via
https://ift.tt/2nPKkoXamuseoffyre:
agirlnamedkeith:
te-amo-corazon:
nadiacreek:
reuters:
With a large chin, a prominent slightly arched nose and delicate lips, the “face” of England’s King Richard III was unveiled on Tuesday, a day after researchers confirmed his remains had finally been found after 500 years.
A team of university archaeologists and scientists announced on Monday that a skeleton discovered last September underneath a council parking lot in Leicester was indeed that of Richard, the last English king to die in battle, in 1485.
Devotees of Richard, who have long campaigned to restore his reputation, proudly revealed a 3D reconstruction of the long-lost monarch’s head on Tuesday, introducing him to reporters as “His Grace Richard Plantagenet, King of England and France, Lord of Ireland”.
READ ON: Face of Richard III, England’s “king in the car park”, revealed
i am so happy we all thought the same thing
I respect this, but every single time I see ANYTHING about Richard III and his bones, I think of this documentary:
In which the like…head of the Richard III Defense Club absolutely loses her shirt because she was convinced that the scoliosis and whithered arm were ‘bad press’ because people didn’t like Richard III.
When the examination proves them to be true she has to leave the room to compose herself.
I will tell you, I appreciate passions. But the attractiveness of a historical figure is not a hill I ever expected to see a person die upon.
(Also, SO ABLEIST and not okay???? I’m not??? sure??? what??? part??? of him??? having??? scoliosis??? and a weak arm??? make him??? less??? likable???)
To be fair, historically, there is historical media precedent of people being “abnormal” or with some physical and/or psychological problem to make them monstrous villains. Bond films still do this to this day and when the Tudor propaganda machine wanted to blacken Richard’s name, in an era when Kings were meant to be the embodiment of strength and goodness, turning him into a limping hunchback villain was Shakespeare doing the standard media approach.
The difference being that, in this particular case, he took Richard’s well-remembered medical condition and turned it up to eleven. Yes, Richard did have one shoulder slightly higher than the other, but we’re two generations down the line and naaaaaah, no one else my age’ll remember that it was only a mild aberration of his shoulder. Let’s turn that into a full blown twisted back that is his entire motivation.
I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them
Technically, they’re not wrong about it being bad press, because it was. Shakespeare made him a very physically and visibly disabled villain. It came as such a shock to them that the bad press was based in reality and that Richard was actually not the embodiment of physical perfection they decided that he must be. They forgot that some people around in Shakespeare’s time would have remembered Richard. There probably were nasty jokes about him, just like there are jokes now about William’s thinning hair and Harry’s red hair (and/or legitimacy).
However, if you want to see something nifty (and I wish I could find a link, because it was awesome), they did a documentary some time later about a man with a similar degree of scoliosis as Richard III being dressed up and trying riding and armour and things like that, to see how someone with scoliosis would have coped. And what do you know? The armour served as a support truss and apparently made things easier for him, which he was really excited about. Also, they think Richard had a special saddle made to ensure stability on horseback, much like Kaiser Wilhelm did in the early 20th century.
I love that they went digging to see how Richard came to be reputed as this fierce and stalwart soldier by working out what mechanisms were put in place to help him deal with his scoliosis. The man died in battle and even his enemies reported he was fighting like a lion until the end. Unfortunately, ableists are useless at seeing past the “disabled” part.
It brings a new meaning to that famous line in the play ‘A horse! A Horse! My kingdom for a horse!’ With his condition Richard was very capable on horseback, but once dismounted he’d tire quickly and be unable to defend himself.
There’s also the possibility that few people actually knew of Richard’s disability until his death, it would be fairly easy to cover up from any but his most trusted servants. however when he was killed, his body was stripped and it would have been obvious.
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