tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/richard-iii-4743/articlesRichard III – The Conversation2022-10-21T14:46:53Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1928872022-10-21T14:46:53Z2022-10-21T14:46:53ZThe Lost King: why are we still obsessed with Richard III after 500 years?<p>The release of Stephen Frears’ film <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/oct/09/the-lost-king-review-sally-hawkins-richard-iii-dig-drama-leicester-car-park-stephen-frears-jeff-pope-steve-coogan">The Lost King</a> once more focuses attention on one of the most controversial figures in English history: <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-III-king-of-England">King Richard III</a>. The film is a compelling account of the struggle of a woman called Philippa Langley to find the grave of the 15th-century king, which was eventually discovered under a car park in Leicester.</p>
<p>Why does a king who died more than half a millennium ago continue to attract such interest? And why does this story of an (extra)ordinary woman’s quest to recover his remains – overcoming the massed battalions of academic orthodoxy on the way – hold such a fascination for us? To understand, we need to know something of late medieval history and more about modern Britain.</p>
<p>Richard III sat on the throne for just two years, but it was a controversial reign which remains fixed in the public consciousness for one main reason: he seized the crown from his young nephew Edward V. Denounced as illegitimate shortly after coming to the throne in 1483, Edward and his brother Richard – the “princes in the tower” – disappeared soon afterwards.</p>
<p>Richard’s guilt or innocence in the fate of the princes – arguably the greatest missing persons case in British history – is particularly important here. This is the area that my latest <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1468-229X.13100">research</a> examines.</p>
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<p>The first person to allocate specific responsibility for the disappearance – and death – of the two princes was the prominent lawyer, philosopher, politician and Roman Catholic saint, <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/thomas-mores-history-of-king-richard-iii">Sir Thomas More</a>. More’s account, written around 30 years after Richard’s death, has been treated with varying degrees of scepticism over the last 150 years.</p>
<p>Richard’s defenders have denounced it as “Tudor propaganda”, contrived years after the event to blacken the reputation of a king. Others have focused on the political philosophy in More’s work as an essentially metaphorical warning about tyranny and its dangers. </p>
<p>On one level, Frears’ film is about a passion for the past and for defending those cruelly maligned by the official historical record – a role which Richard fulfils well. There are those who believe that the king, who died fighting bravely for his cause against Henry Tudor during the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00546sp">War of the Roses</a>, was falsely accused of the murder of the young princes. There is something peculiarly and touchingly British about this concern for the underdog in history.</p>
<h2>Looking at the evidence</h2>
<p>My research reinforces the importance of More’s “orthodox” account of Richard’s guilt, which was subsequently propagated powerfully by <a href="https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/shakespeares-plays/richard-iii/">William Shakespeare</a> a century after the king’s death.</p>
<p>Focusing on the connections and continuities between More’s world and the England of 1483 about which he writes, my research demonstrates he was writing not just great literature and political philosophy, but about real people.</p>
<p>More’s history provides precise circumstantial detail for the focal point of the succession crisis of 1483. It is striking because central to it were several individuals who were still alive at the time of writing – survivors of the episode and their immediate families. So the account deserves to be treated more seriously as history rather than propaganda, imagination or theory.</p>
<p>Frears’ film represents an important contemporary tension between amateurs and enthusiasts on one hand, and professional expertise on the other. The film delivers an appealing message that ordinary members of the public can confound academic experts and overturn orthodoxy. </p>
<p>Richard is an unusual king. He may be accused of murder and tyranny, but he is also one of the few monarchs to have a society dedicated to enhancing his reputation. The <a href="https://richardiii.net/">Richard III Society</a> has more than 3,200 members and 30 groups in the UK, as well as branches in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the US.</p>
<h2>The challenges of history</h2>
<p>But what’s the attraction, and why the determination to acquit him of the alleged misdeeds? Some of the explanation lies in the fact that Richard’s death at <a href="https://www.oxbowbooks.com/oxbow/bosworth-1485-38465.html">the battle of Bosworth</a> in 1485 effectively marked the end of the War of the Roses – when power changed hands – and is often taken to mark a key transition between the medieval and modern periods.</p>
<p>So Richard represents the last flourishing of the middle ages, which from the late 18th century have been increasingly mythologised and admired, whether in the novels of <a href="https://archive.org/details/ivanhoe01scotgoog">Sir Walter Scott</a>, the art and craft of <a href="https://wmgallery.org.uk/collection">William Morris</a>, the architecture of <a href="http://www.thepuginsociety.co.uk/about-pugin--the-society.html">Augustus Pugin</a> or the music of <a href="https://rvwsociety.com/short-biography/%5D">Ralph Vaughan Williams</a>.</p>
<p>His time in the north of England before he came to the throne, and his ostentatious <a href="https://richardiii.net/richard-iii-his-world/his-life-and-death/the-north/">celebration of those connections</a> once he became king, also make him, for some, a champion of the north against the south – an increasingly prominent theme in contemporary debate across the 20th century and today.</p>
<p>It is no surprise that so many contributions to the study of Richard’s life and reign have occurred in a dialogue between people inside and outside the conventional bounds of medieval history.</p>
<p>A key example is Elizabeth MacKintosh’s enduringly popular 1951 novel, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/357036/the-daughter-of-time-by-tey-josephine/9781529156416">The Daughter of Time</a> (written as Josephine Tey), which sees a police inspector working through a sequence of historical “clues” to exonerate Richard as chief suspect in the disappearance of the princes. The author had also enjoyed great success with her play Richard of Bordeaux in 1932.</p>
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<img alt="The tomb of Richard III in Leicester Cathedral." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490623/original/file-20221019-26-naz4gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490623/original/file-20221019-26-naz4gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490623/original/file-20221019-26-naz4gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490623/original/file-20221019-26-naz4gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490623/original/file-20221019-26-naz4gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490623/original/file-20221019-26-naz4gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490623/original/file-20221019-26-naz4gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Richard’s remains were finally interred at Leicester Cathedral in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.alamy.com/M1TR9C">Ian Dagnall / Alamy</a></span>
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<p>In the 1950s, Laurence Olivier’s <a href="http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/467017/index.html">still-celebrated film version</a> of Shakespeare’s Richard III went out of its way in a prologue to identify its narrative as legend, strongly implying that the play’s condemnation of Richard should not be treated as a truthful picture of the real king. Like Mackintosh/Tey, those behind the film did not come from the conventional historical establishment.</p>
<p>The Lost King celebrates another example of this creative dialogue. As always, Richard’s appeal is energised by his connection to the central mystery of his reign and the fate of the princes in the tower. Insights into that mystery carry the potent attraction of hidden knowledge and access to long-concealed truths. This appeal was seen very clearly in the popularity of Dan Brown’s <a href="https://danbrown.com/the-davinci-code/">Da Vinci Code</a>.</p>
<p>It is an essential feature of this phenomenon that the “truth” is more likely to be accessed by the research of working outside conventional orthodoxies and perhaps by the ordinary man or woman in the street, as seen in The Lost King. And so, even as archival research, archaeology and forensic science open up more avenues to our understanding of Richard and his times, he will remain the most controversial monarch in our history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192887/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Thornton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Stephen Frears’ film is adding to the furore surrounding Richard III, England’s most controversial king. New research examines what prompts such ferocious debate.Tim Thornton, Professor of History and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of HuddersfieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1745022022-01-07T12:25:23Z2022-01-07T12:25:23ZRichard III’s reign was dogged by more rumours than just the Princes in the Tower<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439803/original/file-20220107-48044-1keawbs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Portrait of Richard III.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/use-this-image/?mkey=mw05304">National Portrait Gallery</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The fate of the 12-year-old Edward V and his younger brother Richard, “the Princes in the Tower” (a misnomer as one of the “princes”, Edward, was actually king), has been the subject of much speculation since their disappearance in June 1483. Edward V’s father, Edward IV, died on April 9 that year, leaving his son as king and a relatively peaceful kingdom. </p>
<p>Yet, within two months everything had changed: several stalwarts of Edward IV’s regime were dead after a series of violent coups by his only living brother Richard, duke of Gloucester who took the crown for himself on June 26 1483. The two princes were never seen again after going to the Tower of London on June 16 and rumours about their demise began circulating soon after.</p>
<p>Rumours about Richard’s hand in the demise of his nephews quickly arose. The most famous example is an account by an Italian in London at the time, <a href="https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-50257?rskey=0PdEWU&result=1">Dominic Mancini</a>, who reported rumours about the death of the princes almost immediately after their disappearance. Although these rumours were circulating, Richard did nothing to quell them. If they were alive, Richard never proved as much. At the very least, Richard can be charged with making himself easy to smear.</p>
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<img alt="Portrait of two young boys on a staircase." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439804/original/file-20220107-33400-bujhme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439804/original/file-20220107-33400-bujhme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439804/original/file-20220107-33400-bujhme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439804/original/file-20220107-33400-bujhme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439804/original/file-20220107-33400-bujhme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439804/original/file-20220107-33400-bujhme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439804/original/file-20220107-33400-bujhme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Princes in the Tower, Richard Duke of York and Duke of Norfolk King Edward V.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/use-this-image/?email=naomi.joseph%40theconversation.com&form=cc&mkey=mw197046">National Portrait Gallery, London</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>Richard’s reign and his character quickly became the subject of controversies that have continued for more than half a millennium. The overwhelming attention paid to the fate of the Princes in the Tower has meant the fact that Richard III’s two-year reign was dominated by rumour and conspiracy other than just that surrounding his nephews is often forgotten. </p>
<h2>Rumour and political turmoil</h2>
<p>Fake news and conspiracy theories need not only be associated <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-blame-social-media-for-conspiracy-theories-they-would-still-flourish-without-it-138635">with the internet</a>, or even the modern world. Richard III’s dramatic coup allowed rumour and gossip to flourish from the plausible to the outlandish.</p>
<p>On March 20 1485, two weeks after the death of his wife, Anne, Richard publicly denied one such outlandish rumour. The word was that he had poisoned her so he could marry his niece. This rumour was almost certainly false: Richard was grief stricken by Anne’s death and an incestuous marriage to his niece offered little tangible benefit. Yet, the rumour was deemed plausible because Richard’s son had died leaving him with no heir and a new, younger, wife may have given him more opportunities to produce one. Richard did have a ruthless streak and his late wife was his also his cousin. Richard was killed in battle five months later. Had he lived he would have almost certainly remarried but to whom we can only speculate and there is little to suggest that he would have seen his niece as a suitable candidate.</p>
<p>While subject to much gossip, Richard was not beyond using rumours and fabrication to his own advantage. He had his nephews declared illegitimate on the grounds that their father, Edward IV, was already married to another women, Dame Eleanor Butler. This made his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville bigamy and therefore illegal. Illegitimacy meant their two sons could not inherit the crown. This was most likely a fabrication but those living in England during his reign seem to have <a href="https://www.rsj.winchester.ac.uk/articles/abstract/10.21039/rsj.v3i1.75/">at least gone along with this story</a>.</p>
<p>Richard III usurped his nephew after several decades of intermittent political conflict. There had been two civil wars in the previous 25 years. Any dramatic changes in the governance of the country were bound to set the rumour mill into overdrive. In such circumstances the job of disentangling fact from fiction and identifying misinformation could be almost impossible.</p>
<h2>Public interest</h2>
<p>These and other stories are overwhelming overlooked when people talk about Richard III. To this day every shred of new evidence that emerges about the possible fate of the princes gains attention, bringing this sole story back to the fore. </p>
<p>One of the first detailed accounts linking the deaths of the princes to Richard was written by Sir Thomas More, who would go on to become Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor. In it More cites two men, Miles Forest and John Dighton, as the murderers who he states were recruited by a servant of Richard III. Many have discounted this story as “Tudor propaganda”.</p>
<p>However, <a href="https://theconversation.com/princes-in-the-tower-how-i-established-a-direct-link-between-richard-iii-and-the-two-murders-159836">a new archival discovery found</a> Thomas More had contact with two of Miles Forest’s sons – one of whom was working for Cardinal Wolsey and the other in Henry VIII’s chamber. It is assumed that More would have had contact with them when writing about Richard III. While this is not conclusive proof of Richard’s culpability it is perhaps as good as we can expect. </p>
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<img alt="Portrait of Thomas More." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439805/original/file-20220107-13-1iccnbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439805/original/file-20220107-13-1iccnbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439805/original/file-20220107-13-1iccnbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439805/original/file-20220107-13-1iccnbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439805/original/file-20220107-13-1iccnbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439805/original/file-20220107-13-1iccnbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439805/original/file-20220107-13-1iccnbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Sir Thomas More wrote the first account about the suspected murder of Richard III’s nephews.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/use-this-image/?mkey=mw04514">National Portrait Gallery, London.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>Yet, other evidence has been brought forth claiming that <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/richard-iii-didnt-murder-princes-25809860">Edward V was kept in hiding for his own safety</a> by Richard after he made an agreement with Edward’s mother. Edward apparently lived out his days in the south west under the name John Evans. This is not impossible, though it is highly unlikely.</p>
<p>What is impossible is to prove beyond reasonable doubt what happened to the princes. Indeed, when the evidence subjected to trial by jury at the Old Bailey around 500 years after the events, in 1984, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6pnqnlsvcw">Richard was found not guilty</a>. Yet, the overwhelming consensus among historians is that Richard probably had some hand in the killing of the two princes. A rebellion in the autumn of 1483 sought to replace Richard with the exiled Henry Tudor (the victor of Bosworth two years later), presumably under the belief that the princes were no longer alive.</p>
<p>The prevalence of this murder mystery in public discussions of Richard III’s life is unfortunate. Richard only reigned for 26 months, being killed at the battle of Bosworth then <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-panic-the-car-park-skeleton-is-almost-certainly-richard-iii-25109">most likely being buried in Leicester</a>. Talk about Richard’s culpability risks reducing the study of history to a search for heroes and villains, and says little about medieval society or its values.</p>
<p>Without understanding those societies, history becomes no more than a collection of facts designed to create good guys and bad guys. In many cases, who the heroes and villains of history were <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/perspective-drives-our-interpretation-of-heroes-and-villains-in-history/">is a matter of perspective</a>. Surely it is more interesting to consider why people held certain beliefs or why certain rumours and false news flourished than to continually revisit a whodunit?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174502/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gordon McKelvie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rumours and gossip dominated his short reign and the stories were more than just about the Princes in the Tower.Gordon McKelvie, Senior Lecturer in History, University of WinchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1598362021-07-27T10:20:42Z2021-07-27T10:20:42ZPrinces in the Tower: how I established a direct link between Richard III and the two murders<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399775/original/file-20210510-17-14ydkm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public Domain/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is perhaps one of the greatest murder mystery stories in British history – a young king and his brother simply vanish. The boys, now dubbed “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/princes_in_tower.html">the Princes in the Tower</a>”, were held in the Tower of London in 1483, but disappeared from public view, never to be seen again.</p>
<p>Richard III has long been held responsible for the murder of his nephews in a dispute about succession to the throne. But Richard’s defenders have pointed to a lack of hard evidence to connect the king to the disappearance of the princes – who were aged just 12 and nine when Richard took the throne in June 1483.</p>
<p>But I believe <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-229X.13100">my recent research</a> provides the most powerful evidence yet as to who the boys’ murderers were. And it connects the murderers directly to <a href="https://theconversation.com/nine-blows-to-the-head-and-then-he-was-dead-forensics-shed-light-on-killing-of-richard-iii-31751">Richard III</a>.</p>
<h2>The princes</h2>
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<img alt="Two young boys dressed in black stand in a tower." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399738/original/file-20210510-16-rqf32c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399738/original/file-20210510-16-rqf32c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399738/original/file-20210510-16-rqf32c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399738/original/file-20210510-16-rqf32c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399738/original/file-20210510-16-rqf32c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1223&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399738/original/file-20210510-16-rqf32c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1223&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399738/original/file-20210510-16-rqf32c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1223&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Painting of the two princes, Edward and Richard, in the Tower, 1483 by Sir John Everett Millais.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Princes.jpg">John Everett Millais, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>The first detailed account linking the deaths of the princes to Richard can be found in <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/thomas-mores-history-of-king-richard-iii">the History of King Richard III</a> by Sir Thomas More, a public servant who from 1518 served on Henry VIII’s Privy Council and later became Lord Chancellor (Henry succeeded to the throne in 1509, after his father defeated Richard III in 1485). In his book, written about 30 years later, More names two men, Miles Forest and John Dighton, as the murderers. And says they were recruited by Sir James Tyrell, a servant of Richard III at his orders.</p>
<p>More claims that Richard felt he wouldn’t be fully accepted as king while the boys were still alive so he made a plan to get rid of them. He ordered the Constable of the Tower to give Tyrell the keys to the Tower for one night. Tyrell planned to murder the boys in their beds and chose Forest, one of their servants, and Dighton, who looked after his horses, to do the deed. All the other servants were ordered to leave so the murder could be carried out. Then Tyrell ordered the men to bury the boys at the foot of some stairs, deep in the ground.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399737/original/file-20210510-5598-ne6i3d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399737/original/file-20210510-5598-ne6i3d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399737/original/file-20210510-5598-ne6i3d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399737/original/file-20210510-5598-ne6i3d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399737/original/file-20210510-5598-ne6i3d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399737/original/file-20210510-5598-ne6i3d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399737/original/file-20210510-5598-ne6i3d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399737/original/file-20210510-5598-ne6i3d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thomas More wrote his History of King Richard III between around 1513 and 1518.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/thomas-mores-history-of-king-richard-iii">British Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Written over 30 years after the events, it is easy for Richard’s supporters to dismiss More’s version of events. Indeed, many people have <a href="https://zenodo.org/record/1431672#.YJqWbahKiUk">questioned this story</a>, seeing it as “Tudor propaganda”, designed to blacken the name of a dead king. It has even been suggested that the names of the alleged murderers were made up by More. </p>
<p>But I’ve discovered that the names More gives for the men who are alleged to have killed the princes (Forest and Dighton) are not imaginary, but real people. </p>
<h2>Finding the clues</h2>
<p>By the middle of the 1510s when More was working on his book, Edward Forest, son of suspect Miles Forest was a servant of Henry VIII’s chamber, and Miles, his brother, was employed by top adviser Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. In this way, the sons were living and working alongside More – meaning he would have been able to speak with them directly.</p>
<p>Both brothers were also the recipients of royal grants and leases of royal lands and offices. This shows how favoured they were by Henry VIII and builds on <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-229X.13100">evidence</a> I have discovered to suggest the brothers were at the heart of the Tudor regime.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399739/original/file-20210510-16-uhyta6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399739/original/file-20210510-16-uhyta6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399739/original/file-20210510-16-uhyta6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399739/original/file-20210510-16-uhyta6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399739/original/file-20210510-16-uhyta6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399739/original/file-20210510-16-uhyta6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399739/original/file-20210510-16-uhyta6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399739/original/file-20210510-16-uhyta6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Richard III of England, painted c.1520.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Richard_III_earliest_surviving_portrait.jpg">Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I’ve also discovered that when More was composing his other great work, Utopia, in 1515 – and very likely thinking through the History of King Richard III – Miles Forest junior was a messenger between Henry VIII’s court in England and the embassy on which More served. This connects More’s world very directly to the story he is telling, and to the man he says is the leading murderer of the princes in the Tower.</p>
<p>This is a story that is not going away anytime soon. Indeed, the recent announcement of a <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/steve-coogan-stephen-frears-teaming-for-the-lost-king-about-woman-who-found-king-richard-iiis-remains">new film</a> about the rediscovery of Richard III, written by Steve Coogan and Stephen Frears, shows that interest in the controversial monarch is as strong as ever. </p>
<p>And while my latest evidence does not prove definitively that Richard III murdered his nephews, it is certainly clear proof that More wrote his history when he was in direct contact with the men who were closely associated with this most notorious of crimes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159836/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Thornton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Account of the murders written by Thomas More was based more in fact than fiction.Tim Thornton, Professor of History and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of HuddersfieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1364092020-04-21T08:12:47Z2020-04-21T08:12:47ZHow to read Shakespeare for pleasure<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329522/original/file-20200421-82672-10gj7rb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C15%2C2600%2C2576&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Martin's Droeshout portrait of William Shakespeare (1623)</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bodleian Library, Oxford.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In recent years the orthodoxy that Shakespeare can only be truly appreciated on stage has <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11956151/Sir-Ian-McKellen-Dont-bother-reading-Shakespeare.html">become widespread</a>. But, as with many of our habits and assumptions, lockdown gives us a chance to think differently. Now could be the time to dust off the old collected works, and read some Shakespeare, just as people have been doing for more than 400 years. </p>
<p>Many people have said they find reading Shakespeare a bit daunting, so here are five tips for how to make it simpler and more pleasurable.</p>
<h2>1. Ignore the footnotes</h2>
<p>If your edition has footnotes, pay no attention to them. They distract you from your reading and de-skill you, so that you begin to check everything even when you actually know what it means. </p>
<p>It’s useful to remember that nobody ever understood all this stuff – have a look at Macbeth’s knotty “<a href="https://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/quotes/soliloquies/if-it-were-done-when-tis-done/">If it were done when ‘tis done</a>” speech in Act 1 Scene 7 for an example (and nobody ever spoke in these long, fancy speeches either – Macbeth’s speech is again a case in point). Footnotes are just the editor’s attempt to deny this.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329075/original/file-20200420-152567-11dndy9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C21%2C4881%2C3642&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329075/original/file-20200420-152567-11dndy9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C21%2C4881%2C3642&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329075/original/file-20200420-152567-11dndy9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329075/original/file-20200420-152567-11dndy9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329075/original/file-20200420-152567-11dndy9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329075/original/file-20200420-152567-11dndy9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329075/original/file-20200420-152567-11dndy9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329075/original/file-20200420-152567-11dndy9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shakespeare plays hand bound by Virginia Woolf in her bedroom at Monk’s House, Rodmell, Sussex, UK.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ian Alexanber/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Try to keep going and get the gist – and remember, when Shakespeare uses very long or esoteric words, or highly involved sentences, it’s often a deliberate sign that the character is trying to deceive himself or others (the psychotic jealousy of Leontes in <a href="https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/shakespeares-plays/winters-tale/">The Winter’s Tale</a>, for instance, expresses itself in unusual vocabulary and contorted syntax).</p>
<h2>2. Pay attention to the shape of the lines</h2>
<p>The layout of speeches on the page is like a kind of musical notation or choreography. Long speeches slow things down – and, if all the speeches end at the end of a complete line, that gives proceedings a stately, hierarchical feel – as if the characters are all giving speeches rather than interacting. </p>
<p>Short speeches quicken the pace and enmesh characters in relationships, particularly when they start to share lines (you can see this when one line is indented so it completes the half line above), a sign of real intimacy in Shakespeare’s soundscape. </p>
<p>Blank verse, the unrhymed ten-beat <a href="http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/sonnetstyle.html">iambic pentamenter structure</a> of the Shakespearean line, varies across his career. Early plays – the histories and comedies – tend to end each line with a piece of punctuation, so that the shape of the verse is audible. John of Gaunt’s famous speech from Richard II is a good example.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,<br>
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Later plays – the tragedies and the romances – tend towards a more flexible form of blank verse, with the sense of the phrase often running over the line break. What tends to be significant is contrast, between and within the speech rhythms of scenes or characters (have a look at Henry IV Part 1 and you’ll see what I mean).</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6u009U1q69A?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>3. Read small sections</h2>
<p>Shakespeare’s plays aren’t novels and – let’s face it – we’re not usually in much doubt about how things will work out. Reading for the plot, or reading from start to finish, isn’t necessarily the way to get the most out of the experience. Theatre performances are linear and in real time, but reading allows you the freedom to pace yourself, to flick back and forwards, to give some passages more attention and some less. </p>
<p>Shakespeare’s first readers probably <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/apr/01/reading-shakespeare-book-plays-emma-smith">did exactly this</a>, zeroing in on the bits they liked best, or reading selectively for the passages that caught their eye or that they remembered from performance, and we should do the same. Look up <a href="https://shakespeare.folger.edu">where a famous quotation comes</a>: “All the world’s a stage”, “To be or not to be”, “I was adored once too” – and read either side of that. Read the ending, look at one long speech or at a piece of dialogue – cherry pick. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pjJEXkbeL-o?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>One great liberation of reading Shakespeare for fun is just that: skip the bits that don’t work, or move on to another play. Nobody is going to set you an exam.</p>
<h2>4. Think like a director</h2>
<p>On the other hand, thinking about how these plays might work on stage can be engaging and creative for some readers. Shakespeare’s plays tended to have <a href="https://www.shakespeareswords.com/Public/LanguageCompanion/ThemesAndTopics.aspx?TopicId=37">minimal stage directions</a>, so most indications of action in modern editions of the plays have been added in by editors. </p>
<p>Most directors begin work on the play by throwing all these instructions away and working them out afresh by asking questions about what’s happening and why. Stage directions – whether original or editorial – are rarely descriptive, so adding in your chosen adverbs or adjectives to flesh out what’s happening on your paper stage can help clarify your interpretations of character and action.</p>
<p>One good tip is to try to remember characters who are not speaking. What’s happening on the faces of the other characters while Katherine delivers her long, controversial speech of apparent wifely subjugation at the end of The Taming of the Shrew?</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ti1Oh9imI8I?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>5. Don’t worry</h2>
<p>The biggest obstacle to enjoying Shakespeare is that niggling sense that understanding the works is a kind of literary IQ test. But understanding Shakespeare means accepting his open-endedness and ambiguity. It’s not that there’s a right meaning hidden away as a reward for intelligence or tenacity – these plays prompt questions rather than supplying answers.</p>
<p>Would Macbeth have killed the king without the witches’ prophecy? Exactly – that’s the question the play wants us to debate, and it gives us evidence to argue on both sides. Was it right for the conspirators to assassinate Julius Caesar? Good question, the play says: I’ve been wondering that myself. </p>
<p>Returning to Shakespeare outside the dutiful contexts of the classroom and the theatre can liberate something you might not immediately associate with his works: pleasure.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136409/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Smith is the author of This Is Shakespeare, published by Penguin Random House.</span></em></p>The Bard’s plays have an unfair reputation for being hard. You’re probably reading them in the wrong way.Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1132272019-03-11T15:19:39Z2019-03-11T15:19:39ZRichard Burbage: Shakespeare’s leading man and the reason Hamlet was fat<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262933/original/file-20190308-155502-hj3m5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C1128%2C1073&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">RIchard Burbage: actor, theatre owner and entrepreneur. Born, January 5 1558, died March 12 1619.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Unknown artist</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s 400 years since the death of Richard Burbage, the first person to play the roles of Hamlet, Lear, Othello and Macbeth in the original version of the Globe in London. As far as Shakespeare was concerned, Burbage was both a blessing and a curse. He was a good actor, and he seems to have been a particular draw for female audience members – <a href="http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/richardiiiscenes.html">an anecdote</a> by the contemporary diarist <a href="https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/exhibition/document/john-manninghams-diary-earliest-mention-twelfth-night-and-shakespeare-anecdote">John Manningham</a> tells of a citizen’s wife who was so smitten after seeing Burbage play Richard III that she sent a note backstage to make an assignation, only for it to be intercepted by Shakespeare, who went off to the rendezvous himself with the remark that “William the Conqueror was before Richard the Third”. </p>
<p>This story may or may not be true, but the story would never have been told if Burbage had not had sex appeal.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263154/original/file-20190311-86710-1nwh819.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263154/original/file-20190311-86710-1nwh819.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263154/original/file-20190311-86710-1nwh819.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263154/original/file-20190311-86710-1nwh819.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263154/original/file-20190311-86710-1nwh819.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263154/original/file-20190311-86710-1nwh819.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1251&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263154/original/file-20190311-86710-1nwh819.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1251&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263154/original/file-20190311-86710-1nwh819.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1251&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">William Shakepeare’s first folio, dedicated to the Earl of Pembroke in 1623.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But Burbage seems not to have aged well. In the mid-1590s he was playing Romeo and climbing up to Juliet’s balcony, but by the time of Hamlet, which was first performed in about 1600, Gertrude’s remark “he’s fat, and scant of breath” probably got an appreciative laugh from the audience. Hamlet’s trip to England in Act Four of Hamlet looks a lot like Shakespeare engineering a rest for Burbage before the exertions of the fight scene in Act Five.</p>
<p>Five years after playing Hamlet, Burbage was playing King Lear, who – we are told – is over 80 years old. That was overstating the case a bit – Burbage would have been about 40 at the time – but a year or so later he is the male lead in Antony and Cleopatra – a grizzled old warrior who is repeatedly said to be past his best. By 1611, Prospero in The Tempest, perhaps the last role that Shakespeare intended to write for Burbage, is announcing that every third thought will be of his grave. </p>
<p>And eight years later Burbage was indeed dead, leading the Earl of Pembroke – to whom <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/shakespeares-first-folio">Shakespeare’s First Folio</a> would be dedicated four years later – to decide that he <a href="http://bloggingshakespeare.com/the-first-great-shakespearian-actor">could not face going to see a play</a> because it was “so soon after the loss of my old acquaintance, Burbage”.</p>
<h2>Supporting cast</h2>
<p>Burbage was Shakespeare’s most famous actor – but he was not the only one, and the things that the other actors could or couldn’t do had an impact on what was needed from him. Shakespeare wrote for a company of ten men and four boys – and the four boys had to act all the female roles. So if you have ever wondered why Romeo’s mother dies so suddenly and doesn’t have her own death scene, the answer is simple – the boy actor who had played her is <a href="https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/research/starcrossed/enter-montague-alone-5-3-208-215/">already on stage</a> as the page.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263155/original/file-20190311-86678-8qz9rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263155/original/file-20190311-86678-8qz9rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263155/original/file-20190311-86678-8qz9rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263155/original/file-20190311-86678-8qz9rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263155/original/file-20190311-86678-8qz9rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263155/original/file-20190311-86678-8qz9rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263155/original/file-20190311-86678-8qz9rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Old Globe theatre — a print of the original theatre in London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wenceslas Hollar (1642)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Early in his career, Shakespeare enjoyed the services of two really exceptional boy actors – they played Rosalind and Celia in As You Like It, and could learn long and complicated speeches. But just after Shakespeare wrote Twelfth Night, his best boy actor suffered the misfortune of <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_7wRDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA101&lpg=PA101&dq=shakespeare+rewrote+twelfth+night+after+actor+playing+viola%27s+voice+broke&source=bl&ots=NwuJ1kYBf7&sig=ACfU3U2G3PakUwyFBP2raYusrMMq7rr1iw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwilw_-orvrgAhV_URUIHYkBBC0Q6AEwEnoECBAQAQ#v=onepage&q=shakespeare%20rewrote%20twelfth%20night%20after%20actor%20playing%20viola's%20voice%20broke&f=false">having his voice break</a>. We can see this from the way Shakespeare designed the play – Viola, the female lead, says at the beginning that her plan on entering Orsino’s household is to sing, but in the event she never does. Instead Feste the clown is improbably presented as the resident singer in Orsino’s household as well as the Countess Olivia’s. Shakespeare revised the play, but the joins still show.</p>
<p>For a few years after that the parts Shakespeare writes for women are much less ambitious and demanding: Cordelia in King Lear speaks fewer than 100 lines – though that might be partly because it is easier to create an impression of virtue if you do not shine too bright a light on it, and Cordelia is the one good daughter who must be strongly contrasted with the two bad ones.</p>
<p>By the time of Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare had a new performer at his disposal whose Cleopatra could give Burbage’s Antony a run for his money. The boy who played the Egyptian queen had to go through some mercurial mood changes – and Cleopatra dominates the stage in the fifth act after Antony has very unusually died in the fourth.</p>
<p>Even this mark of weakness, though, helps us remember that throughout his writing career, when Shakespeare thought “hero” he thought of Richard Burbage.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113227/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Hopkins is co-editor of the journal Shakespeare and a member of the board of the British Shakespeare Association.</span></em></p>All of Shakespeare’s major male roles were written for Richard Burbage who died in the 1619s.Lisa Hopkins, Professor of Renaissance Literature, Sheffield Hallam UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/857122018-06-25T09:15:22Z2018-06-25T09:15:22ZShakespeare, DNA, and why car parks are a key part of British culture<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224449/original/file-20180622-26570-57ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/moscow-russiaapril-10-2018-multilevel-parking-1072251956?src=gbd070WJoullnDrZpjsiEA-2-88">OlegDoroshin / Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A bevy of Shakespeare productions are currently taking place in a <a href="https://www.minsterfm.com/news/local/2597126/video---roof-goes-on-yorks-shakespeare-theatre/">pop-up Elizabethan-style amphitheatre</a> in York, England. Based on the Rose, a famous Elizabethan public playhouse in Southwark, London, and <a href="http://www.shakespearesrosetheatre.com/">named after it</a>, the construction sits in the York’s castle car park.</p>
<p>Indeed, car parks seem to be intersecting with English history quite a bit lately. Most famously, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/richard-iii-4743">Richard III</a>’s skeleton was discovered underneath one in Leicester in 2013. It’s appropriate, then, that one of the first plays to be shown in York’s replica theatre will be Richard III, a tribute to the city’s infamous son and one that resonates in a slightly macabre way with the site of the 2013 discovery.</p>
<p>Performance Studies’ heavyweight, Richard Schechner, famously <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB6zTUfEODc">asserted</a> that while not everything is a performance, anything can be studied as a performance. This contention can be applied to car parks. It is hard to imagine a symbol of modernity more brutish than the architectural monstrosity of the multi-storey car park, with its layer upon layer of automated machines. The relentless appropriation and occupation of public space signalled by concrete car parks stand in stark opposition to the delicate skeletons, historical timbers and green landscapes that they have erased and replaced.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1008742415547629569"}"></div></p>
<h2>Car parks in history</h2>
<p>But of course, car parks are themselves subject to a history that they both influenced and propelled during the 20th century. The first multi-storey was built at Denman Street in London in 1901, and the company National Car Parks (NCP) was founded 30 years later by Colonel Frederick Lucas. </p>
<p>The remarkable rise of NCP was predicated on its regeneration of the derelict sites of post-war Britain, transforming bombsites into parking spaces in a way which helped to mould the revival of towns and cities, as well as their definition as centres of consumption. The role that NCP has played in shaping the consumerism of 21st-century British national identity means that there is a curious tension between the socialist overtones of the company’s name, and the extraordinary success of this private company, which <a href="https://www.ncp.co.uk/download/1719.9/">posted profits of £28m</a> in 2016.</p>
<p>While car parks seem to be a firm aspect of our present, they have sometimes also assisted in keeping the past alive. In Detroit, the former <a href="https://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2011/04/michigan-theater-detroits-famous-renaissance-style-parking-garage/">Michigan Theatre</a> is often acknowledged as the most beautiful car park in the world, originally a French Renaissance-style venue established in 1926 that fell into decline alongside the city in the 1970s. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224447/original/file-20180622-26552-uxnfcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224447/original/file-20180622-26552-uxnfcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224447/original/file-20180622-26552-uxnfcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224447/original/file-20180622-26552-uxnfcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224447/original/file-20180622-26552-uxnfcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224447/original/file-20180622-26552-uxnfcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224447/original/file-20180622-26552-uxnfcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Michigan Theatre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bobjagendorf/5124336314/">bobjagendorf/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Its transformation into a garage means that drivers can still marvel at the theatre’s decaying glory when they visit Detroit. Park up and admire its great arched window, faded decorative ceiling, ruined remnants of carpets and curtains, the façade of its abandoned stage. Without the car park, all of the building’s languishing grandeur would be invisible. But the building has even more to offer history than first appears as, funnily enough, it was constructed on the site of the Edison Illuminating Company, where Henry Ford built his first car in 1896.</p>
<h2>DNA and Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre</h2>
<p>Car parks can therefore tell us something about our cultural genealogy – and increasingly, genealogy is a primary way that we conceptualise our connection to history. </p>
<p>The growth in popularity of websites offering saliva tests to determine your ethnic origins or TV programmes focusing on family lineage – whether the DNA tests of the Jeremy Kyle show or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaMyFe6sPRg">the uncovering of Danny Dyer’s royal ancestry</a> in Who Do You Think You Are – attest to this. This is enough of a phenomenon that interdisciplinary researcher Jerome de Groot recently launched his <a href="http://projects.alc.manchester.ac.uk/double-helix-history/about/">Double Helix History</a> project, an investigation into the ways in which “DNA sequencing changes the way that people think about themselves and their relationship to the past”. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MaMyFe6sPRg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>It is telling how many times DNA also recurs in the language surrounding theatre and car parks. James Cundell, chief executive of Lunchbox Productions, who are producing the shows at Shakespeare’s Rose, claims an “<a href="https://www.minsterfm.com/news/local/2587400/rose-theatre-reveals-ancestral-link-to-shakespeares-first-folio/">ancestral link</a>”, for instance, with Shakespeare’s First Folio as a distant relative of one of its editors, Henry Condell. And in 2013, DNA proved crucial in confirming that the Leicester car park skeleton was in fact Richard of York, his identity authenticated through the <a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-a-hunch-identifying-richard-iii-with-dna-11999">genetic testing of living relatives</a>.</p>
<p>Multi-storeys even exhibit what their architects call “double helixes” in the design of ramps, which mean that cars ascending the car park never converge with those on their descent.</p>
<h2>Car parks and future memory</h2>
<p>These ideas may seem provisional, coincidental, unconnected, comical even. But looking at car parks as a performance, their recurrence in recent history is intriguing. It is possible that in this new car park theatre, we’re witnessing the work of British collective memory in action and that, in the future, car parks will perform a quite different role in our history than they do at present. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224451/original/file-20180622-26576-18sr3du.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224451/original/file-20180622-26576-18sr3du.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224451/original/file-20180622-26576-18sr3du.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224451/original/file-20180622-26576-18sr3du.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224451/original/file-20180622-26576-18sr3du.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224451/original/file-20180622-26576-18sr3du.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224451/original/file-20180622-26576-18sr3du.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A future site of cultural memory?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/port-glasgow-scotland-uk-june-12th-1114292465?src=8Dm9bX08Pfjz0e_S5Q1-Mw-2-11">TreasureGalore/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The car park has already taken on an almost mythic status in the Richard III narrative for instance, irrevocably linking English history, and Shakespeare’s play, with this supremely modern invention. Elsewhere, de Groot has <a href="http://www.historytoday.com/jerome-de-groot/royal-oak">written about</a> how the object of the Royal Oak, in which Charles Stuart hid in 1651, has taken root in English cultural memory in surprising ways, manifesting in pubs, on coins, or the name of warships, becoming “a site of tourism and memory, something to be owned, a place to drink, something to spend”.</p>
<p>Is it completely unfeasible that the car park might perform history in the same way as the oak tree in time to come? Car parks, currently perceived as sites of modernity that must be dug up or covered over in order to access the “truth” of pre-modernity, may in time emerge as objects that are more delicately-intertwined with British memorial culture than they currently seem.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85712/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eleanor Rycroft does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Car parks seem to be intersecting with English history quite a bit lately.Eleanor Rycroft, Lecturer in Theatre and Performance, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/765712017-04-24T01:49:21Z2017-04-24T01:49:21ZLies, monsters and Kate Mulvany’s intensely human portrayal of Richard 3<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166383/original/file-20170423-22929-500eeu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kate Mulvany as Richard 3: her acting of deformity seems to tell its own story.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As we all know, the first line of Shakespeare’s Richard 3 reads, “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York.” Strip away the Elizabethan rhetoric, and the line simply signifies that the civil war that has plagued England through the mid-15th century is over.</p>
<p>But the war is not over: to better secure the peace, the Yorkist king Edward has taken as his queen a partisan of the rival Lancaster house. The queen’s family, the Woodvilles, are social-climbers, and no sooner do they acquire noble positions than they plot to supplant the ruling Plantagenet line. They imprison the king’s brother Clarence on falsified charges of treason and then have him assassinated. When the king dies of natural causes, they collude to hastily install his 12-year-old son as his successor. </p>
<p>Other noble houses of England, fearing the consequences of another child king, petition Richard of Gloucester, the king’s surviving brother, to take the throne. As king, Richard dutifully smashes the Woodville faction and governs over England until 1485, when he is assassinated by a cadre of exiled Bretons. The leader of this coup d’état, Henry Tudor, seizes the English throne for himself and thus severs the Plantagenet line.</p>
<p>The Tudors go on to rule England from the 15th century until the early 17th century. But still, the war is not over: in the late 16th century, the young English playwright William Shakespeare writes a tragedy on the popular subject of Richard III. In obedience to the political orthodoxy of his time, Shakespeare portrays Richard as a madman, a grotesque and deformed beast who slaughters friend, foe and family alike in his lust for power. </p>
<p>The play is a hagiography: Henry Tudor, the slayer of such a dragon, is surely an agent of God, and his bloodline is therefore fit to rule England in perpetuity. Yet Shakespeare’s Richard is also intelligent: he sees through the devices of politics and learns to wield them to his own ends. </p>
<p>He meditates on the power of “lies, well-steeled with weighty arguments”: as we watch him strut across the stage, deceiving and cajoling, he teaches us that his victims are also deceivers. In Shakespeare, there is no truth in history. There is only the lie, and the counter-lie.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166386/original/file-20170424-12629-1c76tfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166386/original/file-20170424-12629-1c76tfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166386/original/file-20170424-12629-1c76tfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166386/original/file-20170424-12629-1c76tfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166386/original/file-20170424-12629-1c76tfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166386/original/file-20170424-12629-1c76tfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166386/original/file-20170424-12629-1c76tfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166386/original/file-20170424-12629-1c76tfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richard (Kate Mulvany) and Queen Elizabeth (Meredith Penman.)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Peter Evans, the director of the Bell Shakespeare Company’s new production of Richard 3, boldly proclaims that for our times, the play is “completely about Trump”. He argues in the program notes that Richard’s path to the throne exposes </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the way power is grabbed … language is degraded … fear is used to incite loyalty. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course, a depiction of Richard as a master of spin may reflect the anxieties of our current political culture, but how can this analogy be reconciled with the knowledge that the play itself is Tudor propaganda? Would Evans have us accept the simplistic proposition that Richard’s villainy is also the villainy of Trump, or does he mean that the play’s fanciful vilification of Richard exposes the myth of villainy that our culture is all too ready to swallow?</p>
<p>The answer may not be immediately clear, for despite the director’s claim of political significance, his vision of the play doesn’t seem to be much about anything. The performance incorporates many bizarre touches that are typical of the Bell’s recent work: outlandish dance numbers, choral singing by the actors, and (my favourite) a longueur in which members of the cast stand for an improbable interval, mutely chewing on strawberries.</p>
<p>None of these elements seem to connect with what is clearly the production’s anchor and focus: Kate Mulvany’s intensely human portrayal of Richard. Mulvany’s acting of deformity seems to tell its own story, sometimes at odds with the rest of the production, but there are elements in her performance that aptly analogise the current mood of our political culture.</p>
<p>Richard is a fearsome political adversary, both admired and despised by his peers. Among them, only a minority ever dare connect his villainy to his deformity. There is a scene early in the performance where the aggrieved queen Margaret (Sandy Gore) casts a series of curses on the Woodvilles and Yorks. </p>
<p>Richard remains calm while Margaret brutally condemns his character. He smirks knowingly out at the audience. Suddenly, her tone shifts. </p>
<p>She describes Richard’s deformity as a violation of nature, and his birth as a “slander” on his mother’s womb. Richard’s face goes white. </p>
<p>He drops his gaze and moves away from her. Her curse builds until he cuts her off with an emphatic “Margaret!” </p>
<p>It is clear to all present, even the audience, that a line has been crossed.</p>
<p>Despite its indecency, Margaret’s curse seems to legitimise such ad hominem attacks for other characters in the play. In a later scene, Richard’s mother (Sarah Woods) repeats the accusations, cursing the day she delivered him into the world. Likewise, the Prince of Wales (Rose Riley), played as an energetic and factious youth, shows his contempt for Richard by physically intimidating him with a lit cigarette.</p>
<p>As these attacks escalate through the performance, Richard’s shame and injured humanity become difficult to watch. He loses his coherence, both as an individual human, and as a political construct. He moves from scene to scene, trying to find a centre in the play: sometimes he is the hero, sometimes the villain, sometimes its victim.</p>
<p>Hate is a powerful feeling, and it is no less so for those who view themselves as powerless. In Richard 3, it is the victims who play out these fantasias of hate. They resemble our own culture’s chorus of “voiceless” subjects, for whom social media has granted the opportunity to play out hatred to its fullest and most unrestrained expression. </p>
<p>Under the banner of “resistance”, these subjects do not hesitate to degrade their own humanity by robbing their enemies of theirs: casual slurs, sex and body shaming, execrations of mental illness and schadenfreude are all justified by the assumption that they are on the right side of history.</p>
<p>In an interview, director Peter Evans laments that, after 400 years, the world still has not learned the hard lessons of Richard 3. It is some consolation, then, that Mulvany’s performance reminds us that Shakespeare still has the power to reveal the true monsters of our culture.</p>
<p><em>Bell Shakespeare’s Richard 3 is at the Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne until May 7.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76571/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christian Griffiths does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mulvany’s performance reminds us that Shakespeare still has the power to reveal the true monsters of our culture.Christian Griffiths, Doctorate in Literary and Cultural Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/388622015-03-26T06:34:01Z2015-03-26T06:34:01ZWe’re all related to Richard III – it’s just a matter of degree<p>So, Benedict Cumberbatch, national treasure, is related to Richard III. His upcoming role as the infamous king in the next instalment of The Hollow Crown could not be more appropriate, and he is also <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-32040692">to read</a> a specially composed poem by Carol Ann Duffy at the reinterment service. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2897477/Benedict-Cumberbatch-closely-related-Richard-III-QUEEN-actor-prepares-play-15th-century-monarch-new-BBC-series.html">Widely reported</a> in the press, it was the genealogical research carried out by my colleague, Kevin Schürer, that showed that Benedict is related to Richard III through Edward III (though some of the press rather erroneously stated that this relationship had been confirmed by a DNA test. </p>
<p>Unfortunately perhaps for Cumberbatch – I’m not sure how he feels about such things – DNA analysis couldn’t be used to prove Cumberbatch’s relationship. This is because of the way our DNA is inherited through the generations and the way he’s related to the former king of England through a mixture of male and female ancestors.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75955/original/image-20150325-14526-4sxmus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75955/original/image-20150325-14526-4sxmus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75955/original/image-20150325-14526-4sxmus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75955/original/image-20150325-14526-4sxmus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75955/original/image-20150325-14526-4sxmus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75955/original/image-20150325-14526-4sxmus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75955/original/image-20150325-14526-4sxmus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The distant cousin as Richard III.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Neal Street Productions/Carnival/NBCUniversal/Thirteen/Robert Viglasky</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>DNA dead-end</h2>
<p>The vast majority of our DNA is a mixture of that inherited from our ancestors. This is actually quite straightforward to understand. Each of us inherits half our DNA from our mother and half from our father. They, in turn, inherited half from each of their parents: in simple terms you halve the amount of DNA you expect to share with a direct ancestor in each generation (provided there haven’t been any relationships between relatives in the genealogy). Richard III lived some 500 years ago and 21 generations exist between Richard and Benedict (through John of Gaunt, the shortest link between them). This means Benedict would be expected to share ~ 1/1,048,576 of his DNA with Richard through this relationship. </p>
<p>Alongside this there is a shuffling of DNA (known as recombination) which occurs before each of our parents passes down the portion of DNA we are to inherit. This means that we don’t necessarily inherit equal amounts of DNA from each of our grandparents. Over the generations, not every one of our ancestors’ DNA is represented equally – so it’s completely possible that Cumberbatch doesn’t share any DNA in common with Richard through his relationship to him. </p>
<p>DNA analysis therefore wouldn’t allow us to prove his relationship to Richard. From a scientific point of view, however, it would be interesting to see just how much DNA that Cumberbatch, and similarly distant cousins, do share with their famous relative to see if there are deviations from what we’d expect.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75953/original/image-20150325-14500-duyol3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75953/original/image-20150325-14500-duyol3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75953/original/image-20150325-14500-duyol3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75953/original/image-20150325-14500-duyol3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75953/original/image-20150325-14500-duyol3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75953/original/image-20150325-14500-duyol3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75953/original/image-20150325-14500-duyol3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75953/original/image-20150325-14500-duyol3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Remains of the day.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">University of Leicester</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Crowning a king</h2>
<p>So how, then, did we identify the king in the car park?</p>
<p>Fortunately for the purposes of identification in the Richard III case, there are two segments of our DNA that are inherited in a very simple way down through the generations: these are mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome. </p>
<p>Mitochondrial DNA is a small circular piece of DNA with a number of important functions. This is the segment of DNA which has itself become rather famous, the Benedict Cumberbatch of the genetics world perhaps, in the debate about three-parent families and mitochondrial disease. However, what concerns us for the Richard III project is the way it’s inherited: the DNA sequence is copied (with the occasional typo) and passed down by a mother to all of her children, boys and girls, in the egg. Only her daughters can pass it on. </p>
<p>The other segment of DNA which is useful for this project, though with its own set of issues, is the Y chromosome. This is a rather small chromosome that has on it a crucial gene known as SRY (sex determining region Y) which causes a foetus to develop as a male. As such, only men carry a Y chromosome and only men can pass it on. Again, it’s copied, with the odd little typo, and passed down to the next generation. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75952/original/image-20150325-14494-1wb8fpz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75952/original/image-20150325-14494-1wb8fpz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75952/original/image-20150325-14494-1wb8fpz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75952/original/image-20150325-14494-1wb8fpz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75952/original/image-20150325-14494-1wb8fpz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75952/original/image-20150325-14494-1wb8fpz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75952/original/image-20150325-14494-1wb8fpz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Michael Ibsen’s DNA sample.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">University of Leicester</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So not just any old relative could be used as part of Richard III’s DNA identification process. The only ones who could were living men or women related through an all female line to Richard. These would be expected not to carry Richard’s DNA (only Richard can carry his own DNA) but an identical, or near identical, copy of the mitochondrial DNA type that Richard had. </p>
<p>In this case, Michael Ibsen and Wendy Duldig, the two living relatives, and Richard III all inherited their mitochondrial DNA type from Cecily Neville, Richard’s mother. Michael and Wendy inherited through Richard’s sister, Anne. And we found a match. </p>
<h2>Other relatives</h2>
<p>Similarly, men related to Richard through an all-male line might be expected to carry an identical or near identical Y chromosome type, unless, of course, a false paternity had taken place where the biological father is not the recorded father. Going into the project, we knew that there was a possibility that this might occur: all that was required was one of the relevant ladies in the tree running off with a medieval milkman and the medieval milkman’s Y chromosome types would have ended up in the genealogy rather than the one recorded. </p>
<p>In the end, two false-paternity events were revealed. One must have occurred recently as one of the five male-line relatives (all with the surname Somerset) was not genetically related to the other four. Another must have occurred historically, between Henry Somerset (the common male-line ancestor of the remaining men) and the skeletal remains. This mismatch was simply built into the statistical analysis of all the evidence and did not affect the identification of the remains.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75958/original/image-20150325-14494-qsd6ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75958/original/image-20150325-14494-qsd6ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75958/original/image-20150325-14494-qsd6ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75958/original/image-20150325-14494-qsd6ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75958/original/image-20150325-14494-qsd6ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75958/original/image-20150325-14494-qsd6ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75958/original/image-20150325-14494-qsd6ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As he was discovered.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">University of Leicester</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While only individuals related to Richard in either of these two ways could be used for the DNA analysis in the identification of Richard III, Cumberbatch will be by no means alone in being a distant cousin of Richard III. Richard III himself left no living descendants, but my colleague Kevin and, more famously, Radio 4’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-23757868">More or Less</a> estimate that there are something in the region of between 1m and 17m people alive today who are descended from any of Richard’s immediate family. </p>
<p>Again, this is easy to calculate. If one of Richard’s siblings had two children who survived to adulthood, who then went on to have two children and so on, over, for example, 20 generations (2<sup>20),</sup> then this means that they would have some 1,048,576 descendants alive today (provided there was no intermarrying between relatives). If you allow for the average medieval family size of 2.3, then this results in 17,161,558 descendants. Cumberbatch himself is descended from Edward III, who was Richard’s great, great-grandfather, and so this will give Cumberbatch rather a large number of “cousins” who are related in a similar way to Richard III. </p>
<p>Indeed, <a href="http://www.le.ac.uk/richardiii/science/genealogy.html">we’re all related</a> to Richard, it’s simply a matter of degree. What makes Cumberbatch different in this case, is that how he is related to Richard is known – the majority of his “cousins” simply don’t know their family trees. This will perhaps keep my son happy, a fan of Cumberbatch, to think that he is actually a distant cousin. But with so many cousins to write to, I think we’ll forgive Cumberbatch for not putting us on his Christmas card list.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38862/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Turi King lead the DNA analysis in the Richard III case.</span></em></p>Benedict Cumberbatch is related to him – as are many others. But very few helped us identify the car park king.Turi King, Lecturer in Genetics and Archaeology, University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/390782015-03-25T15:51:37Z2015-03-25T15:51:37ZHistory has been rewritten (Leicester’s, not Richard III’s)<p>There have surely been few cities which have endured as much scrutiny as Leicester has been subject to recently. Thrust into the limelight almost by accident, because of a historical battle near Bosworth in 1485, this very modern and multicultural city faced a very medieval problem when archaeologists discovered the remains of Richard, duke of Gloucester and king of England: what to do with the remains of a dead king.</p>
<p>The story of the discovery and identification of the “King in the Carpark” is itself history by now. We’ve moved from discovery to ceremony as the world watches as Leicester re-inters the remains of the last Plantagenet king.</p>
<p>What a community does with its dead tells a story and, as has been commented on by more than one <a href="http://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/some-thoughts-about-saints-translations.html">observer</a>, events in Leicester recall the narrative pattern of a medieval hagiography, the biography of a saint or king. All of these stories follow an established pattern of finding, identifying and re-contextualising the remains of a significant person. </p>
<p>In these stories, how important a person might be is expressed through the way in which the remains are dealt with. Particularly significant is the “translation” of the remains – their movement from one place of rest to another – which forms the centrepiece of the narrative. What a translation showcases is what the civic or sacred body organising the procession wishes the viewer to take away from the spectacle. So the translation is always less about the remains themselves but rather about the identity and self-promotion of the community. </p>
<p>What has been so visible in Leicester, especially during the extraordinary procession on Sunday March 22, is the emphasis on collaboration between not just the city of Leicester and the communities in Bosworth and so on, but also with the university as a significant contributor to this narrative.</p>
<h2>A modern saint?</h2>
<p>So, what is unfolding in Leicester this week, witnessed by thousands of spectators in Leicester itself – and hundreds of thousands more through Twitter and TV – is not so much the rewriting of Richard III’s history. Instead, what is happening is the integration of the history of the last Plantagenet king into Leicester’s own sense of self. </p>
<p>Richard III has been appropriated by the city where, through an accident of history, he met his death on the battlefield. Richard had certainly never been associated with Leicester in life, but has become associated with it through death. This has created a relationship of obligation for the city, one it has responded to with “dignity and honour” as stated in the motto for the re-interment events. In death, the remains of Richard III have been assimilated into the identity of the party with control over them.</p>
<p>Henry VII, the original possessor of Richard III’s remains, was as aware of the power this gave him than anybody else. Accordingly, he used the display of Richard’s body to great success. In his English History, Polydore Vergil describes Richard’s end at Bosworth as the ignominious end well deserved of a traitor. On the other hand, the victorious Henry’s first act was to “give forthwith thanks unto Almightie God”, before acknowledging the help of his loyal nobles, offering them reward for their services and then accepting to wear the crown so recently claimed by Richard.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75986/original/image-20150325-14518-1guk694.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75986/original/image-20150325-14518-1guk694.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75986/original/image-20150325-14518-1guk694.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75986/original/image-20150325-14518-1guk694.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75986/original/image-20150325-14518-1guk694.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75986/original/image-20150325-14518-1guk694.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75986/original/image-20150325-14518-1guk694.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In translation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Megan Clement</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Pomp and circumstance</h2>
<p>After asserting his right to be king, the next step was to punish the usurper, and to humiliate him for his aspirations to be the rightful king. So, spectacle and pageantry was needed, and events had to be witnessed to establish the “correct” version of history. Where Richard had ridden out of Leicester mounted on a war horse, crowned, upright, armoured as a victorious general and king, flying his banners and followed by loyal troops, this journey had to be made in reverse to visualise the fall of the former king. </p>
<p>Sources such as Polydore Vergil are very precise in telling us about Richard’s re-entry into Leicester. This time:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the meane time the body of king Rycherd nakyd of all clothing, and layd uppon an horse bake with the armes and legges hanginge downe on both sydes, was browght to thabbay of monks Franciscanes at Leycester, a myserable spectacle in good sooth, but not unwoorthy for the mans lyfe, and ther was buryed two days after without any pompe or solemne funerall. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Henry understood the power of ceremony. He made visible the fallen state of his vanquished foe by returning him to the place he had most recently occupied as a king. He reduced his visibility after death by assigning him a Christian, but low-status resting place. This created the dominant version of Tudor history, confirmed and sealed through performance.</p>
<h2>Rewritten</h2>
<p>The rediscovery and exhumation of Richard’s remains in 2012 created an obligation for re-interment of the body. Particularly interesting was the day following the positive identification of the body, which marked the launch of a legal challenge to the High Court over possession of the remains. There were occasionally quite heated debates over the competing claims of various locations. </p>
<p>Leicester’s claim was upheld and the recent commemorations are the city’s response to the challenge of how to re-frame the mortal remains of a controversial and highly significant King. Richard has become visible again, because by giving him a permanently accessible burial place, Leicester has created a site of memory that allows for an engagement with the history of the War of the Roses through interest in one of its protagonists. </p>
<p>But there’s more to it than this. Richard has also been restored into the chronology and timeline of a community, and perspectives of the erstwhile king have been fundamentally altered by this repositioning. Just as Henry VII’s pomp rewrote history for his benefit, so has 2015’s week of ceremonies changed Leicester’s.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39078/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gabriele Neher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>By an accident of history, Richard III met his death on a battlefield near Leicester. Now, this has transformed the city.Gabriele Neher, Assistant Professor of History of Art, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/391412015-03-23T06:23:12Z2015-03-23T06:23:12ZOne of Richard III’s many embodiments is sent off on his last hurrah<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75539/original/image-20150320-14630-yhfad6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gone is the winter of our discontent.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>King Richard III is on his last royal tour. Until his reinternment in Leicester Cathedral on Thursday March 26, the remains of the infamous villain are being paraded to the crowds as he journeys around his realm one last time.</p>
<p>But he won’t be the only Richard III you’ll be able to catch sight of this year. Benedict Cumberbatch has been <a href="http://www.hinckleytimes.net/news/local-news/gallery-filming-carried-out-benedict-8857268">spotted</a> as his latest incarnation, shooting for his role in the Hollow Crown, and there will be many others – in July another Richard will be on the stage at London’s Globe Theatre. </p>
<p>If the Globe production retains the artistic choices used the last time this version appeared, Richard will be “a physically imposing and attractive protagonist … a leader – bold charismatic, presidential”. He will also be Chinese; and he will be accompanied by three witches and supported by murderers who engage in “<a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/a-year-of-shakespeare-9781408188149">house of the flying daggers</a>” acrobatics while speaking the Mandarin equivalent of Cockney. </p>
<p>This production, from the National Theatre of China, is a ripple from the enormous splash of theatrical invention and global investment that went into the Shakespeare events of the <a href="http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/what-we-do/arts-council-initiatives/cultural-olympiad/">Cultural Olympiad</a> in 2012. That global celebration of international Shakespeare also featured a “feminist” Richard III from the RSC, giving due attention to the play’s powerful women and a bilingual Portuguese/English show from Rio de Janiero that played wittily with the multiple critical and theatrical possibilities that the play has inspired over the past century. </p>
<h2>Man of many faces</h2>
<p>All this is, perhaps, what Richard III means to us now. A figure that largely springs from the words of Shakespeare, a Richard III no longer contained by language, nationhood or history. Nor has he been since adaptation of the plays began in the 18th century. Writers, directors have created new Richards for every production. The reason they can do so is because Shakespeare has made a character who is gloriously inconsistent and changes his version of the truth to suit his own purposes. </p>
<p>Shakespeare’s Richard manages information, controls events and always uses his physical deformity as both an excuse (he cannot prove a lover and so will be a villain) and a tool (blaming the Kings’s mistress Jane Shore for his withered arm and then denouncing those who doubt the connection). </p>
<p>Of course this Richard III is not a representation of the real historical figure: Shakespeare uses his story to reflect on the very idea of using history for tyrannical purposes. Tyrants before and since have used similar forms of misinformation which had allowed other inventive writers and directors to create Richards that are as close to Hitler, Nixon (another “Tricky Dick”) or Saddam Hussein as they are to the last Plantaganet king. </p>
<h2>The carpark king</h2>
<p>While all this inventive creativity was taking place, the “real” Richard III lay entombed, latterly under a carpark, in Leicester. His bones, identified by the University of Leicester archaeologists, will finally be laid to rest, providing a “real” landmark.</p>
<p>The work involved in making this event feasible was begun by a genealogist who established a <a href="http://www.le.ac.uk/richardiii/science/genealogy.html">family tree</a> from Richard III to a known descendant in the female line. The female line is important since the mitochondrial DNA transmitted in this way is not subject to contamination by undocumented illegitimacy – what <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqywU9RQf10">one archaeologist called</a> “the mediaeval milkman”. </p>
<p>The thesis created by this family tree was then tested and supported by cartographers who identified the Greyfriars abbey burial site, excavators who systematically dug the trenches, carbon data analysts who established the dates of the remaining structure, a systems analyst who could create programmes to crunch the huge quantity of data produced and the osteologists who examined the bones of a “young male adult in the east end of the church” and identified the adolescent scoliosis that had afflicted his spine. The hump is not only not enough for archaeology: actors have discovered that performing deformity in the theatre does not in itself create convincing characterisation as Tony Hancock’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/feb/04/richard-iii-video-clips">vigorous fusion</a> of Laurence Olivier and Long John Silver showed. </p>
<p>But there is another connection between archaeology and theatre. When the Leicester archaeologists <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqywU9RQf10">told their fascinating story</a> to a rapt audience at the British Academy, they indicated, as <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/wolf-hall">Wolf Hall</a> and its avatars have done all winter, that the fascination with the connection between real and fictional history is everywhere. </p>
<p>Stories of the past, whether they are stage performances or regime-changing conflicts, have been turned into entertaining experiences ever since the first enterprising inn-keepers offered tours of Bosworth field or Shakespeare’s birthplace to the passing trade. Already the excitement of discovering the “real” Richard has taken on a new incarnation at the <a href="http://kriii.com/">Richard III visitor centre</a>, which offers visitors a chance to experience the legend of dynasty, death and discovery in yet another new way.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39141/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate McLuskie received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council from 2006-10.</span></em></p>Shakespeare has largely shaped our understanding of the king – and all the while the real Richard lay entombed in a carpark.Kate McLuskie, Emeritus Professor of Shakespeare Studies, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/317512014-09-16T23:10:43Z2014-09-16T23:10:43ZNine blows to the head and then he was dead: forensics shed light on killing of Richard III<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59181/original/f2ns55yx-1410880833.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In better days.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lex-photographic/10653564703/sizes/l/in/photolist-heqiC4-7oiNjr-e2WtMx-5qzhge-5dPxna-ois1z3-o3YWo9-o3ZeJa-ois8hm-o3Zg29-o3Zo5Y-okhaJS-okrU8u-ois6s9-okrXvb-7YByWJ-7YykPi-7Xdt8t-aWx8Wc-rW1vo-7XgGz9-5gJTH1-aWx4Li-aWx622-aWx7f6-7YykDa-6TYjhF-dSJ71d-8tFntm-7YBzbj-a99aZn-8Fkd1P-8FomYu-dCzw5-7Xruzw-8V4w9Z-8Tr1S3-fdok3K-5qzhc6-5qyGbH-8NbDMG-8NbFG7-8NbFbG-8N8z5M-8NbDfA-8NbDuU-8NbE3s-8NbFUW-8N8yfk-8NbD9y-8NbFif/">Lex Photographic</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-burial-fit-for-a-king-from-car-park-to-cathedral-for-richard-iii-12001">discovery of</a> Richard III’s skeletal remains under a car park in Leicester revealed the final resting place of the last English monarch to die in battle. We know that he was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field on August 22 1485 but not about what ultimately proved fatal.</p>
<p>Using modern forensic examination, we have now discovered that Richard’s skeleton sustained 11 wounds at or near the time of his death – nine of them to the skull, which were clearly inflicted in battle. The injuries to the head suggest he had either removed or lost his helmet. The other two injuries that we found were to a rib and his pelvis. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59177/original/fmhxmy3d-1410878240.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59177/original/fmhxmy3d-1410878240.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59177/original/fmhxmy3d-1410878240.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59177/original/fmhxmy3d-1410878240.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59177/original/fmhxmy3d-1410878240.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59177/original/fmhxmy3d-1410878240.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59177/original/fmhxmy3d-1410878240.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">View from below.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Lancet</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These injuries to his skeleton were all perimortem, in other words inflicted at or close to the time of death, because there was no evidence that these were old wounds that had subsequently healed.</p>
<p>With help from the Royal Armouries in Leeds, who have expertise in the medieval weaponry of that time, we also wanted to identify the medieval weapons that were potentially responsible for his injuries using an analysis of the tool marks on the bones. The most likely injuries to have caused Richard’s death are two wounds to the bottom of the skull: a large sharp-force trauma, possibly from a sword or staff weapon such as a halberd or bill; and a penetrating injury from the tip of an edged weapon. </p>
<p>We didn’t find any defensive wounds on his arms which would suggest he was otherwise armoured, and while the injury to his </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59178/original/7rc8r5wy-1410878320.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59178/original/7rc8r5wy-1410878320.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59178/original/7rc8r5wy-1410878320.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59178/original/7rc8r5wy-1410878320.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59178/original/7rc8r5wy-1410878320.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1163&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59178/original/7rc8r5wy-1410878320.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1163&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59178/original/7rc8r5wy-1410878320.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1163&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">May have been missing helmet.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Lancet</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>pelvis was potentially fatal, his armour would have given protection against this injury on the battlefield and therefore we think it most likely that it was inflicted after death.</p>
<p>Richard’s head injuries are consistent with some <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4300442-the-crowland-chronicle-continuations-1459-1486">near-contemporary accounts</a> of the battle, which suggested that Richard abandoned his horse after it became stuck in a mire and was killed while fighting his enemies.</p>
<p>Microscopic marks (striations) on the bones result from the way in which the imperfections on the edge of a blade from manufacturing, sharpening and use leave a distinct pattern or fingerprint on the bone surface. The striations found on three of the injuries to the top of the skull show three different directions to the marks and therefore could have come from one or several assailants. However, other striations in different injuries have similar patterns and so were most likely the result of multiple blows from one single sharp-bladed weapon. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/t6S0ku1R9nE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Modern techniques</h2>
<p>Our study, published in The Lancet, was the result of work by a team of archaeologists and a forensic imaging team from Leicester University’s East Midlands Forensic Pathology Unit and the Department of Engineering. Despite Richard’s skeleton being 500 years old, it still holds many clues for modern scientists and archaeologists. For example, other pieces of research have shown that the king had scoliosis of the spine and have <a href="http://app.dundee.ac.uk/pressreleases/2013/february13/richard.htm">re-constructed his face</a>, while geneticists <a href="https://theconversation.com/scientists-to-sequence-richard-iiis-genome-23104">may be able to find clues</a> about Richard III’s health while he lived.</p>
<p>We wanted to use the modern techniques applied in forensic medicine and engineering as a powerful complement to traditional archaeological techniques. Using full-body CT scans <a href="http://www.le.ac.uk/richardiii/science/microct.html">and computed and micro-computed X-ray tomography</a> (another type of CT scan that can be used to create 3D images) of the injured bones, we were able to develop a fuller picture of the significant injuries. </p>
<p>While it is not possible to know, after 500 years, whether Richard sustained significant soft-tissue injuries that could have led to his death, the skull injuries would certainly have been fatal. </p>
<h2>From battle to obscurity and back</h2>
<p>Our findings add to the winding story of Richard III’s journey from battle to obscurity and legal dispute <a href="https://theconversation.com/consent-and-discontent-what-will-become-of-richard-iiis-bones-21960">over where he should be interred</a>. After his death, Richard was buried in the church of Greyfriars in Leicester, a friary of the Friars Minor (or Franciscans) which was dissolved in 1538 in the reign of Henry VIII. </p>
<p>Although local stories from this time said that his remains were disinterred and his body thrown from the Bow Bridge in Leicester into the River Soar, the ruins of Greyfriars were also discovered in the car park excavation and the skeleton was found in the choir of the church, a location typically reserved for people of high status. DNA comparison with matrilineal descendants of his sister showed that it was indeed Richard. While historians have pieced together much about how this monarch lived; with the discovery of his remains we certainly now know more about how he died.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/31751/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Hainsworth and the team behind the study were funded by the University of Leicester.</span></em></p>The discovery of Richard III’s skeletal remains under a car park in Leicester revealed the final resting place of the last English monarch to die in battle. We know that he was killed at the Battle of…Sarah Hainsworth, Professor of Materials Engineering, University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/219602014-01-15T05:11:44Z2014-01-15T05:11:44ZConsent and discontent: what will become of Richard III’s bones?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39094/original/ccs639j5-1389755626.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1000%2C531&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The country Richard ruled was very different from the one that exists today.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">University of Leicester</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Richard III’s skeleton, dug up from <a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-a-hunch-identifying-richard-iii-with-dna-11999">a carpark in Leicester</a> in 2012, is currently the subject of <a href="http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/battle-over-the-burial-richard-iii-become-savage/#.UtXFGChK5P3">a legal dispute</a> about where he should be buried.</p>
<p>In one corner is the University of Leicester, whose archaeologists dug up and identified the skeleton. The university was given a licence by the Justice Ministry to exhume Richard and to appropriately dispose of his remains.</p>
<p>University archaeologists assumed the proper site for burial was Leicester Cathedral, and work on the crypt to house the body was supposed to be completed this year.</p>
<p>In the other corner is the <a href="http://www.kingrichardcampaign.org.uk/">Plantagenet Alliance Limited</a> – a recently formed group of distant relations of Richard <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/26/richard-iii-reburial-site-court-leicester-bones">who claim</a> that failure to take into account relatives’ wishes and Richard’s preferences is a serious violation of human rights.</p>
<p>The Plantagenet Alliance think Richard would have preferred York as a burial place because he grew up nearby and was strongly supported by people of that city.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39097/original/tcfrsfdp-1389756095.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39097/original/tcfrsfdp-1389756095.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39097/original/tcfrsfdp-1389756095.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39097/original/tcfrsfdp-1389756095.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39097/original/tcfrsfdp-1389756095.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39097/original/tcfrsfdp-1389756095.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39097/original/tcfrsfdp-1389756095.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39097/original/tcfrsfdp-1389756095.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dr Jo Appleby carefully exhumes the bones of Richard III.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">University of Leicester</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The British High Court <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/wars-of-the-roses-part-2-high-court-battle-over-burial-of-richard-iii-set-to-continue-as-case-is-adjourned-8963772.html">adjourned the case</a> at the end of last year when the City of Leicester, the owner of the carpark, became one of the parties to the dispute.</p>
<p>Richard will be a lucrative tourist attraction for the city and cathedral that houses his bones.</p>
<p>Richard III was killed 530 years ago in the <a href="http://www.bosworthbattlefield.com/battle.htm">Battle of Bosworth Field</a>. His death ended the <a href="http://www.britroyals.com/plantagenet.htm">Plantagenet line</a> of kings. He was succeeded by the first Tudor monarch, <a href="http://tudorhistory.org/henry7/">Henry VII</a>. </p>
<p>The search for Richard’s remains was financed by the <a href="http://www.richardiii.net/">Richard III Society</a>, a group dedicated to rehabilitating Richard’s reputation. He comes down in history as he is portrayed by Shakespeare – a villain who murdered his nephews in order to become king.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39098/original/7vpkyppy-1389756255.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39098/original/7vpkyppy-1389756255.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39098/original/7vpkyppy-1389756255.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39098/original/7vpkyppy-1389756255.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39098/original/7vpkyppy-1389756255.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39098/original/7vpkyppy-1389756255.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39098/original/7vpkyppy-1389756255.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39098/original/7vpkyppy-1389756255.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richard III likeness.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">mharrsch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The legal dispute over his bones arises from moral and legal considerations that archaeologists and their sponsors are supposed to take into account. In making decisions about how human remains should be treated, they are not the only ones whose opinions count. </p>
<p>Descendants or those whose traditions or religious beliefs give them a special relation to the deceased have a right to be consulted. In Australia, archaeologists are expected to consult with Aboriginal communities when they uncover ancient bones on Aboriginal land.</p>
<p>However, the belief of the Plantagenet Alliance that it has a right to determine Richard’s burial place rests on morally dubious grounds. Relatives generally do have rights in such matters. But this is because they have a personal relation to the deceased or because they share the same traditions. Members of the Plantagenet Alliance merely have a remote genetic connection.</p>
<p>What Richard would have wanted is an unanswerable question. If finding out what the dead would prefer is a matter of knowing what they wanted when they were alive, then for Richard this is unknowable and anyway not relevant in a world very different from the one he experienced. If finding out what the dead would have wanted is a matter of imagining how they would respond if they could be updated on events after their death, the answer is undeterminable.</p>
<p>Members of the Plantagenet Alliance have no ability or entitlement to answer this question of where Richard should be buried. But neither do archaeologists or the City of Leicester.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39092/original/nfr6gqvr-1389755236.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39092/original/nfr6gqvr-1389755236.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39092/original/nfr6gqvr-1389755236.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39092/original/nfr6gqvr-1389755236.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39092/original/nfr6gqvr-1389755236.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39092/original/nfr6gqvr-1389755236.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39092/original/nfr6gqvr-1389755236.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39092/original/nfr6gqvr-1389755236.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The complete skeleton of Richard III as discovered in a Leicester car park.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/HO/University of Leicester</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So who should determine what happens to Richard’s remains? The obvious answer is that the decision should be made by those who can speak for the country that Richard once ruled. This authority now rests with citizens rather than a monarch.</p>
<p>The country Richard ruled was very different from the one that exists today - in geography as well as customs and institutions – but this does not mean there is no relevant connection between past and present. Heritage passed down through the generations is an important aspect of a nation’s identity. Public interest in Richard’s exhumation is a good indication of the value to people of a connection with history.</p>
<p>That and the dispute about Richard’s bones show that decisions about heritage should not be made by governmental fiat or by a small group of experts. An ethical and politically satisfactory solution would be for disputants to allow the question of Richard’s burial place to be decided by an independent panel on the basis of submissions by interested people and opinion polls.</p>
<p>There is a precedent. In 2006 the Orders of British Druids <a href="http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/battle-over-the-burial-richard-iii-become-savage/#.UtXFGChK5P3">requested</a> that neolithic skeletons be reburied rather than displayed in a museum. English Heritage and the National Trust made a decision (in favour of the museum) on the basis of public consultation and an opinion poll.</p>
<p>The Plantagenet Alliance has questionable ideas about how the case should be determined. It will be no violation of human rights if Richard ends up in Leicester Cathedral. But the Alliance has performed a useful service by insisting that he cannot be buried without consulting those who have an interest.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/21960/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janna Thompson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Richard III’s skeleton, dug up from a carpark in Leicester in 2012, is currently the subject of a legal dispute about where he should be buried. In one corner is the University of Leicester, whose archaeologists…Janna Thompson, Professor of Philosophy, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/119522013-02-05T19:51:13Z2013-02-05T19:51:13ZBones of contention: why Richard III’s skeleton won’t change history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19967/original/hwj3qnkx-1360041444.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The bones of Richard III, whose remains were found more than 500 years after his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/University of Leicester</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“It will be a whole new era for Richard III,” Lynda Pidgeon, spokeswoman for the Richard III Society, <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/technology/sci-tech/scientists-confirm-king-richard-iii-find-20130204-2dut2.html">said of the discovery</a> that the skeleton found under a car-park in Leicester is almost certainly that of King Richard III. “Hopefully people will have a more open mind toward Richard”, she added.</p>
<p>But why? How will it make people sympathise more with this highly contentious ruler? What does it add to our understanding of his life, death and character? The answer, arguably, is “very little”.</p>
<p>We now know that Richard died of one or more slashes to the skull with a heavy blade, and was also wounded by an arrow. But contemporary writings already confirmed that he died in the battle of Bosworth, and no one familiar with medieval
warfare could suppose it was from a light tap on the shoulder. The skeleton shows pronounced scoliosis; this may help to quell exaggerated <a href="http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/media-centre/richard-iii/press-conference-4-february/key-scientific-information/comparison-with-historical-sources">claims of Tudor writers</a> that Richard was hopelessly deformed, but is perfectly consistent with John Rous’s account (written within seven years of Richard’s death) that he was “small of stature
with … unequal shoulders, the right higher and the left lower”.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19962/original/rx63qrnz-1360039284.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19962/original/rx63qrnz-1360039284.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19962/original/rx63qrnz-1360039284.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19962/original/rx63qrnz-1360039284.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19962/original/rx63qrnz-1360039284.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19962/original/rx63qrnz-1360039284.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19962/original/rx63qrnz-1360039284.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A portrait of Richard III, King of England, by an unknown artist.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Evidence of <a href="http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/media-centre/richard-iii/press-conference-4-february/presentations-by-speakers-at-the-press-conference-monday-4-february-1/osteoarchaeologist-dr-jo-appleby-gives-key-evidence-on-the-skeletal-analysis">post-mortem wounds to the body</a> suggests that the body was humiliated after death. That’s hardly news. One contemporary London chronicler, generally reasonably reliable, says that Richard’s corpse was displayed stripped naked and trussed on horseback “like a hog, or any other foul beast”. However horrifying to modern sensibilities, this hardly surprises medievalists. </p>
<p>Corpses of deceased kings were not infrequently displayed in public, in part to convince would-be supporters of
the certainty of their death. The body of a defeated king like Richard, accused in his lifetime of wife-murder, nephew-assassination and attempted incest, could easily be
seen to deserve further ritual humiliation, signalling to onlookers the moral turpitude that “justified” his overthrow.</p>
<p>What these bones cannot tell us is anything decisive about the issues that radically divide Richard’s modern public between those who see him as a martyr to Tudor black-washing, and those who place him on the shady side even of the robust politics of his day. </p>
<p>There’s no DNA test to prove either these bones belong to a man who unjustly disinherited, and then assassinated, his nephews – or the reverse. The scholarly consensus nowadays is that Richard III almost certainly did order the killing of his brother’s sons Edward and Richard, aged twelve and ten, sometime between late June and November 1483. No texts record their appearance after October 1483 at latest; their household servants were apparently dispersed; the fact of their murder was taken for granted, in January 1484, by the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2009/jul/22/notes-and-queries-king-richard-murders">French Chancellor</a>, who had no particular axe to grind.</p>
<p>Most tellingly, as <a href="http://www.winchester.ac.uk/academicdepartments/history/peopleprofiles/Pages/ProfessorMichaelHicks.aspx">Michael Hicks</a> argues, the boys were “politically dead” by November 1483. From then on Richard’s opponents, apparently convinced that the princes had been killed, stopped planning to reinstate the young Edward V, turning instead to candidates with exponentially weaker claims, like the eventually-victorious Henry Tudor. </p>
<p>So who had the power and motive to order the murders, and the reason to conceal them? Richard III.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19965/original/pmfxyrjs-1360040185.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19965/original/pmfxyrjs-1360040185.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19965/original/pmfxyrjs-1360040185.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19965/original/pmfxyrjs-1360040185.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19965/original/pmfxyrjs-1360040185.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19965/original/pmfxyrjs-1360040185.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19965/original/pmfxyrjs-1360040185.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edward IV, older brother of Richard III and former King of England.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The problem, therefore, is not lack of archaeological or written evidence; it’s that proponents and detractors of Richard will doubtless continue — even after this
discovery — to interpret the evidence differently.</p>
<p>Supporters highlight Richard’s (arguably) exemplary role as military leader on behalf of his brother Edward IV,
particularly in the Scottish wars of 1480-83, and to his popularity with his northern English subjects.</p>
<p>Detractors point out that a man may be simultaneously an efficient general and administrator and a completely unscrupulous politician. Some modern Ricardians even defend child-murder. </p>
<p>Mathew Morris, first finder of Richard’s skeleton, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/feb/04/richard-iii-dna-bones-king">argues</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Even if Richard did kill the princes in the tower, you have to judge him by the standards of his day – no other medieval king would have taken the risk of leaving them alive. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Possibly. But this shirks the crucial question: why
was Richard king in the first place? Edward V clearly should have succeeded his father. Only after Uncle Richard had usurped his crown did he become a danger to be eliminated. And not all medieval uncles of child-princes were usurpers. </p>
<p>In 1422 Henry V died leaving his infant heir Henry VI well supplied with uncles, one of whom became his regent. Henry nevertheless succeeded to the throne, and survived
until 1471 (when he was probably killed by order of Edward IV).</p>
<p>Tourists and historians alike will undoubtedly find the discovery of Richard III’s burial exciting. To some it may be easier to identify with the real, material skeleton than with a figure known only through historical texts. </p>
<p>But will it change our entire view of Richard III and his reign? I doubt it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/11952/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philippa Maddern does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>“It will be a whole new era for Richard III,” Lynda Pidgeon, spokeswoman for the Richard III Society, said of the discovery that the skeleton found under a car-park in Leicester is almost certainly that…Philippa Maddern, Professor of Medieval History, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/119992013-02-05T02:58:33Z2013-02-05T02:58:33ZMore than a hunch: identifying Richard III with DNA<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19949/original/b293kq29-1360028336.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The skeleton of Richard III was discovered beneath a car park in Leicester, and identified using the DNA of his descendants.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/HO</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the past few days news has come to light of the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/feb/04/richard-iii-dna-bones-king">confirmation</a> that skeletal remains discovered in an excavated site of a Leicester car park are indeed that of the famous English king Richard III. But how was it done?</p>
<p>It should be noted that DNA played only a part in this puzzle, the project involved archaeologists, pathologists, genealogists and anthropologists. </p>
<p>It has been <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2013/02/03/world/europe/richard-iii-search-announcement/index.html">reported</a> that testing produced a match with the maternal DNA of two descendants of Richard’s sister (one anonymous, and the other Michael Ibsen, a Canadian carpenter living in London). A “beyond reasonable doubt” match by all accounts. </p>
<p>So what does this actually mean and how can DNA be considered such a useful tool to identify the dead?</p>
<p>Most people who are interested in the field of forensic science would be familiar with DNA profiling. In shows such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0247082/">CSI: Crime Scene Investigation</a> it is used quickly and cleanly to great crime-fighting effect. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wR1IjOVWI7Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The reality of course is somewhat different, but in essence what you see on screen is as it occurs in the lab. The DNA used mostly in the criminal forensic realm is that termed <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-richard-iii-mitochondrial-dna-20130104,0,5536883.story">“nuclear DNA”</a>. This large DNA strand is found in the middle of most cells of the body, its role being to act as a blueprint for building and operating your body. </p>
<p>Its sequence is very unique. Your nuclear DNA is inherited in part from your father, and in part from your mother. The “letters” in their DNA codes combine to produce an approximately 3.2 billion base pair-long strand believed to be unlike anyone else’s (aside from an identical twin). It can be used to individualise biological evidence from crime scenes - effectively pinpointing an individual as the source. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19953/original/nwjj5xxd-1360028805.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19953/original/nwjj5xxd-1360028805.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19953/original/nwjj5xxd-1360028805.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19953/original/nwjj5xxd-1360028805.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19953/original/nwjj5xxd-1360028805.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19953/original/nwjj5xxd-1360028805.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19953/original/nwjj5xxd-1360028805.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19953/original/nwjj5xxd-1360028805.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The complete skeleton of Richard III as discovered in a Leicester car park.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/HO/University of Leicester</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When identifying bloodstains from a murder, or semen from a rape, this technique can be invaluable. Being a large molecule, however, nuclear DNA is susceptible to damage, which can be fatal to the scientist’s ability to read it’s code. </p>
<p>This means that when evidence items or biological material has been left exposed to the elements – such as moisture, sunlight, or chemical environments - its value for unique identification can be reduced. Enter <a href="http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/chromosome/MT">mitochondrial DNA</a>.</p>
<h2>Mitochondrial DNA</h2>
<p>Mitochondria are the power-houses of the cells. They are present in virtually all cells both plant and animal. They convert energy into forms that can be used to drive cellular reactions and processes.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19955/original/jmkfrkt8-1360029293.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19955/original/jmkfrkt8-1360029293.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19955/original/jmkfrkt8-1360029293.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19955/original/jmkfrkt8-1360029293.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19955/original/jmkfrkt8-1360029293.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19955/original/jmkfrkt8-1360029293.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19955/original/jmkfrkt8-1360029293.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19955/original/jmkfrkt8-1360029293.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A portrait of the slain English king Richard III.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/ The Dean and Chapter of Leicester </span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is the much neglected “other” DNA contained within our bodies, and it has been used effectively to identify skeletal remains from hundreds, even thousands of years past. </p>
<p>To make the regal link: recently mitochondrial work has been <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com.au/news/2008/06/080606-egypt-mummies.html">undertaken on Egyptian royal mummies</a> from the Valley of the Kings. No less than Tutankhamen has had his familial relationships probed and documented via his mitochondrial DNA. </p>
<p>Moving further north, the Russian royal family (the Romanovs) were <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/11/science/sci-romanov11">also identified</a> after a grisly dispatch using the same process.</p>
<p>So why go down the mitochondrial path when nuclear DNA fails us? </p>
<p>In line with their functional importance, mitochondria are rewarded by both quantity and size in their cellular home. Your average cell contains hundreds or even thousands of circular mitochondrial DNA strands. This gives them an advantage over the more fragile, singular nuclear DNA. They are smaller, more robust and by weight of numbers - they are more likely to survive the slings and arrows of time and outrageous fortune. </p>
<p>The other advantage of mitochondrial DNA is that it is inherited solely on the maternal line. When egg and sperm combine at the moment of conception, the sperm tail containing the parental mitochondria is shed. The resulting embryo will now inherit the mitochondrial sequence from the mother. As there is no combining of codes the original sequence is (generally) maintained. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19940/original/2gfjc673-1360025661.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19940/original/2gfjc673-1360025661.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19940/original/2gfjc673-1360025661.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19940/original/2gfjc673-1360025661.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19940/original/2gfjc673-1360025661.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19940/original/2gfjc673-1360025661.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19940/original/2gfjc673-1360025661.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19940/original/2gfjc673-1360025661.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The final resting place of Richard III was discovered over 500 years after his death.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">HO/EPA/University of Leicester</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Less change and mutation means that even many generations down the line the sequence can be compared and matched. It also means when only distant relatives (such as maternal aunts or cousins etc) can be found for matching, a result is still possible. This kind of matching with standard nuclear DNA profiling is far less discerning.</p>
<p>So, where does this leave us with a king and a carpenter? King Richard and his sister would have inherited the same maternal mitochondrial DNA. This has in turn been carried down the line in Michael Ibsen’s family (thank goodness there appear to be no other skeletons in his family’s closet!). </p>
<p>A direct comparison would have been carried out, and (perhaps allowing for minimal mutation) a match would have been detected. A statistical analysis of the frequency of the profile within a population would have been undertaken and the result was such that scientists consider his identity “beyond reasonable doubt”.</p>
<p>It has been quipped that there is some irony in the fact that the man Shakespeare made famous for his “my kingdom for a horse” speech should be found in a car park. That aside, it is yet another testament to the value of the technique of DNA identification that makes a DNA scientist feel all warm and fuzzy. </p>
<p><strong>Further reading:</strong> <br> <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-burial-fit-for-a-king-from-car-park-to-cathedral-for-richard-iii-12001">A burial fit for a king: from car park to cathedral for Richard III</a> - Peter Sherlock, The Conversation</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/11999/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Devenish-Meares does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the past few days news has come to light of the confirmation that skeletal remains discovered in an excavated site of a Leicester car park are indeed that of the famous English king Richard III. But…Jane Devenish-Meares, Scientist, Molecular Biology, Victorian Institute of Forensic MedicineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/120012013-02-05T02:00:23Z2013-02-05T02:00:23ZA burial fit for a king: from car park to cathedral for Richard III<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19942/original/mb67xc6s-1360025773.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">These bones have prompted a discussion about how the English view the monarchy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/University of Leicester</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The story is almost unbelievable: a king buried for five centuries under what is now a car park, identified through <a href="http://www.pocketexpert.net/files/U.pdf">mtDNA analysis</a> with the last surviving matrilineal descendants of his sister.</p>
<p>But it seems it’s true. Archaeologists from Leicester University have confirmed that the remains were those of <a href="http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biographies/richard-III.html">Richard III</a>, King of England from 1483 until his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. </p>
<p>The identification awaits peer-review, but assuming the identification is, as the archaeologists say, “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9846722/Richard-III-remains-found-in-Leicester-are-beyond-reasonable-doubt-those-of-former-king.html">beyond reasonable doubt</a>”, a host of questions now arise.</p>
<p>The history books do not need to be rewritten - the body cannot tell us whether Richard was a “good” or a “bad” king - but what the English do next will say a great deal about their collective identity.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19945/original/y655b3vr-1360026587.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19945/original/y655b3vr-1360026587.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19945/original/y655b3vr-1360026587.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19945/original/y655b3vr-1360026587.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19945/original/y655b3vr-1360026587.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19945/original/y655b3vr-1360026587.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19945/original/y655b3vr-1360026587.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19945/original/y655b3vr-1360026587.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richard III reigned as King from 1483-1485.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dean and Chapter of Leicester</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Surprisingly, most of Richard’s royal relations have been disinterred and reburied, often for political and dynastic reasons. Many of his ancestors lay at Westminster Abbey around the shrine of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/edward_confessor.shtml">King Edward the Confessor</a>, but following the burial of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/henry_v_king.shtml">Henry V</a> at Westminster in 1422, royal funerals were dispersed among other locations.</p>
<p>Richard III’s father, Richard Duke of York, was buried at Pontefract, Yorkshire following his death in 1460. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/edward_iv_king.shtml">Edward IV</a>, Richard’s brother, had their father reburied in a grand ceremony in 1476 at Fotheringhay, Northamptonshire – the parish church of one of the family’s favoured residences. The ritual asserted that the elder Richard should have been recognised as king in his lifetime, shoring up the claims of Edward IV to the throne.</p>
<p>The Yorkist monarchs subsequently moved the body of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/henry_vi_king.shtml">Henry VI</a> from its grave in Chertsey Abbey to their grand new burial ground at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Here, Edward was buried in 1483 with an incomplete monument incorporating a silver effigy.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/henry_vii_king.shtml">Henry VII</a>, the founder of the Tudor dynasty who claimed the crown on defeating Richard III in battle, returned to Westminster Abbey, building a magnificent chapel for himself following the death of his wife Elizabeth of York in 1502. This established Westminster as the preferred site of royal burials for another 250 years, although Henry VIII, was buried at Windsor.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19946/original/gf3yvjz9-1360026726.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19946/original/gf3yvjz9-1360026726.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19946/original/gf3yvjz9-1360026726.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19946/original/gf3yvjz9-1360026726.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19946/original/gf3yvjz9-1360026726.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19946/original/gf3yvjz9-1360026726.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19946/original/gf3yvjz9-1360026726.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Westminster Abbey is the preferred burial site of choice for modern-day monarchs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">timoni</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Royal disinterments continued in the seventeenth century. Remains alleged to be those of Richard’s nephews, the infamous “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/princes_in_tower.shtml">Princes in the Tower</a>”, were found in the Tower of London in the 1670s and reburied in Westminster Abbey.</p>
<p>But the grandest reburial of all was reserved for <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/scots_mary_queen_of.shtml">Mary Queen of Scots</a>. Mary, successively Queen of France and Queen of Scotland, and would-be Queen of England, was executed by <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/tudors/elizabeth_i_01.shtml">Elizabeth I</a> in 1587 and her body buried at Peterborough.</p>
<p>When Mary’s son, known as James VI when he was King of Scotland and James I when he was King of England, succeeded to Elizabeth’s throne, he determined that Elizabeth and Mary would both be honoured with tombs at Westminster Abbey. Mary’s tomb - the larger of the pair - was ready in 1612, so her body was reverently exhumed and brought to London in procession by night for reburial at the Abbey. This extraordinary move attempted to rehabilitate Mary’s memory, from a disgraced queen executed as a traitor to the mother of the founder of a new British royal dynasty.</p>
<p>Some are already <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9842559/Carpark-skeleton-row-over-new-burial-site-for-Richard-III.html">arguing</a> that Richard III should be buried at York, in honour of his title as Duke of York, or at Westminster. Burial with his brother at Windsor, or his parents at Fotheringhay would be other possibilities.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19952/original/s2f985ng-1360028677.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19952/original/s2f985ng-1360028677.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19952/original/s2f985ng-1360028677.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19952/original/s2f985ng-1360028677.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19952/original/s2f985ng-1360028677.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19952/original/s2f985ng-1360028677.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19952/original/s2f985ng-1360028677.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19952/original/s2f985ng-1360028677.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richard III is likely to be buried at Leicester Cathedral.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">OZinOH</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Initial media reports <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2013/02/03/world/europe/richard-iii-search-announcement/index.html">suggest</a> the outcome will be a new tomb nearby in the medieval church of St Martin’s Leicester, which has been an Anglican Cathedral since 1927. Even in this secular day and age, a royal tomb is a great asset, with only a handful of buildings outside Westminster and Windsor endowed with the resting place of an English monarch.</p>
<p>What kind of memorial service will be held? Should the Queen attend as Richard’s heir? Should the service be one fit for a king complete with heralds, politicians, and bishops?</p>
<p>Richard died a generation before the Reformation; should the service be Anglican or Catholic? Or is a multi-faith service more appropriate to the 21st century?</p>
<p>Will there be more, disturbing, disinterments to confirm Richard’s identity, or to solve other puzzles such as the veracity of the remains of the “Princes in the Tower” at Westminster?</p>
<p>The way monarchs are commemorated through the manipulation of bodies and tombs tells us a great deal about power and authority in ages past. </p>
<p>Whatever happens, the fate of Richard’s remains reveal a great deal more about how the English think about themselves, their monarchy, and their place in the contemporary world, than they will about the reign of England’s most infamous monarch.</p>
<p><strong>Further reading:</strong> <br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-a-hunch-identifying-richard-iii-with-dna-11999">More than a hunch: identifying Richard III with DNA</a> - Jane Devenish-Meares, The Conversation</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/12001/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Sherlock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The story is almost unbelievable: a king buried for five centuries under what is now a car park, identified through mtDNA analysis with the last surviving matrilineal descendants of his sister. But it…Peter Sherlock, Vice-Chancellor, University of DivinityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.