Nutmegger

OK, I'm outing myself as a history nerd, but Richard III dug up from under a parking lot in Leicester? There's something kind of depressing about that! I'd rather they hadn't found him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/wo...ones.html?_r=0

Lion in Winter

It wasn't a parking lot when they buried him, to be fair.

And it might end up being a good thing, in that he wasn't nearly the villain that Shakespeare and others portrayed him to be.

Nutmegger

LOL -- very true (but it could have been a stable yard then . . . ). For many people, he will always be Larry Olivier hamming it up, despite what the historians have actually stated.

Sally Redux

I love this stuff

Lion in Winter

It was a friary I think.

He is probably good for knocking off the princes, but then who didn't in those days. He still did a lot of other useful things, like introducing the practice of bail.

Lion in Winter

I had thought about posting this on the Obit thread this morning, since he didn't get proper recognition at the time.

yellowroom

Ah, there's plenty of evidence for that being down to Henry VII who then lay the blame on his predecessor. Henry had motive (wanting to legitimise claim to the throne via his win at Bosworth by bumping off all the remaining York males).

Richard didn't need that motive as the Princes had been declared illegitimate thanks to Richard's elder brother's marriage being null and void. He didn't need to bump them off as well to secure the throne.

I think it's fascinating that he's been found (and the archeologists found him early on in the hunt, their "hunch" was correct, boom boom). Although I would have preferred him to be interred in York Minster (as he was a "King of the North" and very popular there).

Lion in Winter

Yes, I had read the Henry theory too - although I think it was Richard who put them in the tower more or less permanently? Still, not unusual for the times. For either monarch their continued existence could have spelled problems, in terms of being a focal point for rebellion, legitimate or not.

Nice to lay him to rest properly, anyway. York would have been good, agreed.

yellowroom

The Tower in those days was still a normal Royal Residence, not the prison it became later on. A Royal Residence surrounded by big walls to protect from the rebels, sure, but it didn't yet have the resonance of "off to the Tower and off with his head" that it became in Henry VIII's day.

I love all this kind of stuff. I hope it raises awareness that asking "where's the evidence" and "what's my bias" is important in everything, from history to science to crime to what's in the papers today.

sir_eccles

Seen these two so far today, not my own work obviously:

kimilseung

Bloody foreigners taking all the best parking spaces..

Lion in Winter

Agreed. History depends on those who write it a lot of the time, in this case Tudor propagandists. I don't think the Princes were exactly free to leave the Tower though were they?

Richard did quite a bit of good stuff though, during his short reign. Here is one take on it.

http://www.richardiii-nsw.org.au/?page_id=1144

Lion in Winter

The Hanoverians should have been buried on deck chairs, with towels.

Lion in Winter

His facial reconstruction, based on his skull.

Derrygal

Me too - history was my favorite subject at school.