CEJ #2: World

Kate

2/4/12

Bones of Richard III Found, Deemed Genuine

(Chu, Henry)

"Los Angeles Times"

2/4/13

World

http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-richard-iii-remains-20130204,0,7667709.story

  It was recently found out that a skeleton found in Leicester, England in September is the remains of King Richard III of England. He was known as a bad king who supposedly killed his nephews and ruled tyrannically, but some think that he was a good and was just portrayed in a bad light by his successors and Shakespeare. This September, the skeleton was discovered under a church and extensive DNA testing was done. It turned out that the bones' DNA matched as it should when compared to DNA from a distant descendant of his sister, and the skeleton is therefore his. Other things proved that the skeleton was Richard, such as skull wounds that would come from dying in battle as he did. The skeleton matched what he would have looked like. An archaeologist, Richard Buckley, said: "Beyond reasonable doubt, the individual exhumed ... is indeed Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England" (latimes.com). They can tell for certain that these are his bones. The Plantagenet Family line ruled for a long time but Richard was overthrown in battle, he was the final king to die that way, and since then the rulers have been Tudors. It is debatable whether or not Richard III was a good king, but it is not debatable that we have found his remains.
  This article did not have much bias, but I think the author was leaning towards the opinion that Richard III was a bad king, not just unfairly portrayed. The author started and ended the article by mentioning things about his reputation of being awful; he also talked about the idea that he was good, but not as much. I partly agree with the opinions in this article, because I think that Richard III was probably bad, but I don't necessarily think that he was all bad. If educated professionals believe that he had good in him, I think there must be some truth to that. The Tudors probably made him sound worse than he was to help get control of their subjects. What confuses me about this event is how the king was lost in the first place. If he was royalty, wouldn't he have had a more official burial, or at least a marked tombstone? I did not think that society would have been able to lose someone like that, and even if we did, why did it take 500 years for him to be found? Our society does a lot of things wrong, and I think this was one of those things. This article was interesting for me because I have read things about Shakespeare and England in historic times, but I had never heard of something like this. Hopefully we can recount history more correctly now that we have Richard III's skeleton.