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Monday, August 19, 2013

War of the Roses: Part Deux

Richard III

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/war-roses-part-deux_748614.html

9:31 AM, AUG 18, 2013 • BY GEOFFREY NORMAN
Richard III, last of the Plantagenet monarchs, was KIA in the 
Battle of Bosworth Field.  That would have been 528 years ago, 
come Thursday, August 22. The King is famous for providing 
Shakespeare with the line "A horse, a horse.  My kingdom for a 
horse."  And if you haven't heard Al Pacino deliver it, in the film, 
Looking for Richard, then you really must.
The King's body was, evidently, buried in haste and only recently 
unearthed.  And the fight has been resumed.  Only now, the 
weapons are legal briefs rather than broadswords.  As Sam 
Jones reports in the Guardian:
A high court judge has given permission for 
descendants of Richard III to challenge plans to 
rebury the king's remains in Leicester rather than  
York, but counselled both sides against engaging 
in an "unseemly, undignified and unedifying" legal 
rerun of the Wars of the Roses. Richard's twisted 
and hacked skeleton was unearthed in a Leicester 
council car park last September, 527 years after he 
was killed at the battle of Bosworth Field and hurriedly 
buried in the church of the Greyfriars. 
The judge may desire that things be handled in a 
dignified manner but this is unlikely since, as he 
observed in his ruling:
... there were economic issues to be considered

  
in terms of prestige and tourism. "The benefit in terms of
prestige and increased tourism to the city or place or
institution which eventually secures these royal remains
is obvious," he noted. "It is said that the footfall at Leicester
cathedral has increased 20-fold since the discovery."
Well, as an American writer famously put it:  
"The past is never dead. It's not even past." 
War of the Roses, Part Deux?  Bring it on.

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