Richard III - Murdering uncle or misunderstood ruler

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Richard III - Murdering uncle or misunderstood monarch?

Advantages

  • He may have poisoned his own wife Anne Neville
  • There is a rumour he drowned his brother the Duke of Clarence in a vat of wine.
  • He is considered the prime suspect for committing the princes in the tower murder as he had access to them and the obvious motive that they stood between him and the English crown.
  • All of the other suspects for the murder of the princes didn't have access to the tower so are unlikely to have done it.

Disadvantages

  • Anne Neville is actually thought to have died of a broken heart grieving the death of her son. Richard openly wept at her funeral.
  • There is no evidence that links him to his brothers mysterious death.
  • It is highly likely that Richard himself didn't kill the princes himself: it is much more likely that it was somebody else acting on is orders.
  • What are about Richard are actually tudor propaganda like the fact it is unlikely he had a hunch back or other such physical deformities.

Evaluation

It is likely that Richard was responsible for his nephew's death though the other murders supposedly linked to him were probably not committed by him. He unlikely to have had many of the deformities described by the tudors but there is evidence he had one elbow higher than the other. Most of what we know about Richard can't truly be verified as there is much biased tudor propaganda mixed in among the facts.

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