History records that Richard suffered an *excruciating *death.
Is Richard the only English monarch to die in battle?
Richard III was the only English king (post-Conquest) to die in battle.
Eight English monarchs (post-Conquest) died violent deaths:
• William II - died of an arrow wound in mysterious circumstances in the New Forest;
• Richard I - died of an arrow wound received at a siege in France (didn’t die in battle, lingered a few days);
• Edward II - died in mysterious circumstances after being deposed in favour of his son, who became Edward III;
• Richard II - died in mysterious circumstances after being deposed by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, who became Henry IV;
• Henry VI - died in mysterious circumstances in the Tower of London after being deposed by his cousin, Edward of York (Richard III’s older brother), who became Edward IV;
• Edward V, son of Edward IV, who was deposed by Richard III and last seen in the Tower; cause of death unknown;
• Richard III, who died in battle;
• Charles I, beheaded after trial and conviction for high treason during the Commonwealth - last King of England to die a violent death.
If popular rumours are correct, he died the worst death of the lot … :eek:
Agnatic (patrilineal, Y-chromosome) lines usually attract the most interest but Uterine (matrilineal, mtDNA) lineages are very important in forensics. At Leo van de Pas’ wonderful website you can see some of the female uterine descendants of Richard III’s mother (Cicely ‘the Rose of Raby’). Michael Ibsen doesn’t appear (he isn’t female!) but he has the same mtDNA as his sister Leslie Ibsen who is shown in that list. (Indeed she is the only uterine descendant shown at generation 19; checking dates and notes, it appears Leo added that family in response to the Richard III exhumation news.)
There’s at least one more: Jane Grey, beheaded in 1554, and so the only queen regnant of England to die a violent death.
Huffington Post has some pretty nice pictures of the skeleton. By nice I mean clear, what they show suggests an absolute absence of nice will toward Richard. His scoliosis too was evidently quite severe.
This is all quite interesting but some of us across the pond’ers haven’t had the benefit of as much English history as we’d like. Any good, to the point online articles on the life and controversy of Richard III that you would suggest? Thanks.
I still have this overwhelming urge to give him a horse.
Can we start a petition to have him buried with one? Even just a little wooden one?
In her book about Queen Isabella, Alison Weir argues pretty convincingly that Edward II, even if he was killed, was not killed the way Christopher Marlowe said. Not historical evidence, or testimony - just basically, it wouldn’t work. Red hot pokers just won’t go up butts like that.
While his culpability in the death of his nephews is debatable, it has now been established that he has thousands in unpaid parking violations.
How can that be? He didn’t have a horse, let alone a car.
Apparently it is a British Thing.
Best not to inquire. 
Wait, so which wasn’t it? It wasn’t a parking garage, or it wasn’t a parking lot? 
Way I heard it, there was a three-stage process involved: (1) insert hollow tube; (2) insert red-hot pointy poker into tube; (3) ram pointy poker into guts.
Not gonna experiment to see if it works, mind. 
But yeah, most actual contemporary accounts have the more boring CoD as “smothered”.
I was going to venture a guess of the hunchback part but the photo linked by Septimus show that the scoliosis is pretty severe.
If you need test subjects, I’ve got a little list.
At the moment Channel 4 in the UK is showing a documentary filmed behind the scenes of the archeology site and the subsequent investigation, research, facial recognition etc. It’s quite remarkable and fortuitous that the cameras have followed the whole thing.
So it seems a member of the Richard III Society, called Philippa Langley, uncovered some research that that pointed toward Richard’s grave being in this council run car park. When she visited it she saw a big R painted on the tarmac and felt a distinctly odd feeling when she stood on that spot. They tried to get funding to dig but no-one would give it to them. She appealed to her fellow society members and the money rolled in. So far it seems the woman was nuts. With the help of the local University the dig began - and she was astonished to see the first cut into the ground was where the R was. What turned out to be King Richard III was the first thing they found in the first trench on the first day. The documentary has her saying “I think it’s him”, with the archeologists saying they thought she was insane.
Phillipa and the rest of her society, have always claimed that Richard was definitely NOT a hunchback and that finding hos body would prove that all the negative history about the King was Tudor propoganda. So it was fantastic moment when the scientist digging out the skeleton beckoned Phillipa over and told her in so many words: ‘this skeleton belonged to a man with a severe spinal deformity’. When the bones were finally excavated and carried to the university, Phillipa put a royal flag on the box. Total crackpot - very emotional throughout the whole process. Only thing is, she was the person who found the body…
It’s still on now, UK dopers check it out in the +1 channel.
How is that a crackpot?
Remember, they had no idea who this was at the time - it was just a set of bones of a person with a deformed spine at an archeological dig. When she asked an archeologist to help her, the archeologist refused.
A chess piece will do. A white one, of course.