LONDON (AP) — Richard III was finally getting the ceremony and honor a king deserves, 530 years after his ignominious death in battle.
Hundreds of people, including some in period costume and armor, turned out in Leicestershire on Sunday to watch a procession carrying the remains of the medieval king whose bones were found in 2012 under a parking lot. The cortege made its way to Leicester Cathedral, where the monarch will be properly reburied.
Richard, the last Plantagenet king, was killed in battle against Henry Tudor in 1485 and buried hastily without a coffin in a long-demolished monastery.
His bones weren’t found until 2012, when archaeologists excavated them from a Leicester parking lot. DNA tests, bone analysis and other scientific scrutiny established that the skeleton belonged to the king.
On Sunday, a hearse carrying the monarch’s remains, sealed inside an oak coffin, processed through Leicestershire’s countryside to Bosworth, the battlefield where the monarch fell. Crowds lined the route of the cortege, and re-enactors in costume fired cannons in a 21-gun salute.
Michael Ibsen, a descendant of the monarch who built the coffin that carried Richard’s remains, was among academics and others who placed white roses on the casket during a short ceremony earlier Sunday.
The coffin will lie in Leicester Cathedral, where it will be lowered into a tomb on Thursday.
“His reburial at the end of the week will have all the dignity and solemnity that his original burial never had,” said Phil Stone, chair of the Richard III Society. It was time to reconsider the king’s legacy, he added.
The monarch was most famously portrayed as a hunchbacked villain in Shakespeare’s play “Richard III,” though some historians say he was a relatively enlightened monarch whose name was besmirched by his opponents.
“Let us remember King Richard III: The good king. The warrior king,” Stone said.
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Sylvia Hui can be reached at http://Twitter.com/sylviahui
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When you read a little about Richard III he wasn’t half as bad as Shakespeare made him out to be. He did kill the two little boys in the tower but he spared their mother and sisters. Other than that he was a reasonably enlightened noble of his age. He invented bail and tried to administer justice evenhandedly. Mostly he was brave in battle to the point of being foolhardy. He could have won the battle by hanging back and letting his superior numbers crush the Tudors, but decided to personally lead a brave but ultimately foolish cavalry charge. He almost got to Henry but just couldn’t make the last few feet. He is the last King of England to see combat as King.
The victor writes history and in this case the Tudors had the greatest writer of all time as their propagandist.
I love this news story and the fact that DNA helped identity Richard’s bones. In 1951, Josephine Tey wrote a detective novel, The Daughter of Time, which presented the case for restoring Richard’s reputation. Perhaps, even, he did not kill the two little boys. Glad his bones will rest in honor after all these centuries.
Hard for me to concede, because to this Shakes-bot his Richard will always be my Richard. But that seems to be a pretty solid case. Nevertheless, I can’t resist:
(Wow, MGM got any YouTube scenes taken down; but Criterion at least has the trailer, above. Watch especially from around :30 to 1:18, newbies, and see the most hideously seductive villain in [theatrical] history…)
No doubt Richard III is the most hideously seductive villain in theatrical history. That is what you get when the best playwright in history writes the part. Just remember who Shakespeare had to impress–the Tudors.
Have you seen the Richard as 1930s fascist version with Ian McKellen? It’s positively hypnotic.