Sean Mcglynn

Why are people venerating Richard III? He was a murderous tyrant

Imagine if the body of a notorious child killer was exhumed and that, during the week of its reinterment, 35,000 people thronged the streets of a major UK city to respectfully watch the passing of the specially designed coffin and, with hopeful hurls, bedeck that coffin with white roses. The funeral procession itself is led by two knights in full medieval armour. Then people queue for four hours to file pass the coffin in a cathedral while the prayers of the highest ecclesiastics of the land who officiate over the solemn, ceremonial proceedings are communicated across the country.

Not very likely, is it? Well, that’s what has been happening this week in Leicester. Such is our (and the world’s) preoccupation with British royalty that King Richard III has – some 530 years on – been afforded this singular and somewhat bizarre honour. Of course, the surprisingly fervent and vocal defenders of Richard, who congregate under the respectful and scholarly auspices of the Richard III Society, would acquit him of the crime of murdering his young nephews and (probably) rightful heirs to the throne: the twelve or thirteen-year-old King Edward V and his nine-year-old brother, Richard, Duke of York.

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