For a start, there seems little doubt that the body in the
car park is indeed that of Richard III. The researchers have clearly done their
job well in estimating the certainty at more than 99%. It also seems reasonable
that the Society of Antiquaries portrait taken 25 years after his death (at a
time when he was being vilified by the Tudor dynasty) is the most accurate we
have, whether or not the hair has been coloured darker than it really was.
However, some of the Guardian’s
comments about royal descent are eyewash, particularly since the researchers
make the careful point that the break in DNA – the non-paternity event, as they
put it – could have happened anywhere in the 19 generations between Edward III
and today’s Dukes of Beaufort, and indeed it sounds as though there may be two
breaks, one of them in the Beaufort line itself, as opposed to the Plantaganet
line. There is nothing at all to suggest that the break happened between Edward
III and Richard III. But if it did, my immediate reaction would be to wonder
whether it is that Richard III himself was not the son of his apparent father Richard
Duke of York, father also of Edward IV. The mitochondrial DNA is correct – it matches
the modern-day descendants of Edward Duke of York through the female line, from
Richard’s eldest sister Anne. It has been observed on other occasions that he
was not a typical Plantaganet to look at – they were big and strong, vigorous
and usually blond haired, well suited to medieval kingship that often depended
on fighting skills and charismatic leadership.
Added to that, the report talks about gossip about illegitimacy
during Edward IV’s reign. This kind of gossip was a common way of denigrating
an unpopular king or one seen as vulnerable to challenge because legitimacy by
blood was seen as essential to the passing on of kingly traits and charisma.
Richard III declared his nephews illegitimate, but not because they were not
the sons of Edward IV – they almost certainly were – but because Edward had not
been married to their mother, Elizabeth Woodville, at the time of their birth,
owing to a little unofficial bigamy. We don’t know whether Richard III actually
believed this to be true, or merely used it opportunistically to put them aside
because their presence was a threat to his own kingship, but it is one of the
pieces of evidence often cited against
the likelihood of Richard III being responsible for their death in the Tower of
London. If they had been declared and were believed to be illegitimate, then
they were not a threat to him. So this is a different kind of illegitimacy
altogether.
Finally, the Tudors did not only rest their claim to the
throne on descent from Margaret Beaufort, the legitimised daughter of John of
Gaunt and his long-time mistress Kathryn Swynford (in itself rather a weak
claim since it came through the female line not a direct male descendant, but
certainly not a negligible one). They cemented this through the marriage of
Henry Tudor to Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV (sister of the
Princes who had been declared illegitimate, no less). Added to this, the Stuart
line which gave rise to later monarchs (including the Hanoverians through the
female line in the shape of a cousin of Charles II, granddaughter of James VI
of Scotland/James I of England) was descended from Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII, who married James IV of Scotland.
Thus the break in biological paternity would have to have happened in both the
York line (descended from both Edward III’s younger son Edmund Duke of York and his second son Lionel Duke of
Clarence, via the Earls of March, the latter again through the female line) and the Lancastrian line (descended from
John of Gaunt) for there to be no biological link between the Plantaganet kings
and our own royal family (see family tree link below - it won't paste directly into the blog unfortunately).
It is all rather complicated, isn’t it?
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