CONCLUSIONS

How much of this exposition of the man and his legend explains the ongoing fascination he continues to exert? The mystery surrounding the fate of the princes must rank as the major single factor (beyond Shakespeare) in keeping Richard before the public. The boys’ fate is one of those “who shot JFK?” or “were Sacco and Vanzetti guilty?” dilemmas that will generate debate indefinitely. When the likely villain is the uncle, and when the uncle also happens to be king of England, and when he also happens (in the dark legend’s version) to be misshapen and generally evil, melodrama lives and flourishes.

Some considerations get lost amid the drama about the princes. Richard can be compared with some other medieval kings in a fashion that shows to his advantage. None of the kings who acted on the medieval version of a unilateral declaration of war has ever been excoriated in a comparable fashion. Edward III launched the Hundred Years’ War in the 1330s because of a claim to the throne of France; the senseless slaughter of thousands and the destruction and ruin of the French countryside do not keep us from hailing him for bringing chivalry into the court with the Round Table and the Order of the Garter. Henry V, who burned heretics and reopened the war with France, gets an immortal line from Shakespeare (“a little touch of Harry in the night”) and the accolade from a major fifteenth-century historian as the greatest man to ever rule England. On this scale Richard’s crimes—even if he is guilty as alleged in the darkest of dark legends—seem a fairly small matter.

On the other hand, why he draws such fervent support is not easy to explain. Even if he is innocent of most of the charges that have been levied against him over the years—the deaths of Prince Edward and Henry VI and his own queen and his brother Clarence, plus lesser horrors—why does it seem so important to clear his name? Whatever answer we offer to this leads us to reflect on how some events, and some people, and some causes, seem to take on a life of their own—one that may bear little relationship to what really happened at the time. That so many authors, over three or four centuries, were content to calumniate Richard on tainted evidence has become a challenge to those who have labored to clear his name and to expose the conspiratorial nature of the dark legend. That historians have not found Henry VII to be a particularly attractive character has perhaps strengthened the resolve to revisit and vindicate Richard.

When all the factors are taken into account, the fascination of the man, the legend of his evil deeds, and his death on the battlefield seem to assure him a role in our historical imagination that few others of his age and even of his exalted status can claim. Though she had no deep historical insights, we might close this assessment with the sage words of the young Jane Austen’s History of England, written by a “partial, prejudiced, and ignorant historian”:

The character of this Prince (Richard) has in general been very severely handled by Historians. But as he was a York, I am rather inclined to suppose him a very respectable Man. It has been confidently asserted that he killed his two nephews, but it has also been asserted that he did not kill his two nephews, which I am inclined to believe true. Whether innocent or guilty, he did not reign long in peace, for Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, as great a villain as ever lived, made a great fuss about getting the Crown.