Parliament declared her dead in 1474. She was forty-seven years old, in good health, and had approximately eighteen more years to live. The act required no evidence of death because her death was not the point. Her estates were the point. She was simply in the way of them.
He was a prince of the blood in a dynasty that had no use for princes of the blood who were not the king. His brother wore the crown. He carried the blood. He spent his entire life trying to close the distance between those two facts. He never came close.
In the summer of 1470 Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, knelt before Margaret of Anjou in a French court and asked for her help. She had been waiting nine years for someone with an army. He was the man who had made that wait necessary. They both understood what the meeting was. They did it anyway.