Friends from all over are alerting me to the news that anthropological research teams have found and positively identified the skeletal remains of King Richard III of England. It’s been 528 years since his death in battle and this much-maligned monarch has undergone serious and vociferous debate about his guilt of the murder of his nephews (the jury is still out on conclusive evidence . . . and is likely to remain so).
After his defeat at the Battle of
Not-Really-Bosworth (http://tinyurl.com/Not-Bosworth), Richard’s
corpse was mutilated and then was believed to have been thrown in a
river. It has since been determined that he was buried unceremoniously at
Greyfriars church, which then became lost, both in location and in
history (Yes, they lost a whole church; records were notoriously few and far between way back then).
As it turned out, the remains of the church were found under the now Grey Friars car park in
Leicester. Three trenches were dug to investigate the find, and (what
would turn out to be) Richard’s skeleton turned up almost
immediately.
“The King in the Car Park”
became the catchy, if somewhat ignominious, legend by which the
skeleton in question became known.
Richard is arguably the most
notorious English monarch. His legend is based on the disappearance
of his two nephews, ages 12 and 10, the elder of which was the proper
inheritor of the throne, Edward V. It has been claimed far and wide
that he had them smothered and buried in a hidden grave to eliminate
any possible attempts on his usurped kingship. And if you only look
that far, it may seem logical on the surface. If you look further, it makes absolutely no sense at all. But that's a whole 'nother blog post.
The news of the discovery and
exhumation made a fairly big splash in England and around the world. R3 geeks like myself awaited with abated breath for the announcement
that it was indeed the lost king.
In Tweet-Land, as clever dicks
around the world are wont to do, the discovery has created more than
a few bits of humor (some more clever than others), such as:
- “Historians now believe Richard III died when the car park fell on him”
- “Richard III? That's the one where Richard fights Mr. T, right?”
- “And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house, In the deep bosom of a parking lot buried.”
- “Richard III has finally been declared "1485 Hide 'n Seek Champion".”
And my personal favorites:
- "Richard III found in a multi-storey car park? That's wrong on so many levels".
- “As X just pointed out, the battle (Bosworth, but not really) *was* nearby, so that's obviously where he would have parked.”
Which goes with:
- “The daily rate for a Leicester NCP car park is £18.50. Richard has been there 192,649 days. He owes £3,564,006.50 in parking fees.”
Why, you ask, do I care at all about
the long-dead king of our former patriarchal host nation?
Simply because I spent two and a
half years researching him for a play I subsequently wrote. A play
called “Kynges Games.” It actually doesn't suck at all for a historical play and is quite funny. In spots.
Anywho . . . there's no telling what subject I'll
fixate next on, and Richard just fell in one day. What started it all was the thought, “Hey,
maybe it will be good for my playwriting career that I should extensively research and write a historical play.”
(Another blog entry will be all
about dissuading this farchachdah notion from your brain.)
Richard had all I needed: he was
dubiously infamous, very likely evil (which as we knows usually makes
for good theatre), ambitious (built-in action), and relatively
unknown here in the ex-colonies. So there I went, library-bound,
a-reading all I could find on the dude. Soon I discovered that the
controversy was much deeper than expected. There were those such as
Desmond Seward, whose book, “Richard III: England's Black Legend”
pretty much went with the very possible theory that Richard did
indeed order the execution of his nephews. He was backed up by quite
a few other historians whose publications left no room for doubt as
to Richard's parricide. Evidence shows that Richard made some pretty
bad decisions in his last years.
But these were decisions that, I
argue, were at best lose-lose decisions. He was placed by fate in the
middle of a gang war, the Wars of the Roses, and because of the way
things progressed and the way others (and yes, Richard himself)
compounded the mounting hatred of one side to the other, it was a
Gordian Knot and Richard, despite his well-known sense of justice,
fairness, and perspicacity as a judge, did not posses the sword to
cut it. My proposal is that he was royally screwed from the
beginning.
On the other hand, there were, and
still are, plenty of folks who stood up for the passed-on
Plantagenet, even an international organization dedicated to his
historical redemption, The Richard III Society. The debate is heated
on both sides.
The evidence, however, for any
reliable answer, is woefully non-existent. It just doesn't exist.
Records were not kept back then, for any number of reasons. No one
really believed records needed to be kept; the practice of news
reporting did not exist, and the practice of well-researched
histories was also far in the future. Paper and ink were rare,
available only to the fortunate or well-off. The ability to read was
pretty much contained within the medieval one percent.
There is no definite, reliable
answer to Richard's guilt in the disappearance of is nephews.
Which, of course, only spurs on
scholars, myself included, to propose alternate theories that fit the
known evidence. Other proposed murderers flood the landscape: the
Duke of Buckingham (my favorite), Henry Tudor, Margaret Beaufort.
We'll probably never know.
But is is good to know we have
finally found him. A mystery has been solved. We know where he is and
now we have his computer-generated face, somewhat close in resemblance
to the two or three paintings we've had to depend upon all this time.
He's actually a handsome fellow.
All I wonder about now is what his
reaction would be to being laid at rest in a church and ending up under a parking lot.
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