So, given his dark reputation who wouldn’t chose to sneak up on that personification of evil who dispatched his brother, his nephews and heaps of other political rivals?
After all Richard described himself as that man “Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time, Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them.”*
But of course that is to believe William Shakespeare, the man who was writing for Queen Elizabeth I whose granddad had defeated Richard at the battle of Bosworth and then let his soldiers mutilate the King's dead body.
For me almost as long as I can remember I was on Richard’s side, having picked up on all those historians who argued that he was the victim of Tudor propaganda fuelled by Thomas More and a plethora of Victorian writers.
So when we were in Leicester this weekend it was inevitable that we should go to the Richard III visitor's centre to see the story of how he was found in a disused car park and the investigation into proving he was the last Plantagenet King.
Added to which I was interested in how Leicester managed to hold onto him when I rather thought his final resting place should be York.
All of which seems a double whammy, first the Tudors steal his reputation and then Leicester his body.
But then I am biased, and such an outburst will get me in the naughty corner when we return to Leicester.
And that might be why the Richard III visitors centre was closed when we were in the city.
Location; Leicester
Pictures; Sneaking up on Richard III, and Standing up to Richard, Leicester, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
* "Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York;" Richard III, Act 1 Scene 1, William Shakespeare
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