Richard III’s Bones: Should One of History’s Losers Be Redeemed?
These are royal bones. Researchers from the U.K.’s University of Leicester confirmed today that the remains of a skeleton discovered in September beneath a parking lot in the British Midlands were that of Richard III, a monarch who ruled for a brief, bloody two years before being slain in battle in 1485.
But now that we have — or at least, believe we have — established the identity of the remains, what of the historical figure that once gave them life? Richard III perished at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 when his army was decisively defeated by the forces of Henry Tudor, a rival claimant to the throne who would go on to become King Henry VII.
More than a century later, William Shakespeare would immortalize the cornered Richard’s final moments in Richard III as he fights grimly on foot after losing his steed — “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.” Sensing his doom a few lines before, Richard intones: “I have set my life upon a cast,/ And I will stand the hazard of the die.”