Thanks to the efforts of two famous Philippas, one of England’s most controversial medieval kings has been catapulted to the forefront of discussion. Ricardian Philippa Langley, who campaigned to exhume her hero’s bones from a Leicester car park and novelist Philippa Gregory, author behind The White Queen TV adaptation, have brought the events of the Battle of Bosworth into homes across the nation. With Richard III’s sympathetic portrayal by Welsh actor Aneurin Barnard and Langley’s forthcoming book on the dig, co-authored with Michael Jones, this fresh interest gives no sign of waning. Yet despite the debates, burning questions about the man remain unanswered.
Many theories have been offered to explain Richard’s actions in the late spring and early summer of 1483, when he unexpectedly put aside his twelve-year-old nephew and became King of England. Even his devotees will admit that there are several areas in which he appeared to act out of character. One of the most contentious is the fate of the Princes in the Tower, with some unable to accept that a man bound by the motto “loyaulte me lie” could order the murders of his brother’s young sons. Viewers of The White Queen recently saw Gregory’s own personal theory about the substitution of the younger boy and the culpability of Henry VII’s mother Lady Margaret Beaufort. When it comes to understanding Richard’s actions, there will never be as dramatic an answer as that which the discovery of his body provided about his scoliosis. We are not about to unearth the lost Richard III diaries, so his true motives can only be guessed at, across a divide of five centuries.
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