destruction which engulf a nation once the inheritance claim of a King is challenged or uncertain. Believe me, lords, my tender years can tell Civil dissension is a viperous worm That gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth. Thus the young King Henry VI berates his senior nobles, even before the competition between their factions has begun the spiraling destruction of the Wars of the Roses. Fear of civil disorder stalks the plays.
Vested interest succeeds vested interest in determining the succession.
Oaths are made and broken according to the contingencies of political need. This is a world without assured values, and one in which even the sanctity of the King himself is increasingly called in doubt. The process of the Henry VI plays is a downward spiral, from the factionalism around the boy king in the first part to the social turbulence and destructive uncertainty of the last. Once the structure of government fails, Shakespeare shows his audience, the nation loses its political bearings. Hierarchies of rank and status that have held for generations disintegrate into unworthy squabbles between families.