Two tragic kings called Richard….

 

I know I’ve rabbited about this before, because I’m fascinated by both King Richard III and his predecessor Richard II. Such fascination sparks latter-day loyalties. It certainly has with me.

Tragedy struck them both, and as supporters of Richard III we know he was maligned as the killer of his two small nephews, betrayed, widowed, robbed of his only legitimate son and then brutally murdered at Bosworth heroically defending his throne. Yes, Richard III was definitely a tragic figure, and he claims our support across the centuries.

But Richard II suffered similarly. He came to the throne as a boy and was bullied by his powerful uncles. History has branded him a bloodthirsty hysterical tyrant who threw his slippers out of windows in fits of uncontrollable rage, but he didn’t. That silly story has come about because an original source was misread, and it was a mad friar who threw the fit and chucked his sandals out.

Richard wasn’t warlike, a quality that was expected—nay, demanded—by a quarrelsome nobility that was always up for a money-making war or three. Richard would rather have had peace with France than sail across the Channel to raise merry hell. Richard II too lost the queen he clearly adored. Anne of Bohemia was everything to him, and theirs became a true love match, but the plague took her from him. Another tragedy was that although she suffered miscarriages she was unable to bear a child to full term. Richard II was never a father. To our knowledge anyway.

He was murdered, although not on the battlefield, rather in a poky cell in Pontefract Castle. No one knows how he died exactly, but his murderers liked to claim he starved himself to death. If starvation figured in the mire, then it was because he was denied food, and the man who ordered this murder was his odious usurping cousin, the Lancastrian Henry IV. It is undoubtedly with this despicable crime that the Wars of the Roses truly began.

Today there are unpleasant nudge-nudge comments about Richard II’s second marriage, to the child Isabella of Valois, but in those days there was nothing untoward in such a match, and consummation certainly wasn’t permitted when a child was involved. Nor was Richard a man who liked children in the wrong way. On the contrary, he treated Isabella kindly and she loved him. I think he chose a child bride because he was still too in love with Anne and wished to postpone a consummation that might to him have appeared almost like unfaithfulness. He was a very emotional man. But who can say what was in his mind? It remains that Isabella loved him and wouldn’t marry his murderer’s son and heir, who would become Henry V. It was eventually Isabella’s sister, Catherine of Valois, who married Henry V. And we all know the calamities for which we have her to thank!

You can read about Richard II here, and watch a video, a still from which is shown above.