DNA Evidence Casts Doubt on Richard III's Claim to the Throne

Per CNN: Richard III was blue-eyed, blond, but should he have been king? DNA puzzle:

DNA reveals a break in the royal lineage. According to the BBC, this could cast doubt on the Tudor line or Richard III’s claim to the throne.

The BBC and Nature Communications delve deep into all the nitty-gritty biological reasons for this, but to summarize quickly: Scientists were able to match the maternal side of Richard III’s DNA (the X chromosome) to two living relatives of Richard’s eldest sister, Anne of York. Both Michael Ibsen and Wendy Dulig, 14th cousins and descendants of the House of York, have the same extremely rare genetic lineage as the skeleton found in the parking lot. 

The male side (the Y chromosome) is where things get tricky. 

The skeleton’s DNA does not match the Y chromosomes of living heirs of the fifth Duke of Beaufort, a descendent of John of Gaunt (all the aforementioned men are descendants of Edward III—you can find a helpful family tree here). The Tudors also descend from John of Gaunt. The lack of Y chromosome consistency between the DNA in the skeleton and of the Duke of Beaufort’s heirs means that, somewhere down the line between Edward III and Richard III, there was a “false paternity event”—aka, an act infidelity. If this event happened along either the Richard III or Henry Tudor (later known as Henry VII) branches of Edward III’s family tree, their lineage’s claims to the throne could be false.

Lots more at CNN, BBC, via Mental Floss.

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A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse! Richard III was born 562 years ago (and unearthed recently)

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visag'd war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now,--instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,--
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I,--that am not shap'd for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform'd, 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;--
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun,
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore,--since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,--
I am determined to prove a villain,
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false, and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,--
About a prophecy which says that G
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul:-- here Clarence comes.

~William Shakespeare (1564-1616) (Richard III, Act I, Sc.1)

BBC's sequel to the excellent Hollow Crown will
 star Benedict Cumberbatch (AKA Sherlock)
as Richard III

The truth I take to have been this. Richard, who was slender and not tall, had one shoulder a little higher than the other: a defect, by the magnifying glasses of party, by distance of time, and by the amplification of tradition, easily swelled to shocking deformity.

~Horace Walpole (1717-1797) (Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard III) 

In the course of a mere eighteen months, crowded with cares and problems, he laid down a coherent program of legal enactments, maintained an orderly society, and actively promoted the well-being of his subjects. A comparable period in the reigns of his predecessor and of his successor shows no such accomplishment.

~Paul Murray Kendall (1911-1973) (Richard III, page 319)

Today is the 562nd anniversary of the birth of England's controversial King Richard III (1452-1485) (wiki), who reigned from 1483 until his death on Bosworth Field at the hands of Henry Tudor, who thus ended the War of the Roses and ascended the throne as Henry VII. Largely because of Sir Thomas More's highly partisan Tudor biography* and the Shakespeare play that followed in 1593, Richard III has come down to us as a misshapen, ambitious, and totally ruthless psychopath, who usurped the throne by murdering the rightful heir, Edward V, and his brother ("the little princes") in the Tower of London in 1483.

 Richard's face, reconstructed from 3D scans of
his skull. He seems to have looked a lot
like Jim Carrey

Modern scholars have adopted a somewhat less monochromatic view of the iniquitous Richard as presented above in Shakespeare's masterful depiction of evil in the opening soliloquy of his play.** The remarkable discovery of Richard's remains just two years ago under a parking lot in Leicester confirms Richard's deformity - severe scoliosis - but he was in many ways the kind of strong and decisive ruler called for by the times.

* N.B. Despite his latter-day canonization and an enduring reputation as the "Man for All Seasons," More was not entirely the goody-goody-two-shoes he is often portrayed as on stage and screen. Under Henry VIII, he was something of an opportunist, a ruthless politician, and a merciless persecutor of Protestant "heretics" - a dozen or so of whom he sent to the stake. 

** See, for example, Richard III, by Charles Ross (University of California Press, 1981)

Be that as it may, without the later maligning of Richard's character, we would have been deprived of Shakespeare's deliciously evil characterization of the man, depicted here by Sir Laurence Olivier in this excerpt from his classic 1955 film version of the play:

More recent news of the discovery of the bones of Richard III:

DNA confirms twisted bones belong to king: "Not just the identity of the man in the car park with the twisted spine, but the appalling last moments and humiliating treatment of the naked body of Richard III in the hours after his death have been revealed."

Here's a "60 Second Know-It-All" video on the unearthing of the bones ("they had a hunch they would be there":

Richard III, the 'hunchback king’, really could have been a formidable warrior . . . and his body double can prove it:

Here's a more comprehensive video:

Scientists find mystery coffin-within-a-coffin at Richard III site.

A study of the teeth and bones of Richard III towards the end of his life suggests that he drank around a bottle of wine a day.

Catholic and Anglican clergy are working together to give the last king of England's Plantagenet dynasty a proper funeral; the Church of England's Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, will share the altar next March during the long-lost king’s burial in Leicester.

Based on Ed's Quotation of the Day, only available via email. Leave your email address in the comments if you'd like to be added to hist distribution list.

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