Richard III's scarred skeleton becomes a battlefield for academics

[steve2470]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/feb/04/richard-third-skeleton-confirmed-leicester



As in 1485, once the death of the king was confirmed, the arguments started. Was the search for the man in the car park a stunt and a media circus, or a classic piece of research archaeology based on sound science, which opens a window on a period of history fogged by Tudor propaganda?

The debate will certainly last longer than Richard's two-year reign. Before the identification had even been formally confirmed, the redoubtable historian Mary Beard had waded in on Twitter: "Gt fun & a mystery solved that we've found Richard 3. But does it have any HISTORICAL significance? (Uni of Leics overpromoting itself?))"

Meanwhile, the bones that have just been confirmed as those of Richard III – the last Plantagenet king, the last monarch to die on a battlefield, whose death ushered in the upstart Tudors – lay quietly in a calm room on the second floor of the Leicester University library, unknown to many of the students bustling in and out of the building.

Inevitably, the press conference in another building – with 140 registered journalists and camera crews from seven countries – was controlled mayhem, but the university had gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the actual remains were treated with respect.