To think that just because they have found the bones of Richard III, that doesn't automatically mean that he was actually A Really Bloody Nice Bloke?

[BalloonSlayer]

Constant quotes from the Richard III Society:

"We're going to completely reassess Richard III, we're going to completely look at all the sources again, and hopefully there's going to be a new beginning for Richard as well." Why? It's a skeleton? Was it holding a signed confession from Henry VII of the murder of the Princes in the Tower?

Richard III Society member Philippa Langley, originator of the search, said on a Channel 4 documentary earlier: "It doesn't look like the face of a tyrant. I'm sorry but it doesn't. WTF?

Why does this change anything at all?

Wasn't that area (west country) considered to be very spiritual during that era? And wasn't it the centre of religion back then? I remember learning about Arthurian stuff at school but that was a LOT few years back now. off to Google...

Myths

The REAL Arthur was Welsh.

I reckon she must have been bleddy gawjus, and banged like a privy door when the plague was in town...

Best. Quote. Ever.

Grey eyes were fashionable when Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. There's a quote somewhere (might be in the 'she doth teach the torches to burn bright' speech) about famous beauties not comparing to Juliet, and it mentions (I think) Thisbe being a grey eye. Which, according to my Higher English recollections, meant she was beautiful.

getorf - I think because the West Country was rich and Christianized? The danelaw was full of Danes (and that's sort of Lincolnshire/bits of Nottinghamshire and upwards, basically). I am not an Anglo-Saxonist though. Thank god.

Btw, a learned friend has just informed me that in Medieval Romance, women are considered most beautiful if their eyes are green or grey, not blue. Interesting. I coulda got the same from the gospel according to Anya Seton, but still.

Ha! Nice cross-post.

Pyramus had eyes as green as leeks. I remember that.

I remember that because I have grey/greeny eyes.

I have brown eyes. If I had my picture painted, in 500 years people would be saying 'so why did they paint them all like that then, boring!'.

What colour are yes if people say "hazel"? Is it just a light brown?

lol at thank god you're not an anglo saxonist.

I suppose Wessex was a rich area - just wondered why more kings werent' buried in London. Presumably London was still the most important city in those times. God knows actually, I know nothing about that era at all.

I always think hazel is greeny/yellowy/brown.

My dull eyes are grey/blue/green, depending what colour jumper I have got on. A nondescript colour really.

That cat is all about X-inactivation.

In humans, I'm not so sure.

He was bent and crooked (sorry)

I always think hazel are brown with green flecks. It sounds pretty, anyway.

London wasn't very important really. It's still a backwater in lots of ways until quite late on. I work on manuscript books, and basically (she says, generalizing to the sound of book historians shuddering) London isn't a centre for book making until maybe 1350-1400, at which point it really kicks off. Before that places like Worcester and East Anglia and York were much more literate and cultured-y.

It was a political capital, but lots of other cities had good claims to be more important in terms of religion (which obviously has a lot to do with where you want to be buried).

Did you know, until Lincoln Cathedral tower was built, the highest man-made building in the world was the pyramids? And then the tower fell down again, and the highest man made building in the world was ... the pyramids.

But there was a point when Lincoln was quite up-and-coming, which is such a bizarre concept to us now. Norwich too. It's really odd how cities that are important have changed so much.

Exactly, hazel sounds pretty, so write it in books where you have to describe someone's eye colour :)

To Flyingspghettimonster

The mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA analysis has come on a bit in recent years - you can identify loads of subclades within each haplotype now, so it can all be narrowed down quite a bit.

I'm one of the group Brian Sykes has dubbed Jasmine.....'cos I'm dead classy and exotic, like.

I emailed Dr Turi King earlier today, and she responded to say RIII's groupings will all be revealed when the paper's published.......ooooohhhh.....exciting.....

We should definitely write a medieval novel on MN, trills. We could include a parti-coloured cat.

The team also probably looked for other markers as well as just mDNA and whatnot.

I wonder if there's a marker for tyrant....... (just joshing)

minou I liked the first half of The Seven Daughters of Eve but thought it got a bit silly when he made up life stories for each of the mitochondrial ancestors.

I know...I remember reading about Jasmine and her early efforts at farming on what she called her "experimental plot". I thought - she never called it that.....

An account of what the women's lives were probably like, written at a bit of a remove, would have come across much better.

I have hazel eyes. They're kind of browny greeny sludge coloured, until I get a cold or cry, when the red of my face turns them vivid green.

If I want to read about prehistoric women inventing stuff I'll go the whole hog and read the Earth's Children books, thanks. :)

My eyes are green.

flyingspaghettimonster Wed 06-Feb-13 01:54:52
"Am I missing something here? How does mitachondrial DNA conclusively prove the skeleton is Richard the 3rd? Anyone could have the same mitachondrial dna, it could have come from a woman 1,000 years before Richard III and passed down through completely different people, this could be an almost unrelated skeleton... or a cousin... I don't like how concretely they are taking the genetic evidence..."

It's considered (fairly) conclusive because it fits in with the other evidence: grave from the right period, male skeleton, buried in the church where we know Richard was buried, in a part of the church suggesting high status, with battle wounds and a deformity which fits well with the descriptions of (admittedly somewhat later) historians. So it's just another part of the jigsaw, not something that would stand up on its own. We don't know of any other relatives of Richard who were killed in battle and buried in Leicester and suffered from deformities of the spine.

Exactly, hazel sounds pretty

Preen.