It's official. The bones found in an English midlands parking lot are those of King Richard III, Shakespeare's villain but likely misunderstood medieval king.
Not too long ago, the battleground where Richard met his end was finally established to be several miles away from what folks thought for centuries. Richard, having not only lost the battle and his life, also lost his dynasty to Henry Tudor who became Henry VII. Richard's body was conveyed to a local friary and buried there. As time past, King Henry's son, King Henry VIII, broke with the Roman Catholic church and became the head of the Church in England. He dissolved the monasteries, land was sold or fell into disrepair, and such was the case with this friary. The place was forgotten and into the modern era was covered over and used as a parking lot. It was all rediscovered last September and bones were recovered that might have been Richard's. And since it was customery to call him "Crouchback" (not to his face, mind you) it was believed he was possibly a hunchback or otherwise deformed. Made it all the better since he was charcterized in the Holinshed chronicles as a villain, famously supposed to have made certain his rivals for the throne, his own young nephews, were murdered in the Tower.
So it was with some excitement that these bones showed a case of severe curvature of the spine (as you can see above). DNA tests were done and compared to Richard's living descendants and the jury is in. It's him! What an amazing story! There are supposed to be plans to rebury him with the proper pomp and circumstance in Leicester Cathedral, though in his lifetime he expressed a wish to be buried in York Minster. Why they wouldn't fulfill his final wishes at this late date is a wonder.
I hope there will (possibly) be one more installment. I've read that there are plans to reconstruct his face. Would love to see it, and see how much he did, or didn't, look like his paintings.
Posted by: Debra Adams | February 08, 2013 at 03:04 PM