You can’t make this stuff up. Two years ago a skeleton was discovered under a parking lot in Leicester, England. Historians had posited that King Richard III had been buried there in what was Greyfriars Abbey. They dug, and they found remains. Today the BBC reports that test results of DNA from the skeleton matches DNA from known descendants of Richard with 99.99% accuracy.
Briefly, Richard III was the last English king to die in battle, in this case the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, slain by the army of who would become king Henry VII. This marked the end of the Plantagenet royal line and the beginning of the Tudors. (See my December 17, 2012 blog for a review of Shakespeare’s Richard III.)
Remarkably, the DNA evidence also reveals something else. It appears that somewhere along the line the female chromosomes picked up an anomaly that can only be explained by … infidelity. Unfortunately, it can’t be determined whether the infidelity occurred before or after Richard or, even stranger, whether the indiscretion is to be found on the Plantagenet or Tudor side, since both families sprung from the same ancestor, Edward III.
Was either royal line legitimate? Should the current royal family be under scrutiny? Who knows, but look for juicy, “based on a true story” historical dramas springing from British PBS over the next few years. Downton Abbey, move over, historical reality TV is on the way!
berowne.com 