Distant relatives of Richard III want the king’s bones returned to York
By Jessica Allen - Tuesday, March 26, 2013 - 0 Comments
15 ancestors threaten to take legal action if the royal remains stay in Leicester
University of Leicester/AP
Last September a human skeleton was discovered in a parking lot over top of a Medieval monastery in Leicester, England. On Feb. 4, those remains were confirmed to be Richard III’s. Now, a group of 15 living relatives of the king want his remains returned to York, where the monarch spent his youth.
“Although the last English king to die in battle perished almost 500 years before the European convention on human rights came into force,” reports the Guardian, “his distant relatives are claiming they were not consulted and that their rights have been breached.”
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Why we still care about Richard III
By Patricia Treble - Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 10:07 AM - 0 Comments
Josephine Tey’s 1951 detective novel ignited a fascination for the ‘poisonous bunch-back’d toad’
A 1934 photo of Elizabeth Mackintosh (1897-1952), who wrote mystery novels under the nom de plume of Josephine Tey. (Sasha/Getty Images)
So it was him after all. It was always likely that the bones of a man unearthed last September from beneath a parking lot in the English Midlands city of Leicester would be those of King Richard III. The most notorious monarch in English history—thanks to Shakespeare’s excoriating portrait of him as the man who murdered his young nephews and seized the throne—died at nearby Bosworth Field in 1485, the last English king to be killed in battle. The man under the concrete was found, more or less, where tradition said he would be. His skull was cleaved by something like an axe and there was a barbed arrowhead between two vertebrae; as well, he had severe scoliosis—just like Shakespeare’s “poisonous bunch-back’d toad.” On Feb. 4, archaeologists announced the promising indicators had been confirmed by DNA comparison with Michael Ibsen, the Canadian-born descendant of Richard’s sister, Anne of York. The bones belonged to Richard III.
