Free The King's Grave: The Discovery of Richard III's Lost Burial Place and the Clues It Holds by Philippa Langley Page A

character assassination that subsequently reached its apogee – or nadir – with Shakespeare’s play. Whether we agree or disagree with these sentiments, we have been replaying this side of the debate ever since.
    But Richard responded to his opponent’s letters with a proclamation of his own. In it, he derided Henry Tudor’s claim because through his pedigree, his family descent, he had no legitimate right to claim the crown at all. Henry was, he asserted, of bastard stock from both his maternal and paternal lineages – an observation that was fundamentally correct. This was the issue that John Rous was strongly hinting at in his earlier version of Richard III’s reign. Richard, by contrast, was born from a true marriage, and this not only validated his own right to rule, but fatally undermined the right of his opponent. Richard’s side of the argument revolved around legitimacy, a belief in his own legitimate right to be king and a conviction that his challenger possessed no right at all.
    This was the argument the Tudors feared most deeply. We often employ the phrase ‘Tudor propaganda’ when discussing Richard. Yet although that propaganda grew apace over time, it was notably hesitant, even reticent, in the reign of the first Tudor king. Henry was content to be the avenging angel, sent by God to chastise an unnatural tyrant. Any departure from this script would mean revealing information about Tudor’s own difficult life, the political compromises that he made in exile and the confusion over his claim to the throne, which persisted long after he had won it. And that was something Henry was most reluctant to do.
    If we introduce legitimacy back into the heart of the debate we can break away from the endless sessions of a Kafkaesque court of justice, reconvening year after year, and century after century, to discuss the real and imagined crimes of this long dead king. Instead, we can give Richard III a cause to fight and die for, a cause that he could be loyal to – and loyalty was the guiding personal motto of his life. In doing so we also return to the heart of the family – the House of York – from which Shakespeare and the Tudors had plucked him. We see the power of the reverence for his dead father, whose achievements Richard admired so much, and whose rightful heir he increasingly felt himself to be. Departing from the hostile versions of More and Shakespeare, and following the contemporary account of Dominic Mancini, we encounter the force of his grief over the death of his brother, the Duke of Clarence, along with fear that he also was at risk, and an all-consuming desire to avenge his brother’s fate. This interpretation, which will turn Shakespeare on its head, forms a cornerstone from which much else will fall into place.
    Richard might have fought his way to the throne for no other reason than merciless personal ambition; he may also have killed for a cause – the legitimacy of his right to be king. Once we allow for that possibility, the fateful and heroic cavalry charge on the morning of 22 August 1485 begins to make more and more sense. The Battle of Bosworth saw the fall of the last King of England to die in battle and the succession of a dynasty determined to denigrate his name. To bring him back to life we do not need to try to replace a villain with a saint; rather, we need to understand better the bravery and self-belief of the line of horsemen who charged across the battlefield to meet their foe, and the astonishing courage of the king who led that charge. If we are able to allow history to be written by the losers as well as the winners, perhaps we can at last lay Richard III to rest with real dignity.

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    So It Begins
    Thursday, 23 August 2012
    T HE ALARM GOES off at 5 a.m., but I had woken at two and slept unevenly, questions racing through my mind. What could go right and what wrong? What hadn’t I planned for? Would I be ridiculed for this quixotic search? The cab arrives promptly