[Red Badger]

The unveiling of the reconstruction was attended by Michael Ibsen, Richard's 17th generation nephew, who also provided DNA for tests on the bones

Richard III died aged 32 in the Battle of Bosworth

[Red Badger]

GGG Ping!........

[IronJack]

His kingdom for a horse ...

[Trapped Behind Enemy Lines]

Thanks largely to Shakespeare, this unfortunate monarch gets one of the biggest bum raps in history along with people such as Joe McCarthy, Pius XII, and Mary Surratt.

[afraidfortherepublic]

That just looks like a portrait of Richard Ibsen.

[Vigilanteman]

Whether scoundrel or martyr, Richard III was the last of the Plantagenet kings. The Tudors sought to erase every vestige of Plantagenet influence and revoked titles and offices to every Plantagenet who wouldn't pledge absolute fidelity to the Tudors.

The first title was not restored until the Tudor rule ended with the death of Elizabeth II roughly a century and a half after Bosworth Field. Even then, it was a minor title to a minor Plantagenet, Lord Aston of Forfar.

He's in my mother's family tree as a cousin or uncle, not direct. The interesting thing is that the purge of the Plantagenets actually accomplished two positive things:

1. Introduction of meritocracy to fill the scores of government and religious offices left vacant by the Plantagenet purge.
   
2. Driving many of the deposed Plantagenet's into what would grow into competing schools of religious thought which planted the seeds of Puritanism. Oliver Cromwell basically acquired his seat in Parliament from modest family wealth left over by deposed Plantagenet forebears. And scores of our Puritan founding fathers can trace their ancestry back to Plantagenet royalty, including those of my mother.

[Mr Ramsbotham]

Richard III was one S.O.B., there’s no doubt about it.

[GreyFriar]

Worth reading and also the back stories on the Daily Mail about the archeological dig.

[wildbill]

Looks like Laurence Olivier to me.

“Why, I can smile and murder whiles I smile,
And cry ‘content’ to that which grieves my heart,
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,
And frame my face for all occasions”

Shakespeare’s Richard III

[onedoug]

“Make me immortal with a....” Yuck! Never mind. That’s Christopher Marlowe anyway.

[martin_fierro]

Looks more like a young Bono.

[MinuteGal]

I don't know when I've enjoyed a thread as much as this one.

Many thanks to the freeper history brains who have written all the engrossing narratives upthread. I devoured every word.

We never learned all this detail in school, did we....and to be filled in by our resident freeper intelligentsia is absolutely awesome and fulfilling.

Leni

[dfwgator]

We seen the last of Good King Richard
Ring out the past his name lives on
Roll out the bones and raise up your pitcher
Raise up your glass to Good King John

[Tau Food]

That doesn’t do Richard justice.