Richard III defenders have now gone to war with William Shakespeare over his depiction of the monarch. The Richard III Society blasted the Bard for his portrayal in his 16th-Century play of him as a hunchback king who murders his nephews.
The broadside came as the group slammed a new documentary about the Princes in the Tower mystery. In the Channel 5 show, new “smoking gun” evidence is uncovered which supports the theory Richard III did order the killings of King Edward V, 12, and his nine-year-old brother Richard in 1483.
But the society insisted the document, a will supposedly linking Edward’s chain to the prime suspect Sir James Tyrell, has actually been known about for ages so is much ado about nothing.
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Amanda Geary, the society’s acting chair, tweeted during the programme’s broadcast: “Shakespeare’s version of Richard is very different from the real man. It has to be remembered that he was writing when the Tudors were ruling the country.”
Richard III’s death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 led the Tudors claiming the throne. Tudor historians claimed Richard III was responsible for the death of his nephews.
In another post, she wrote: “Sadly not letting the truth get in the way of a good story…” She also insisted the two young royals “were not a threat” to Richard III, adding: “He had no reason to kill them.”
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And she also criticised the depiction in the doc, called Princes in the Tower: A Damning Discovery, of the Tower of London as a crime scene.
The society’s Twitter account wrote: “So, immediately the Tower is the scene of a ‘crime’. Not exactly a neutral start, sadly.”
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