Historic royal families and incest….

  The above gentlemen have the infamous Habsburg chin on full display. It means they are definitely not going to win a World’s Handsomest Man competition any time soon. Their chins and general looks are the result of generations of inbreeding, the aim being to keep the royal blood pure. Well, there’s pure and there’s…

Sibling marriages again

In the teeth of the evidence, some authors maintain that Richard Duke of Gloucester and Anne Neville required a third dispensation because his brother had already wed her sister, an argument that Barnfield has conclusively fisked. We don’t have to go very far to find a similar case of sibling marriages – the Neville sisters’…

Richard III and the Pharaoh….?

Last night I settled down to watch a two-hour documentary I’d recorded from the History Channel. No, it wasn’t about Richard III, or even the English medieval period, but about the Fourth Dynasty of Ancient Egypt. Specifically about the discovery of the long-fabled fourth pyramid, some five miles from Giza: here Unfortunately, I haven’t been…

Anti-history: Edward IV’s ‘Secret’ Illegitimacy

Originally posted on Helen Rae Rants!:
As the old saying goes, it’s a wise child that knows its own father; one might add it’s a sure child that knows its own mother, if only because maternity is harder to conceal, deny or be mistaken about. So while doubts have been cast on King Edward’s paternity…

Which man fathered the first Beaufort….?

Here is the scene. The mother with her newly born child, her ladies, the air of relief and happiness. But presumably she is a faithful wife, and her delighted husband will soon be summoned to see his new offspring. No doubt he hopes for a son. But what if she isn’t a faithful wife, and…

Richard and “Incest”- a further rebuttal

The recent suggestion by a well-known academic that Richard committed incest when he married Anne drew to my mind at least three examples at the highest levels of society where people had done something similar without any criticism. I was confident that there were many other examples at gentry level. However, as I no longer…

TWO BRIDES FOR TWO BROTHERS

  ‘Did Richard III Marry His Sister?’   Lurid headlines blared off a rag on sale during Richard’s re-interment week in March 2015. A certain anti-Richard professor was, once again, insisting that because Isabel Neville was sister to Anne Neville and married to Richard’s brother George, that made Richard Isabel’s ‘brother’ and therefore his union…

Richard and “Incest”

In BBC History, Richard III Special Edition, Professor Hicks returns to his theory that Richard III’s marriage to Anne Neville was incestuous because of the prior marriage of his brother, George Clarence, to Isabel Neville. I have to confess to surprise that a historian of Professor Hicks’ fame and academic stature is still chasing this…

Deliciously Wicked Richard

Richard III really will have to try harder if he is going to live up to that interesting reputation of his. After all, what good is a serial incestor if all he does is simply marry his cousin (with a Papal dispensation) which occurs all the time nowadays anyway – without the Papal dispensation? And…