Richard III

I am a Richard III apologist. I don't mean that in the Christian apologetics way; I mean that I apologise for and defend Richard III. I don't think he was a particularly great king, but I also think he didn't get the chance to be great (or not), and I don't think he killed his nephews.

The discovery of Richard III's body has brought a lot of the story back into the news, and it brings up two very different debates. First, what does this discovery teach us, and second, how do we think of Richard III?

I'll take the first one first before I get into my Richard III rant. What does the discovery of Richard III's body teach us? Oh so many things. The most important thing for me is its corroboration of (or invalidating of) contemporary sources. The skeleton showed signs of scoliosis (although not genetic scoliosis - he'd developed it but hadn't been born with it) so, yes, Richard had a crooked back. It showed no signs of a "withered arm". And it obviously hadn't been desecrated and thrown into the river, given that it was right where it had been buried in 1485.

What else does it tell us? It tells us the same things that other skeletons tell us: general standards of health and nutrition, battle customs, and burial customs. It tells us that a defeated king, who was very quickly considered a traitor and a murderer, was given a consecrated burial, but that even in death his hands were tied. It tells us that he'd been thrown over the pommel of a saddle after his death, even if it can't tell us by whom. It tells us all sorts of details of what it was like in Leicestershire during the days after Bosworth.

Is any of this important? Perhaps not these details in themselves. But put them together, and they can fill in the story. Put them together, and they can paint a clearer picture of a very murky time. Put them together, and they can point the way to future discoveries, and a better understanding of the past.

Going on to the second point: how do we think of Richard III? I don't think this discovery is going to greatly affect how people view Richard III. If you have an opinion, you have a strong opinion, and there's nothing with the skeleton that is going to affect someone's opinion of him.

My opinion is that he didn't kill his nephews, and my reasoning is very simple (although almost entirely lifted from The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey). He didn't really have a reason to, and more importantly, he didn't have a reason for them to disappear. If they had died, it would have been much better for him to show their bodies, as proof. Since they disappeared, all there could be was devastating rumour, which didn't do him any favours.

I'm not saying he didn't have means, and I'm not saying he didn't have opportunity. I'm saying that he didn't have motive. He'd already had them declared illegitimate, so there wasn't any imminent legal dispute over his right to the crown. There weren't any impending rebellions to put them back on the throne, except by the Woodvilles who didn't have a ton of support themselves. And while he was ruthless (having executed his own brother [Duke of Clarence]), he wasn't callous or reckless. By many accounts, he agonised over killing his brother George, and only did so after treason against Edward had been proven. 

And even if he did have motive to kill them, he had no motive to cover up their deaths. This is the one that really gets me - their disappearance, as opposed to their death, does not help Richard at all. If they had died, it would have been in his interests to announce their death. Spin a story if he must, but the princes' death only helps him if people know they are dead, and no longer claimants to the throne. If they merely disappear, then there's always the wondering, always the knowledge that Edward's sons might be out there. How does that help him?

I'm willing to believe that they died in Richard III's reign - the last recorded sighting of them was in 1484, before Henry Tudor started playing a part (according to Alison Weir, at least). But I simply don't believe that a man who was incredibly loyal to his brother, a man who had promised to protect his nephews, a man who had gone through the legal step of declaring them illegitimate instead of going on the attack, and a man who was incredibly careful with his actions would have rashly murdered two young teenagers in his care and then not reaped the benefits of their deaths. If they did die in 1484, I am more likely to believe that it was a Henry-II, "who will rid me of this troublesome priest" situation, and not any sort of conscious order of Richard's. (Although even then, if he knew about it, why didn't he tell anyone? He could have gotten major points by shaming the man who actually killed them - gotten them out of the way with no real blame attached to him.)

Or I think it would have been someone with Lancastrian sympathies. I know it had been 13+ years since the last real battle in the Wars of the Roses, but the Lancastrians were moving again. It had to have been someone who wanted to both eliminate and discredit the Yorkist line. I don't know whether they would have had Henry Tudor in mind as the next "rightful" king, but to me it's the logical explanation. The princes' disappearance gets the boys out of the way for whoever's next, and casts doubt on Richard's right to rule.

But, of course, none of this can be gleaned from the skeleton.

My life so far

I have spent far too much time at work lately. I am on a project with a team that "needs a lot of hand-holding." Everything is urgent for this team, but they're reticent about giving us information.  And our internal team can be a bit frustrating as well (myself included sometimes). Yesterday I was at work until 7, chasing a solution to a problem (that should have been a simple fix, adding an email address to a database) and waiting for confirmation that it had been done. Today I woke up and checked to make sure it had been done right - on a Saturday! - and it didn't look like it had been done. Good times.

And yesterday wasn't the first day that I've been at work late for this particular team, either; I have feel like I've barely seen my boyfriend for two weeks, much less any of my other friends.

But I did manage to get to the doctor last week to renew my no-crying prescription, which I've dropped down a step. Yay for that! 

And there's been interesting things happening in the news and whatnot, and lots of things that I've thought, "oh, I should blog about that," but at the moment all I can think of is Final Fantasy 6, the prospect of imminent snow, and the Jane Austen analysis (What Matters to Jane Austen?) that I'm two chapters away from finishing. And the Malory biography that I want to get back to, after listening to In Our Time about the Morte d'Arthur. And work.

6 January 2013

Happy Epiphany, I guess. It's the end of the liturgical Christmas season, and the end of my Christmas vacation. I still didn't do a lot of the things I usually do at Christmas - in part because my lovely boyfriend refuses to listen to Christmas  music except on Christmas day, so my hours and hours of choral and carol arrangements had to get squeezed into commutes, etc.

I didn't write here yesterday, and didn't realise it until about 2 am. When I was lying in bed, awake, playing backgammon on my phone in an attempt to stave off the for-no-apparent-reason tears. It didn't work. I'm hoping that going back to work and having that kind of schedule will help.

Because being around people......hasn't really helped. Friday night was necessary because it was a farewell to a friend, but I spent most of that night standing or sitting while people talked over and around me. The bar was really loud - it's a small place, we'd packed it, and then there were people who weren't part of our group as well - and got even louder (painfully so) when the live blues band started playing and no one thought to turn down their mikes. A touch of distortion, and ringing in my ears for an hour. So not only was no one talking to me, but I couldn't get to anyone that I might have wanted to talk to, and I couldn't hear anyone who wasn't immediately next to me. But, hey, good cocktails! Even though I had to put up with Mr. I-don't-like-to-try-new-things, and his friends, Let-me-tell-you-why-your-opinion-is-wrong and Oh-that's-nice-now-back-to-me.

So I think that was part of my problem yesterday, recovering from that. I spent most of yesterday upstairs reading and writing a few (as-yet-untyped) blog posts. I then went to bed, tired, about midnight, only to start crying for no apparent reason (and get pushed away by my normally lovely boyfriend, who hadn't really spoken to me all day). So it was 3am, at least, before I actually fell asleep.

Today I had every intention of waking up at a normal time (hence originally going to bed at a reasonable time last night) and maybe doing some baking. Instead, it was noon and I have played games, washed the sheets (but not put them back on the bed yet), sorted through music files, and cooked dinner. It's 8:30 the night before I go back to work, and I still need to wash dishes, wash my hair, remake the bed, and attempt to sleep at a reasonable time so that I'm not dead when I'm facing two weeks of a crisis inbox. Wish me luck with that....

January 4, 2013

Daily diary:

Today I still slept until nearly noon - despite waking up and being fairly wide awake at 9:30 when the postman knocked at the door. I lay in bed and read a few pages of Terry Jones's Medieval Lives and dozed and when I opened my eyes again it was almost noon. Oh, well. It's officially the last day of vacation, so I'm entitled, right?

The post included three boxes/packages for me - a headset for my computer, new forks because we keep running out, and the Christmas box from my mom (calendars, massive amounts of yummy spices, and a couple of other trinkets).

I have no idea what I've done for the rest of the afternoon. Went to the post office. Caught up on blogs and webcomics somewhat. Maintained my farm on WoW. Finished reading Medieval Lives - I plan on starting A Dance with Dragons shortly, since I finished A Feast for Crows last night, but didn't want to get sucked into it yet, as we're going out tonight to say farewell to a friend (who's moving to Costa Rica for six months).

I'm trying to psych myself up for going out tonight. On the one hand, this is a girl I adore, and it's a major change in her life, and I want to be there for her. On the other hand, .... going outside. And being with people. And spending money. I'm mostly just hoping I can get to midnight before I start freaking out.

3 January 2013

Do something for 30 days and it  becomes a habit. And hey, it's not like I have anything else to do for the month of January. Therefore, I'm going to turn this blog into a daily diary. Bibliophilia will still be for book and reading-related reviews, but Pennies for My Thoughts has languished. Time I got  some thoughts.

And, yes, I know that it's three days into January already and I haven't actually started with any of my vague, habit-forming resolutions (notably: work out so that I can slim down by the end of April). Baby steps!

So, daily diary like, here's what I've been doing for the last three days:

1. Sleeping until 11-ish. Which then makes me feel like I've wasted half the day, and threatens to turn me nocturnal just before I go back to work.

2. Keeping up on WoW farming. Not grinding, but farming and cooking - I'm so close.....but it's also become one of my more time-consuming habits.

3. Board games! Ticket to Ride for the last two days, mostly in person with the Jonface but also on Steam. Just because I have lofty goals doesn't mean it's not also vacation time.

4. Reading. I got 12 books for Christmas, and still have a shelf-and-a-bit full of impending reads. So I'm about halfway through A Feast for Crows now - not one of the Christmas haul, but an essential on the list anyway.

5. Cleaning. Or at least trying to keep the house as tidy as possible so that it doesn't pile up and overwhelm me. Overwhelm is starting to knock at the door.

6. Shopping. It was a bit of an organisational binge, as I cleared off the top of my dresser and discovered that I desperately needed some tiny Very Useful Boxes for bobby pins and ponytail holders. Also an over-the-bath drying rack for sweaters that need to lay flat to dry. Also various other odds and ends and forks.

7. Trying to remember to take  my pills. Because otherwise Overwhelm tends to ....well,  overwhelm me.

Seems like a lot when it's all written down. Doesn't seem like a lot when I'm waking up from an hour-plus nap, with a list of goals and plans that haven't even been started.....