King Richard III & Envy
In my whole observations about the research concerning King Richard III, I always wonder, why everybody thinks to be able to judge him on some prejudice, rumour, envy or other motive and readily dismisses valid research done on a broad basis evaluating the available material.
A historian is bound to build as complete a basis for a research as possible and only after reviewing all (!) available sources, is allowed to come to a conclusion and has to argument from all possible angles the validity of the own conclusions.
So you will find me shaking my head in utter astonishment concerning the current discussion about King Richard III, which gets high press coverage in renowned newspapers and magazines.
I also find it hard to decide how best to present this new discussion to you, as in the major part it is so nonsensical, that I wonder why it gets so much and famous attention at all.
First I want to state that I am in no way connected to or bound to defend the University of Leicester and one certainly can argue if all researches done by them were necessary or interfered with the dignity of the person of King Richard III, but this current discussion certainly shows they were exceedingly necessary.
The argument now raised against the University of Leicester and their result to confirm the identity of the found skeleton as being of King Richard III, is that the skeleton could easily be of some other soldier buried there, just conveniently being of the direct female line leading to King Richard III’s mother.
How many unaccounted for relatives, having the exact female blood line of King Richard III, do you think are lying around somewhere? Or better are lying around at the exact spot King Richard III should be? And in addition have died in the Battle of Bosworth or by incident around that time near Leicester, so that they are buried in the Grey Friars’ Abbey? While just in the late court battle, one of the main arguments against a burial in Leicester is, that King Richard III’s family just had no connections to Leicester? So how can forgotten relatives turn up there? And were the ‘grey friars’, while so discriminating in burying people in the choir of their church, suddenly burying soldiers from the battlefield, carting them all the way from the Bosworth battlefield? Why then were only so few skeletons found and not hundreds and only one with battle marks? Oh, and what a strange method to bury them without clothes and with bound hands? Really, the ‘grey friars’ must have had no piety at all…
I could go on much longer, as a result of the conclusive multitude of researches done by the University of Leicester and though some think it may now be enough research done on the skeleton of King Richard III, still the results in their entirety (not necessarily one taken on its own) give us a very complete and convincing affirmation of the skeleton’s identity as being King Richard III.
Especially helpful in that regard to see the full picture of research results and why they were done, is the excessive pre-research done by Dr. John Ashdown-Hill, who with great determination researched the potential last burial place of King Richard III from all historical angles and laid down his progress of research as well as the conclusions he came to in his work “The Last Days of Richard III”, which we have recommended here repeatedly, as it is the go-to research which was essential in finding King Richard III.
You see, I think the counter-argument just is so far-fetched as envy possibly can make it. Perhaps, it is due to scholars feeling left out from the euphoria and joy over the find in Leicester and now try to jump on the media attention created by the extraordinary research results in Leicester.
I just don’t get it, why the media jumps on this envy train so readily and let itself be used in such a way.
The news stream includes the articles of this new conflict in the sidebar and in the 2014-archive (entries dated around the end of March 2014).
But it provides heated arguments and is one more battle area in the new “Wars of the Roses” or rather a new skirmish.
(I am quite certain the list of battles around King Richard III will have to be continued …)
But now to something creative and constructive about King Richard III:
♛ King Richard III ♛
Matt Lewis – New Podcast series about King Richard III (iTunes)
- The Richard III Podcast – A Perfect Coup (04.03.2014)
- The Richard III Podcast – Introduction (09.03.2014)
- The Richard III Podcast – Episode 2 – The Cat Who Got the Cream (18.03.2014)
Also available via the YouTube channel of Matt Lewis.
New Approach to King Richard III
Lately there have been quite some delays in delivering the news here on KRA. That is due to me being totally overworked and once again fighting with computer hard- and software. As the problems are not house made, but rather involve service providers and those companies so far have not been able to eliminate the causes for the problems, the difficulties might continue for a while longer, till my entire building and town region get new wires, as those seem to be the most likely culprit, as all else has failed to solve the problem so far.
To enable me to keep you updated, while not bother you with numerous messages whenever I have time to accumulate the news, I changed the way of collecting the news stream.
Each news item gets its own post – which, depending on your settings, could result in an individual alert for each newspaper article. As I cannot be sure that is what you are interest in to get here from the KRA website, those news posts now run into a separate sub-blog on the website.
To avoid sending out an alert for every single news article and annoy you with a flood of mails and posts you might or might not be interested in, the news does not go out into the general RSS-feed and newsletter alerts.
If you want to get all the news alerts from KRA in the future, you will need to
- follow us on Twitter, where all alerts run into our tweets
- or watch our Facebook page, where also all messages are collected indiscriminately.
- watch the new “NewsStream” pages (NewsStream / 2014-News – annual news selections)
- or subscribe to the second NewsAlert for the NewsStream in addition to our general Blog-Alerts (Both newsletter subscription forms are in the sidebar. The general blog alert is in the top and the NewsStream subscription form is below the NewsStream-preview.)
Subscribe to NewsStream-Updates:
News gets announced as soon as I find it and have time to put it up.
The NewsStream pages are strictly sorted by day, so news I find at a later date might not always be the last on top, but will show up on the pages at the correct date the news was originally published.
This is in no way a guarantee that the NewsStream will either cover all news or necessarily your or our opinion. I am only human and only take articles which do not copy content already mentioned elsewhere, but really have news and something ‘new’ in them.
As I am over my head in work, I hope this is a way to either keep you updated and still keep the workload doable for me.
Greetings and best wishes,
CDoart
♛ King Richard III ♛
Some older news, which I still want to mention, as they are central in the latest discussions about King Richard III and his adequate handling. The UStream video-stream of the King Richard III conference held by the St. Louis University temporarily was not available or only transferred with major sound problems at the time. I now tested it once again and currently it works fine, so I want to bring it to your attention again.
- University of Leicester (YouTube): Richard III – The Whole Genome Sequence (11.02.2014) – Interview with Dr. Turi King about the coming DNA-analysis of King Richard III.
The DNA can reveal much, but can tell us nothing about King Richard III’s character. So don’t fear, the riddle about him being good or bad will remain as hot as ever for future generations.
- St. Louis University: Recorded livestream of King Richard sessions with Leicester University researchers of King Richard III’s remains, Mathew Morris and Turi King (08.02.2014)
Video streaming by Ustream - News about the High Court hearing currently taking place already is accumulated in the new NewsStream (also visible in the sidebar).
Richard Armitage Asked About King Richard III
The Anglophile Channel, U.S.A. revealed that
due to the results of their poll with participation worldwide, Richard Armitage is the
“Favourite British Artist of the Year 2013”.
In combination with giving Richard Armitage his well deserved price trophy, Marlise Boland interviewed him and asked the for us central question what Richard Armitage intends to do about King Richard III:
Marlise Boland: Is it true you were named after Richard III?
RA: It is true. Yes. I was born on the 22nd of August …
Marlise Boland: The day of his demise.
RA: Right. At the Battle of Bosworth.
Marlise Boland: So you do have affinity to that historical character.
Do you want to play him on stage or do you want to have a film project made out of his story?
RA: He is never really far from my head when it comes to assembling some kind of visual documentation of his life. […] I think he deserves a cinematic outing, that story.
I think it is an extraordinary tale. I think the Wars of the Roses is extraordinary. The last […] English monarch to die on the battlefield – in combat – and actually, a noble death.
A misinterpreted character, I think. But that is the reason to go exploring, because we don’t really know. […]
I don’t know whether I’ll get to play him in a movie, but I’ll certainly have a crack at him on stage.
Marlise Boland: Would you write the script? Have you written a script?
RA: I am not much of a writer. I am good at adapting other people’s writing.
But, yea. The assembling of ideas and gathering people together on a table is something that is my longterm goal over the next 30 years.
I’ll probably be acting less and producing more.
(The interview “Richard Armitage Interview Part 3: Richard the Third! with Marlis Boland (09.03.2014)” with Richard Armitage was released in three parts on YouTube. Here in the third part the question about King Richard III starts at about 3:10.)
The Anglophile Channel, U.S.A. (future website)