Friday 24 August 2012

Finding Richard.

Amid all the utterly depressing items currently filling the news bulletins, one stands out as a little ray of light. Archaeologists are beginning the search for the body of King Richard III in a car park in Leicester. They think the location is the site of the church where the king was buried after being killed at Bosworth in 1485.

I’ve long had a soft spot for Richard. Between them, Shakespeare and those damn Tudors presented him in a very bad light, leaving him with an unfairly tarnished reputation for nearly four hundred years. If the body is found, it might encourage extended discussion and re-appraisal of the real evidence, and maybe cast Shakespeare and the damn Tudors in a bad light for a change. You never know, it might even encourage consideration of how the Establishment and the media continue to work together to hoodwink public opinion.

2 comments:

Wendy S. said...

I've always doubted Richard being a humpback and also like you said all the nastiness that he seems to have engendered. Please let us know the updates.

JJ said...

I gather the hump comes from his portrait, Wendy, and has been shown to have been added later (by order of the Tudors.) And it seems he was perfectly 'correct' in grabbing the throne because his older brother was almost certainly illegitimate and everybody suspected as much.

The one thing that tends to damn him is the story of the princes in the Tower, but we have to remember that it was considered normal in mediaeval times for a monarch to 'remove' rival claimants who might become a rallying point for the opposition. And we don't know whether he actually had them killed.