Richard III (1452-1485) put his dead brother’s son on the throne, schemed to take the crown, and started a war. He imprisoned his two young nephews in the Tower of London. Still a lot more is in question thanks to his successor Henry VII erasing his predecessor from history.
The last king from the Plantagenet dynasty of England the defeat and death of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 more or less ended the Wars of the Roses as well as the Middle Ages.
Henry VII became king after killing Richard III, founding the Tudor dynasty. A schemer himself, Henry promptly waged a publicity campaign painting Richard as a black hearted evil villain. The smear campaign had Richard’s portrait retouched making his eyes slits and the mouth a scowl.
The campaign played up a hunchback angle and erased evidence of where Richard’s body was buried.
The body was finally discovered in a Leicester parking lot 500 years after his death. The discovery was made by Phillipa Langley of the Richard III Society. Richard wasn’t a hunchback, but his spine looked like a question mark due to severe scolioses.
A hundred years after his death Shakespeare wrote his cautionary tale of a military genius who plots, schemes and murders his way to becoming king, then starts a war and dies in battle after a brief reign at 32.
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