The discovery of King Richard III in cold case style

Richard III ... in a parking lot, history crosses the modernity

It’s in perfect cold case style the discovery of King Richard III’s remains in Leicester, England. He had a reputation for ruthless ruler, today it’s given the name of “man of the parking lot”. It should leap time to explain the non-random exhumation. 

Richard III, born in 1452 and belonging to the Plantagenet dynasty (which includes the lineages of York and Lancaster) was King of England from 1483. Considered the historical events, it’s doubtful the licit of coronation because after the death of his elder brother Edward IV, the official heirs were the grandchildren declared unlawful by Richard and dispatched to the Tower of London. They vanished into thin air and that aroused suspicions directed towards the theory of the murder. So the throne was usurped. The kingdom conquered by deception was short-lived: against the king raised a revolt culminated in the Battle of Bosworth (1485), in which perished at the hands of Henry Tudor, the future Henry VII of England, a member by mother’s side of the house of Lancaster. This battle ended the War of the Roses (1455-1485 fought between the two families of Lancaster and York). Shakespeare wrote of him in the historical drama Richard III (1592). The poem paints his life and personality with bleak brushstrokes: a negative character, evil, with a withered arm, limp and a curved back, after whose death took place the final takeover of the Tudors. For centuries descriptions considered invented to emphasize the lack of scruples of the sovereign. The circumstances of his departure were bloody as his temper: it’s said that he received a shot at the base of the skull, which was fatal. His remains were buried in the church of the Grey Friars (Greyfriers Church). In 2012 the University of Leicester has conducted archaeological investigations by identifying the site of the church that now houses an underground car park. A genealogical research has allowed us to track down the last living descendant in the maternal blood line and to examine a sample of mitochondrial DNA (it passed down from the maternal side and remains unchanged in generations), taken with an oral swab. Under the choir of the church are the remains of the infamous monarch confirm the known information: a lesion on the back of the skull and spine with development scoliosis with accentuated curves that explain the humps combined with limping gait. The carbon-14 dating reveals that the remains date back to the fifteenth century. His face was reconstructed in 3D. 

Source: “La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno” , an italian newspaper, February 13, 2013, p. 24.