The Remains of Richard III ... CNN

[WestCoastJoe]

I found this story interesting.

DNA tests seem to confirm that the bones found buried beneath a car park are those of the King who has been vilified in most historical accounts.

I got to see Shakespeare's play, Richard III, at Bard on the Beach. As with all of his plays, they certainly hold your interest.

[WestCoastJoe]

Body found under parking lot is King Richard III, scientists prove

By Bryony Jones, CNN

Leicester, England (CNN) -- DNA tests have confirmed that human remains found buried beneath an English car park are those of the country's King Richard III.

British scientists announced Monday they are convinced "beyond reasonable doubt" that a skeleton found during an archaeological dig in Leicester, central England, last August is that of the former king, who was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.

Mitochondrial DNA extracted from the bones was matched to Michael Ibsen, a Canadian cabinetmaker and direct descendant of Richard III's sister, Anne of York, and a second distant relative, who wishes to remain anonymous.

Experts say other evidence -- including battle wounds and signs of scoliosis, or curvature of the spine -- found during the search and the more than four months of tests since strongly support the DNA findings -- and suggest that history's view of the king as a hunchbacked villain may have to be rewritten.

Ibsen said he reacted with "stunned silence" when told the closely-guarded results. "I never thought I'd be a match, and certainly not that it would be so close, but the results look like a carbon copy," he told reporters.

The skeleton was discovered buried among the remains of what was once the city's Greyfriars friary. After centuries of demolition and rebuilding work, the grave's exact location had been lost to history, and there were even reports that the defeated monarch's body had been dug up and thrown into a nearby river.

Richard III was the last Plantagenet king of England, and the last English king to die in battle.

Born on October 2, 1452, he grew up during the bitter and bloody Wars of the Roses, which pitted two aristocratic dynasties, the House of York and the House of Lancaster, against each other in a fight for the throne.

The wars, which took their name from the families' symbols, a red rose for Lancaster and a white rose for York, were fought between 1455 and 1485.

While Richard was still a child, they led to the deaths of his father, the Duke of York, and his brother Edmund, and forced him into exile.

As the youngest son, Richard was never expected to become king, and instead spent many years as a nobleman, apparently intent on founding his own dynasty. His brother Edward became king in 1461, and Richard proved a loyal supporter.

"Shakespeare paints a picture of Richard as a scheming, plotting villain always aiming for the throne, but if that was the case, why didn't he kill the king?" says historian John Ashdown Hill, author of "The Last Days of Richard III."

"That would have been the easiest way, but he served his brother loyally for over 20 years."

When Edward IV died unexpectedly in 1483, he was succeeded by his 12-year-old son, Edward V, with Richard as his protector.

Within weeks, however, parliament had declared the boy illegitimate, and installed Richard as king in his place.

Edward and his brother were held in the Tower of London, and later disappeared. Richard has long been blamed for their murder.

The remains will be reburied in Leicester Cathedral, close to the site of his original grave, once the full analysis of the bones is completed.

Richard III's body was found in a roughly-hewn grave, which experts say was too small for the body, forcing it to be squeezed in to an unusual position.

Its feet had been lost at some point in the intervening five centuries, but the rest of the bones were in good condition, which archaeologists and historians say was incredibly lucky, given how close later building work came to them -- brick foundations ran alongside part of the trench, within inches of the body.

What was initially thought to be a barbed arrowhead found among the dead king's vertebrae turned out instead to be a Roman nail, disturbed from an earlier level of excavation.

Archaeologists say their examination of the skeleton shows Richard met a violent death: They found evidence of 10 wounds -- eight to the head and two to the body -- which they believe were inflicted at or around the time of death.

"The skull was in good condition, although fragile, and was able to give us detailed information," said bioarchaeologist Jo Appleby, who led the exhumation of the remains last year.

The king had suffered two severe blows to the head, either of which would have been fatal, according to Appleby. The injuries suggest that he had lost his helmet in the course of his last bloody battle.

Appleby said there were also signs that Richard's corpse was mistreated after his death, with evidence of several "humiliation injuries," which fitted in with historical records of the body being displayed, naked, in Leicester before being laid to rest.

Richard Buckley, the lead archaeologist on the project said the unusual position of the skeleton's arms and hands suggested he may have been buried with his hands tied.

Investigators from the University of Leicester had been examining the remains for months.

Others got their first glimpse of the battle-scarred skull that may have once worn the English crown early Monday when the university released a photograph ahead of its announcement.

Read more: Will Richard III discovery rewrite history?

Turi King, who carried out the DNA analysis, said it was a "real relief" when the results came through.

"I went really quiet. I was seeing all these matches coming back, thinking, 'That's a match, and that's a match, and that's a match.' At that point I did a little dance around the lab."

King pointed out that "in a generation's time, the DNA match would not have been possible, since both individuals used in the tests are the last of their line," a fact echoed by Ibsen, who told CNN before the results came through that "they caught us just in time."

The initial discovery of the remains provoked much debate in Britain as to what would happen with the body, if it were proven to be that of Richard III, with many calling for a state funeral at Westminster Abbey, and others backing a burial in York Minster, in keeping with the king's heritage as a member of the House of York.

Opinion: Richard still the criminal king

But on Monday those involved in the search said he would be reinterred in Leicester Cathedral, the closest church to the original grave site in a memorial service expected to be held early next year.

Canon Chancellor David Monteith said it was important to remember that as well as being the subject of important historical and scientific research, the skeleton also represented "the mortal remains of a person, an annointed Christian king," and as such should be treated with dignity.

Supporters of the infamous king, including members of the Richard III Society, hope the discovery will now force academics to re-examine history, which they say has been tainted by exaggerations and false claims about Richard III since the Tudor era.

Screenwriter Philippa Langley, who championed the search for several years, told CNN she wanted "the establishment to look again at his story," saying she wanted to uncover the truth about "the real Richard, before the Tudor writers got to him."

"This has been an extraordinary journey of discovery," Langley said. "We came with a dream and today that dream has been realized. This is an historic moment that will rewrite the history books."

[KnowItAll]

my mother always claimed we were somehow related to richard the lionhearted, but then my mother was always full of *poop*, so who knows...or cares for that matter.

Bones is bones, and I have learned to never trust anything a scientist says for tomorrow they will say something different.

I wonder how much public money was wasted on this issue.

[Toppy Vann]

It was a pretty neat find and I am not a huge history buff but with DNA today and other tests there is not way this is not the guy if they have his relatives.

I assume that family is no longer British nobility.

[WestCoastJoe]

It was a pretty neat find and I am not a huge history buff but with DNA today and other tests there is not way this is not the guy if they have his relatives.

I assume that family is no longer British nobility.

Mitochondrial DNA extracted from the bones was matched to Michael Ibsen, a Canadian cabinetmaker and direct descendant of Richard III's sister, Anne of York, and a second distant relative, who wishes to remain anonymous.

Experts say other evidence -- including battle wounds and signs of scoliosis, or curvature of the spine -- found during the search and the more than four months of tests since strongly support the DNA findings -- and suggest that history's view of the king as a hunchbacked villain may have to be rewritten.

Ibsen said he reacted with "stunned silence" when told the closely-guarded results. "I never thought I'd be a match, and certainly not that it would be so close, but the results look like a carbon copy," he told reporters.

Canadian DNA match. And one other. DNA science is pretty amazing.

[TheLionKing]

Absolutely fascinating. Saw it on the news tonight. What are the odds ?

[TheLionKing]

To bring it back to football --my dad is a history nut, and has been following this story for months. He set up a google alert for Richard III, and not quite understanding how to limit the results he got e-mailed to him every day, he ended up getting daily updates on RGIII. It's turned him into a real Redskins fan.

Cheers,

James

That's funny

[Rammer]

my mother always claimed we were somehow related to richard the lionhearted, but then my mother was always full of *poop*, so who knows...or cares for that matter.

Bones is bones, and I have learned to never trust anything a scientist says for tomorrow they will say something different.

I wonder how much public money was wasted on this issue.

Someone always has to be out of sync with the majority, nice to see how consistent you are KIA.

Not a huge history fan myself, however, that this can be confirmed makes a 1485 story current news, very very interesting.

[KnowItAll]

my mother always claimed we were somehow related to richard the lionhearted, but then my mother was always full of *poop*, so who knows...or cares for that matter.

Bones is bones, and I have learned to never trust anything a scientist says for tomorrow they will say something different.

I wonder how much public money was wasted on this issue.

Someone always has to be out of sync with the majority, nice to see how consistent you are KIA.

Not a huge history fan myself, however, that this can be confirmed makes a 1485 story current news, very very interesting.

yup. no one will ever accuse me of being a sheep

[WestCoastJoe]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-0 ... d-iii.html

What Abraham Lincoln Liked About Richard III

By Stephen L. Carter Feb 7, 2013 3:30 PM

Viewed from the American side of the water, the fanfare about the discovery of the bones of the last Plantagenet monarch probably seems a bit quaint.

Having determined that the remains found in Leicester, U.K., a few months back are indeed those of Richard III, our English cousins immediately got into a fight over where to bury the fellow. Westminster? The queen quietly vetoed that one, say the tabloids. York? Maybe if we want to refight the Wars of the Roses. Leicester Cathedral looks logical and likely, if a little out of the way for royalty.

Stephen L. Carter is a professor of law at Yale, where he teaches courses on contracts, professional responsibility, ... MORE

It’s all so delightfully English. Over here, most of us probably couldn’t name the burial sites of more than two or three presidents. We lack the English sense of the importance of history. History to us is a list of independent facts to be trotted out in the service of political argument, not a set of traditions in which we ourselves are embedded. American taxi drivers, for example, do not get as excited about history as do their English counterparts.

Here in the U.S., we don’t keep track of the true villains of our history. We know those who’ve threatened us from abroad. Yet most of us would be hard-pressed to name, for example, the three most important supporters of slavery in the 19th century. The passions of every political moment throw up monsters by the dozens or hundreds, but in our somber moments most of us recognize how foolish it would be to take that rhetoric seriously.

Fictional Villains
We mainly keep our villains contained in fiction. Richard of Gloucester is no different. We know him mainly as the bloodthirsty and self-aggrandizing villain of one of William Shakespeare’s greatest plays. The opening couplet -- “Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York” -- is so famous that when President Barack Obama alluded to it in his first inaugural address, plenty of people who’d never read a line of Shakespeare probably caught the reference.

“Richard III” rarely appears on high-school reading lists, and fewer students study Shakespeare in college. That’s a shame. As a tale of ambition run amok, it stands worlds ahead of “Julius Caesar” and rivals the more popular “Macbeth.”

Abraham Lincoln was renowned for his love of Shakespeare. “Richard III” was a particular favorite, biographer Fred Kaplan says, because of its message about the dangers of ambition. And Francis Bicknell Carpenter, in his 1866 volume “Six Months at the White House With Abraham Lincoln,” reported that the president not only could recite the prologue from memory, but argued that few actors delivered it with the appropriate degree of “bitterness and satire.”

This bitterness doesn’t fit the American ethos. Thus Ethan Allen Hawley, antihero of John Steinbeck’s classic 1961 novel, “The Winter of Our Discontent,” is less Richard III and more Huey Long: a familiar American archetype, rising from petit bourgeoisie to a position of political and economic power, yet becoming increasingly corrupt along the way. Like Shakespeare’s Richard, Hawley finds rationalizations for every wrong he commits. Unlike Richard, he proclaims a consistent and terrifying innocence of his own crimes.

And of course, the ambiguity of Steinbeck’s ending lacks the finality of Shakespeare’s. This is also very American: We like to leave our villains the possibility of redemption. Shakespeare left his villains dead.

Hawley is Richard-lite. Small wonder. Richard’s villainy is, in a peculiar way, too large for American sensibilities. Richard is grand and horrible. W.H. Auden concluded his brilliant lecture on the play with this apt description: “He must always make enemies, for then he can be sure he exists.”

Historical Villains
In his 2006 essay “Uses of Richard III: From Robert Cecil to Richard Nixon,” M.G. Aune, professor of English at California University of Pennsylvania, points out that the play was considered rather dry for much of history, until the ideological currents of the 20th century occasioned a series of stagings intended as direct commentaries on the rise of German militarism. The director Jurgen Fehling’s Berlin production in the mid-1930s “apparently featured Clarence’s murderers wearing SA uniforms.” Laurence Olivier later confirmed that his own stirring rendition on stage in the 1940s and in the famous 1955 film was inspired by Hitler.

This Richard III, Aune muses, seems to have become permanent: “No matter how a production attempts to reinvent Richard,” he writes, “audiences (and actors and directors) will tend to see him in terms of Hitler or Stalin first. This tendency can thus short-circuit attempts to connect him to more recent or topical figures.”

Exactly. Richard III is a villain too large for our times. That’s why partisan efforts to draw analogies between Richard of Gloucester and, say, George W. Bush or Barack Obama look tendentious and silly.

Rather than abuse great literature by trying to twist it to our purposes, we should sit at its feet and partake of its wisdom. Unfortunately, as Shakespeare’s masterpiece drops from school reading lists, its themes and language will probably become less resonant.

Pity, that. I have argued that democracy rests in part on our willingness to study and cope with difficult and challenging texts. “Richard III” is a play that’s easy to get wrong but important to get right.

Some say Richard’s villainy is overstated. That’s the case made by his many supporters, most prominently the mystery writer Josephine Tey in her 1951 novel, “The Daughter of Time.” Most scholars nevertheless stand with Winston Churchill, who famously responded in his “A History of the English-Speaking Peoples” that the evidence of Richard’s villainy is so great that “It will take many ingenious books to raise this issue to the dignity of a historical controversy.”

Maybe Richard of Gloucester really was the monster who murdered the young princes in the Tower of London to gain the throne. Maybe his tattered reputation arose from centuries of Tudor propaganda. (Elizabeth II is a 16th-generation descendant of Henry VII, whose forces slew Richard at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.) Maybe his style of rule was closer to the stability of his predecessor Edward IV than we imagine. Let our English cousins fight over that one, the way they’re fighting over whether to give him a state funeral.

Back on the American side of the water, we would do well just to learn again to appreciate the play. Lincoln was right. “Richard III” has much to teach us, if we are but patient and reflective enough to learn.

(Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg View columnist and a professor of law at Yale University. He is the author of “The Violence of Peace: America’s Wars in the Age of Obama,” and the novel “The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln.” The opinions expressed are his own.)

[WestCoastJoe]

Tyrants are still with us, but we’re making progress

By Gwynne Dyer, Special to QMI Agency

Friday, February 8, 2013 5:18:28 EST PM

Michael Ibsen, a London, Ont.-born 17th generation descendent of King Richard III, poses with a facial reconstruction of King Richard III at a news conference in London, England Tuesday. Gwynne Dyer says . . . . (Andrew Winning Reuters)

You can hear them shouting it in the horrible mobile-phone footage of the mob killing the wounded, befuddled Muammar Gadhafi: “Not the face, don’t touch the face.” They weren’t feeling sorry for the dying dictator of Libya. They just wanted to make sure that his corpse was recognizable. A lot of people would not feel safe, and some other people would not give up fighting for him, until they were sure he was really dead.

They probably yelled the same thing while they were killing King Richard III on a battlefield near Leicester in 1485. He had only been on the English throne for two years when Henry Tudor came back from exile and overthrew him at the Battle of Bosworth Field, but it was essential that many witnesses saw and recognized his corpse. Otherwise there would be endless rebels claiming to be Richard and trying to overthrow the new king.

We can be pretty certain that the men who killed Richard III were indeed ordered to spare his face, because they have now found Richard’s remains under a car-park in the centre of Leicester. His face is pretty much intact, even though the rest of his skull is a mess. You have to be sure that the former dictator is dead before you give your allegiance to the new dictator.

The skeleton was initially suspected to be that of Richard III because archeologists were digging up the car park to examine the foundations of the medieval Church of the Greyfriars, which is where he was buried. They were further persuaded because the skeleton’s spine was twisted by scoliosis in a way that would have made him look hunch-backed, as every account says that the last of the Plantagenet kings did.

Then they did a computer reconstruction of what the skull would have looked like with flesh on it, and used 3D printing to built up a plastic model that closely resembles near-contemporary portraits of the king. And finally they matched up his mitochondrial DNA with that of Canadian Michael Ibsen, who is descended from Richard’s sister, Anne of York. Yup, it’s Richard III — and here’s how he died.

There is a fist-sized chunk gone from the base of the skull where a heavy, sharp-bladed weapon, most likely a halberd (basically, an axe at the end of a pike), had sliced right through the bone and into the brain. Just below it is a smaller hole, probably made by a sword, that penetrated the bone and entered the brain.

There are about a dozen other wounds, most probably inflicted after he died, but only two small ones on his face. A mob of foot-soldiers — the people who killed him were using infantry weapons — enthusiastically took part in the slaughter, but they left him recognizable.

It all fits with the accounts that he was unhorsed in a cavalry melee and then surrounded and killed by Tudor infantry. “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” William Shakespeare has him cry as they close in, and that has the ring of truth.

So Henry Tudor became Henry VII, to be succeeded by Henry VIII, the closest that English history has ever come to a Stalin figure, and then by “Bloody Mary”, and then Queen Elizabeth I (“Good Queen Bess”), while Richard III became Shakespeare’s most monstrous villain.

It was all pro-Tudor propaganda: Shakespeare, who wrote his plays during Elizabeth’s reign, was not fool enough to question the legitimacy of the Tudor dynasty, or to praise its enemies.

We don’t know whether Richard III was really as bad as Shakespeare painted him, but he was undoubtedly pretty bad, because they all were: medieval politics was ruthless and bloody.

The temptation is to say that nothing much has changed. Gadhafi was also a monster and a killer, and he died in about the same way (except for the horse). History just repeats itself in different clothing, and things are as bad as they ever were.

The temptation should be resisted. Violence still works the same way it always did, but there is far less of it around. Even allowing for the great wars of the last century, the proportion of the population that dies violently now is 10 times lower than it was in medieval times.

Tyrants still get overthrown violently, but more of them are removed by non-violent means, and there are fewer of them around anyway. Nor are they just succeeded by other tyrants. After Gadhafi’s death, Libya held free elections, and it now has a civilian government. One that has a lot of work to do to restore order in the country after 42 years of Gadhafi’s tyranny and incompetence, to be sure, but it is making progress.

There’s that dirty word again: “progress”. We’re not supposed to believe in that any more. What about terrorism? What about the “structural violence” of capitalism? “Progress” smacks of cultural imperialism, and even worse, it’s naive.

OK, you go and live in the 15th century. I’ll just stay here and hold your horse.

[WestCoastJoe]

Michael Ibsen, a London, Ont.-born 17th generation descendent of King Richard III, poses with a facial reconstruction of King Richard III at a news conference in London, England Tuesday. Gwynne Dyer says . . . . (Andrew Winning Reuters)