Richard..............

Richard 111 Last Plantagenet King of England. Was he a loyal brother who stepped in when his brother died? Then following his concience set aside the sons of that brother when their legitamacy was in question or......was he a murderer of his nephews in order to seize the throne?
Who was he? I doubt anyone will change their opinion unless some undisputable evidence comes to light. As of now one must decide based on what we do know of his charactor.
Love or hate him, he is one of Englands best known Kings because of all the tragedy and intrigue that have surrounded him for hundreds of years.



I have read a lot about Richard. Ever since I was quite young and I saw Lawrence Olivier play him in Shakespeare's Richard 111, I have been fascinated with him. I didn't know enough to know he was supposed to be a bad man......I just knew that I wanted to know more.



The more I read about his early life the less I believed that he was bad. Maybe in those violent times he was a violent man and made choices we would never make now......but I do not believe he killed the Princes in the Tower. I would instead put that on the head of Henry V11.
I read the book "Daughter of Time" by Josephine Tey and that cinched it for me. If you have any interest in Richard, do read that book.
Anyway........the body of who is believed to be Richard has been found. I am so eagerly awaiting the results from DNA tests and everything else. It has to be him, and he can now be buried as a King of England should.

There is so much I could write about Richard. I despise Shakespeare for making him into a hunchbacked villain for the entertainment of the Tudor courts.


From the BBC.
Conclusions of investigations into human remains thought to be those of Richard III are due to be revealed in the first week of February.
Experts at the University of Leicester have been analysing the bones since they were discovered beneath a car park in the city in September.
They are awaiting DNA test results before revealing their conclusions.
Circumstantial evidence points to the remains being those of the English king, the team has said.
University spokesman Ather Mirza said: "The university is expecting results of the series of tests in the next few weeks during which period the results will be analysed."
The University of Leicester has led the search for the king in association with Leicester City Council and the Richard III Society.




(Loyalty Bind Me)

Wikipedia.....for those interested.

Richard III (2 October 1452 – 22 August 1485) was King of England for two years, from 1483 until his death in 1485 during the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. His defeat at the Battle of Bosworth Field was the decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses and is sometimes regarded as the end of the Middle Ages in England. He is the subject of an eponymous play by William Shakespeare.
When his brother Edward IV died in April 1483, Richard was named Lord Protector of the realm for Edward's son and successor, the 12-year-old King Edward V. As the new king travelled to London from Ludlow, Richard met and escorted him to London, where he was lodged in the Tower of London. Edward V's brother Richard later joined him there. Arrangements began to be made for Edward's coronation on 22 June.
However, before the young king could be crowned, Edward IV's marriage to the boys' mother Elizabeth Woodville was publicly declared to be invalid, making their children illegitimate and ineligible for the throne. On 25 June an assembly of lords and commoners endorsed these claims. The following day, Richard III officially began his reign. He was crowned on 6 July. The two young princes were not seen in public after August and there arose subsequently a number of accusations that the boys had been murdered by Richard, giving rise to the legend of the Princes in the Tower.
There were two major rebellions against Richard. The first, in October 1483, was led by staunch allies of Edward IV and most notably by Richard's former ally, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. The revolt collapsed and Buckingham was executed at Salisbury near the Bull's Head Inn. In August 1485 there was another rebellion against Richard, headed by Henry Tudor, 2nd Earl of Richmond (later King Henry VII) and his uncle Jasper. Henry Tudor landed in Pembrokeshire, his birthplace, with a small contingent of French troops, and marched through Wales recruiting foot soldiers and skilled archers. Richard died during the Battle of Bosworth Field, the last English king to die in battle (and the only English king to do so on English soil since Harold II at the Battle of Hastings in 1066).