Richard III: Hero or Villain?

The name of Richard York, later King Richard the Third, has gone down into history as one of the world's great villains. He has been accused of murdering his two young nephews, the "Princes in the Tower," his wife, his brother, and many others.

But did he really do it?

The Richard III Society and its American branch believe he didn't, and they have extensive websites detailing the many reasons to believe him innocent.

History, they believe, is written by the victor, and Richard III was the loser in his fight against Henry Tudor, who defeated him in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field and went on to become King Henry VII, the father of a Tudor dynasty that included Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, the patron of the great English playwright William Shakespeare.

More than any other single person, Shakespeare is responsible for the popular image of Richard as a scheming, murderous hunchback. However, Shakespeare's sources for his brilliant play The Tragedy of Richard III were Tudor historians, most notably Sir Thomas More, the author of The History of King Richard III. More himself was only a boy during Richard's brief reign, but he was a protege of John Morton, one of Richard's most virulent enemies. In fact, some historians even claim that Morton wrote The History of Richard III, in whole or in part.

One of the first popular writers to question the Tudor story depicting Richard as a monstrous, unnatural man was the mystery novelist Josephine Tey. Her novel The Daughter of Time, published in 1951, is one of the most extraordinary and unique works of the mystery genre. Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant, the hero of a series of mystery novels by Tey, is laid up in the hospital with a broken leg. Bored out of his mind, he decides to use his time to explore a historical mystery, and is intrigued by a portrait of Richard III presented to him by his theatrical friend Marta Hallard.

It was only after he had given the portrait further puzzled consideration (it piqued him to have mistaken one of the most notorious murderers of all time for a judge; to have transferred a subject from the dock to the bench was a shocking piece of ineptitude) that it occurred to Grant that the portrait had been provided as the illustration to a piece of detection.

What follows is one of the finest mytery novels ever written, and an astonishingly absorbing and suspenseful exploration of the case for and against Richard the Third.

Another genre writer who has published Richard apologia is Elizabeth Peters, best known for her mystery series about Amelia Peabody Emerson, a fictional Victorian Egyptologist and enthusiastic amateur detective. One of Peters' other series focuses on Jacqueline Kirby, librarian, romance novelist, and amateur sleuth. In The Murders of Richard III, Kirby is invited to a Ricardian house party, in which life very soon begins to imitate history. History and Richard apologia are seemlessly integrated into Peters' trademark humor and suspense.

Novelist Sharon Kay Penman has also turned her pen to a sympathetic account of Richard's life. Penman is known for her excellent historical research and ability to bring life and color to far distant times, and her engrossing biographical novel of Richard III is no exception.

On her website, Penman maintains a "Mea Culpa" page of historical errors, including a time traveling grey squirrel and an unnaturally ancient wolfhound in The Sunne in Splendor, but jokes, "And for you Tudor fans out there: No, my sympathetic depiction of Richard in Sunne was not a mistake!"