Stand up for the last Plantagenet
On this day in 1485, betrayed when the treacherous Stanleys switched sides in mid-battle, Richard III fell on Bosworth Field, shouting “Treason!” at the last.
Then the ascendant Tudor dynasty proceeded to blacken his reputation, with a biography by Thomas More and the supreme villainy of Shakespeare’s representation—what the BritLit professoriate refers to as the “Tudor propaganda machine.”
Perhaps you know better. You may have read Josephine Tey’s pleasant The Daughter of Time, in which a detective laid up in hospital gets fascinated by Richard II and gradually ferrets out the historical truth. You might have read in Paul Murray Kendall’s solid biography of 1956 that Richard was, by and large, a moderate and reforming monarch. You may have spotted a passing reference in one of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries that Wolfe removed More’s Utopia from his shelves because More “framed Richard III.”
Still, not much to be done. A restoration of the Plantagenets looks even less likely than a restoration of the Stuarts, so we’re stuck with these dreary descendants of the Hanoverians.
But if you are reaching for a gesture of solidarity with fact-based history, you might wear in your lapel today the white rose of the House of York.
Comments
*The Sunne in Splendour* by Sharon Kay Penman - it's a novel - also gives a really interesting alternate perspective on Richard and the events of his time.
Posted by: Nenya | August 22, 2010 2:41 PM
Although even us instinctive Yorkists have to admit that these dreary descendants of the Hanoverians are also the dreary descendants of the Plantagenets. And, more significantly, of the very undreary Kings of Wessex.
Posted by: Picky | August 23, 2010 4:21 AM
David Faldone Craig commented on Facebook: There you go again. Meddling in the field of politics.
Posted by: John McIntyre | August 23, 2010 8:07 AM
Well, he's not altogether wrong. Those of us who, despite our Yorkist tendencies, were engulfed by the Shakespearian view of R3 linked Bosworth immediately with R4 and Watergate. And the revisionist view of R4 with the revisionist view of R3.
Posted by: Picky | August 23, 2010 9:50 AM
Thank heavens the British were spared Mary the Scottish Queen on the Engish throne. She too was a Stuart.
Posted by: Patricia the Terse | August 24, 2010 2:24 AM
But, Professor, if we hadn't had the Tudors we wouldn't have four juicy seasons of "The Tudors" on Showtime!
Posted by: Dahlink | August 24, 2010 5:38 PM
Or the Episcopalian Church, of course.
Posted by: Picky | August 25, 2010 6:51 AM
It's the Episcopal Church if you don't mind. Episcopalian is the noun. And more precisely, it's the Anglican Church in Britain. As the author of "O Ye Jig and Juleps" pointed out, "Jesus wouldn't care but other people would."
Posted by: Patricia the Terse | August 28, 2010 3:08 AM
1000 culpae. It's "Jigs," not "Jig."
Posted by: Patricia the Terse | August 28, 2010 3:10 AM
Yes, sorry, PtheT - thank goodness for editors. (Although, more precisely, in my part of Britain it's the Church of England.)
Posted by: Picky | August 29, 2010 3:39 AM
I loved the Sunne in Splendour, Penman portrays Richard as a man of honour and integrity...
Posted by: Joanne - Historical Fiction Buff | August 31, 2010 6:59 AM