My Favorite King

Now is MY Winter of Discontent, made glorious Summer, by the Sun of York.  And that's about the last bit of Shakespeare that you will hear from me on this particular subject.

I am going off-topic a bit, in order to express my delight at the recent archeological discovery of the bones of one of my favorite English Kings...Richard III.  Actually Edward I is still my favorite, but Richard is a close second.  And Henry VII is my LEAST favorite.  In fact, my most loathed.

But anyway, as an avowed Anglophile and English History nut, this is right up my alley.  I DO have other interests besides Comics on occasion.  But he'll finally get a proper burial, although I do have to say that I would prefer to have him in York instead of Leicester, but hey...it beats a parking lot.  And perhaps people will be inspired to actually go back and look at the History books for a change.

I read "The Daughter of Time" by Josephine Tey, when I was 12 years old...and it changed my life.  I started reading everything that I could find about Medieval English history.  Thomas Costain's history of the Plantagenets, Sir Thomas Moore's nasty little opus, and an;ything else I could get my grubby hands on.  For some reason, a hell of a lot of people are still falling for the Tudor propaganda,  which is pretty silly really.  They can't chop of our heads for treason anymore. 

He didn't have a withered arm, he didn't have a hunchback, although he did have some fairly serious scoliosis.  He only ruled for two years, and managed to enact laws that are still in effect today, and was only 32 when he was killed at Bosworth.   The town of York, entered into their charter, that their "good King Richard was piteously slain this day, to the great heaviness of this city"...which took a fair amount of courage, in the days after Bosworth, when Henry Tudor had complete control of the Tower, and was busy executing, and confiscating estates and all.  It was a very iffy time.

But anyway.  Here's hoping that the truth comes out, and Richard is vindicated.

Woot!