"Richard III's burial could be as poignant and beautiful as the royal wedding"

[purplecat]

That's a headline from the Telegraph.

I feel there is definitely a double-meaning there.

Thanks to my history teacher, I am broadly Ricardian in the comfy sense that involves having only the most tenuous grasp of the evidence and no real investment in an opinion I didn't exactly personally form. I love me a good conspiracy theory though, and as conspiracy theories go, believing Richard III was wronged seems fairly harmless.

I'm mildly bemused by the level of interest the discovery of his remains seem to have raised though. Does having his actual body contribute much of anything to our understanding of the people or politics of the time?

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

Well, because there's been such a lot of speculation about Richard, this is very interesting indeed, because it confirms a lot of what was said about his death, adds in extra knowledge of how he died, where and how he was buried and also precisely what medical condition he suffered from. (So, he had curvature of the spine, and might well have had one shoulder higher than the other, but no sign of the Shakespearean withered arm). It cuts through some of the romance (and the reverse) about him to give us some facts. There doesn't seem to be much doubt that it is him.

I don't know what the article said; it sounds very weird (newspapers! :lol:), but I saw the BBC Leicester one & it has some interesting facts (as above), and as a bit of a historian myself, I think it is a pretty exciting find.

(This is my Henry VII icon, probably used slightly inappropriately here).

[purplecat]

As more reports are coming in it looks like the spine/hunchback thing could be significant - though both sides appear to be attempting to spin it to their advantage - and I'm also surprised at the number of quite vehement pro- or anti- people I seem to know (though that may be a reflection on my friends rather than the population at large).

The telegraph article was very odd, (here for reference) and reads as a vague apologetic for both Richard III and Game of Thrones at one and the same time, with a sort of knee-jerk tory "anything involving royals, pomp and ceremony is automatically a good thing" undertone. Maybe the idea is that Richard III will be forgiven no matter what he may or may not have done, if he can give us a bit of an excuse to wave flags.

I'm still not convinced the body itself will tell us anything very significant about Richard III, the Wars of the Roses, or the 15th century but I'm guessing the upcoming documentary could be interesting in terms of modern archeological techniques.

And the whole thing is probably fascinating from a sociological and anthropological point of view. I think people's reactions to the news are far more interesting than the news itself.

[thisbluespirit]

and I'm also surprised at the number of quite vehement pro- or anti- people I seem to know

Yes, the debate from both sides does tend to get a little heated. :lol:

Well, it may not add anything new, but with a monarch so subject to speculation, later obfuscation, propaganda, romanticisation, to have a few facts we can confirm or deny - and that it does at least suggest evidence and sources followed to get to the body was actually reliable, always useful.

I don't know, I'm having a history geek out moment, really. It's like a family history breakthrough, only this time everybody gets it. \o/

*cough*

:-)

[evilawyer]

People do tend to get sentimental about bodies. I think we're hard wired to have an urge to honor the flesh as a means of dealing with the fear of death. Which is a bit silly since, as you point out, it's not like it gives insight into his era.

[purplecat]

Yes, it clearly has a symbolic significance to a lot of people that is divorced from anything it actually tells us.

[daniel-saunders.livejournal.com]

I think it's the incongruity of his supposedly being discovered beneath a car park, which also seems like something from a twentieth century gangster story (throw the body in the still-wet concrete).

I never studied the Wars of the Roses at school or Oxford and don't have an opinion on this either. Frankly, there's part of me that wants to be snobbish and tell people this isn't 'real' history (whatever that might be).

[purplecat]

I get the impression from a lot of the comments on Facebook that people feel, or feel other people feel, that Richard has been vindicated in some sense by the finding of his body. You could be correct that the gangster element plays into that, implicitly suggesting he was victim rather than villain.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I suppose examination of the body might lay to rest the 'was he a hunchback' question once and for all, which might shed some light on the extent of bias in later sources. And they could probably analyse his teeth and find out what he ate and compare that against the documentation, which I suppose might be revealing?

But beyond that 'Does having his actual body contribute much' - I think it's an emotional question, not a physical/scientific one? Why do people collect relics? Why is it different to hold a fragment of bone and know the name of the person it came from, to holding a fragment of cow-bone? Why does a powerful story about a wronged and/or wicked king need a physical anchor, and why does that anchor have power? I have no idea, but it does.

[purplecat]

Yes, it's the extent that difference that the presence of a thing makes that is interesting, I think. Though my facebook friends list suggests that (relatively normal*) people hold rather more vehement opinions on Richard's innocence or guilt that seems entirely sensible.

* I've just realised that the assumption that my Facebook friends list somehow defaults to "relatively normal" may be where I've been going wrong here.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I'm mildly bemused by the level of interest the discovery of his remains seem to have raised though. Does having his actual body contribute much of anything to our understanding of the people or politics of the time?

No.

Once I actually read up on some of the books not published or recommended by the Richard III society I became convinced that Richard would have been an idiot if he hadn't murdered said princes. He was a ruthless prince, typical of his era. Big deal.

My main interest is that it turns out that, if the skeleton is Richard's (and my main concern is the convenient way everything fell into place) then it turns out that he was a hunchback (or something close) after all - something that has been denied by the Ricardians for years, but on which they are now strangely silent.

[fredbassett]

The hunchback thing, if true, will be most amusing for the reasons you mention! There's been a lot of protesting too much on that score!

[purplecat]

Indeed, beyond a certain fondness for the general idea that Richard was stitched up - and I guess my history teacher also taught it slightly as a Propaganda 101 lesson - I've also found it difficult to work out, amidst the general awfulness of the wars of the 13th and 14th centuries, not to mention the political viciousness of the renaissance, why Richard III is singled out for particular opprobrium.

[fredbassett]

The main thing that concerns me is the DNA libk. I'm not at all convinced that the genealogical side of things can hold up over that length of time.

But if it is true, then I think it's interesting for the reasona mentioned below. But in effect it's just another example of the cult of the celebrity.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I heard it was meant to be mitochondrial DNA, which is, of course, the female line, but with the inbreeding within the nobility...

[purplecat]

It would be nice to see the DNA thing properly presented. I mean if they can make a good case that the skeleton is a relative of whoever-the-descendent-they-tested is then that's certainly strong circumstantial evidence. But, as Lil points out, there was a lot of in-breeding going on - you'd need to exhaustively test most of the claimed modern descendants of significant nobles at the time and see how many of them also connected to this guy and then do some stats involving known genealogies and likely descent from particular individuals...

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

My Mum has always claimed to be passionately pro-Richard III, but I think it was the result of reading Daughter of Time at a formative age, rather than a serious belief in the evidence. She tried in a slightly tongue-in-cheek way to indoctrinate me, and I reacted by remaining to this day supremely unmoved by the question, either way.

I did choose the Wars of the Roses as my special subject for my Finals, but my interest was more in the early part of the wars. In general, if there's a historical issue where the evidence leads people to have a variety of contradictory strongly-held opinions, my opinion will be a mixture of "we'll never know," and "it's probably somewhere in between the two."

However, I was quite gripped by the press conference earlier today. No, it doesn't reveal anything new about the way people lived or even very much about the course of political events, but it's a human story with a human name and a human face; most people, I think, are more drawn to such stories in history. It's like a novel, though I look on it as a novel in which the modern-day academics are the heroes. It's like Indiana Jones, or all those stories in which dogged investigators pore over the evidence in late-night montages, and end up locating the relic that everyone else has assumed to be lost.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Possibly more Bonekickers than Indiana Jones.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I read Daughter of Time at a formative age too, and was most disappointed to discover the contrary arguments while reading for that same special subject. I decided there and then that I was going to live in an alternate universe where Daughter of Time was 100% correct.

The Wronged King who loved his nephews may not be very historical but it's a story to blow your socks off, which given the whole 'we'll never really know' aspect strikes me as by far the most important thing.

[purplecat]

Daughter of Time is almost certainly partly responsible for my sympathy towards Richard III as well. Though, in my case, I was pointed in its direction by my history teacher when I expressed enthusiasm for her point of view.

[rain-sleet-snow.livejournal.com]

No, I don't really think it adds anything to historical understanding of Richard II or his time period, but I study this stuff, so I find it fascinating. I want to see the papers before I mae any judgements on how good the evidence is, but it looks pretty good from where I'm standing.

[fredbassett]

I think anything after this length of time that might have such celebrity status is definitely fascinating. It reminds me of the Philip of Macedon's tomb sketch. And takes us right back to good old Schliemann and the 'I have gazed on the face of Agamemnon' line.

There's a natuural tendency to personalise things and discoveries.

[nyarbaggytep.livejournal.com]

Miss North?

[purplecat]

Absolutely. Subsequent reading may suggest she was wrong about a lot of things, but I can't fault her for inspiring an enthusiasm for history in me - in particular for, I think, conveying that history was about people not about dates.

[kargicq.livejournal.com]

Well, it's an excuse for me to re-watch the Olivier Richard III film...

Is it just me, or does Peter Dinklage consciously copy Olivier's R III mannerisms and inflections in Game of Thrones?

And is it just me, or does every question beginning "is it just me..." have the answer, "Yes, it's just you?"?

[purplecat]

I'll confess to never having watched Game of Thrones, partly because I fell out of love with the Song of Ice and Fire books somewhere around halfway through book three and partly because B. has stated he doesn't like watching shows in which unpleasant people do nasty things to each other and I rather suspect Game of Thrones will fall into this category. We haven't watched The Wire or the new Battlestar Galactica on much the same principles.