Just a belated comment to say that I liked this! And the Wars of the Roses would probably be used in this sort of way in an actual song. (I tend to know Scottish songs rather than English ones, but they do seem to have this sort of reference to past battles, and very much this emphasis on the common man being the one doing the dying too!) Nowadays they seem to be mostly an excuse for white roses to feature on everything in York - and for York City Archives to have a portrait of Good King Richard III where you might have expected one of the current Queen!