Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Wars of the Roses were rooted in a succession crisis following the death of Edward III in 1377, compounded by the social instability of bastard feudalism, the financial strain of the Hundred Years' War with France, and the mental instability of King Henry VI. Rival branches of the House of Plantagenet - Lancaster and York - each held competing claims to the English throne traced through different sons of Edward III.
The Wars of the Roses began in 1455 with the First Battle of St Albans on the 22nd of May and concluded in 1487 with Henry VII's victory at Stoke Field. The conflict lasted approximately thirty-two years and involved multiple phases of fighting separated by periods of uneasy peace.
The name entered common use in the early nineteenth century following the publication of Sir Walter Scott's 1829 novel Anne of Geierstein, which drew on a scene from Shakespeare's play Henry VI, Part 1 depicting nobles choosing red or white roses to signal their Lancastrian or Yorkist loyalties. During the conflict itself, it was simply known as the Civil Wars.
Henry Tudor won the Wars of the Roses by defeating and killing Richard III at Bosworth Field in 1485, then ascending the throne as Henry VII. He consolidated his victory by marrying Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of Edward IV, uniting the Lancastrian and Yorkist claims in the new Tudor dynasty.
Edward V and his younger brother Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, were placed in the Tower of London in 1483 after their uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, assumed the role of Lord Protector following Edward IV's death. The two boys were not seen in public after August 1483, and accusations circulated that they had been murdered on Richard III's orders. Their fate was never definitively established.
Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, was the most powerful magnate in England during the central phase of the conflict. He helped place Edward IV on the throne in 1461, then turned against him after Edward's secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville in 1464. Warwick subsequently restored Henry VI to power in 1470 before being defeated and killed at the Battle of Barnet on the 14th of April 1471.