What two houses were the primary combatants in the 15th-century English civil war, known as the Wars of the Roses?

The Wars of the Roses, a series of bloody civil wars fought in England during the 15th century, were essentially a power struggle for the English throne. Think of it as a family feud on a grand, national scale. The two main families vying for control were the House of Lancaster and the House of York. Each house had a symbolic rose: Lancaster's was red, and York's was white. Hence, the name "Wars of the Roses." The conflict wasn't a continuous war but rather a series of battles and periods of uneasy peace between 1455 and 1487. The fighting involved the aristocracy and their armies, and it significantly weakened the power of the English nobility. The war finally ended when Henry Tudor, who was from the Lancastrian side, defeated Richard III of York at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. Henry then married Elizabeth of York, uniting the two houses and establishing the Tudor dynasty, symbolized by the Tudor rose, a combination of the red and white roses. The Houses of Wessex and Sussex were important in earlier English history, particularly during the Anglo-Saxon period, but they were not involved in the 15th-century Wars of the Roses.