Richard III's Bones

 

Richard III's skeleton

Was Richard really a hunchback? I get that question over and over during my book tours, and up until 2012, my answer was enigmatic. "We don't know," wasn't satisfactory, I know, but being a writer meticulous about accuracy, I chose not to even refer much to his physicality in all my books--except the last one, This Son of York. I needed to write the final book in my series about Richard's family precisely so I could now set the record straight and answer the question truthfully. It added to his story immeasurably.

No, he was not a hunchback: he had a bad case of scoliosis that developed gradually only during his teen years, which is very different from kyphosis (hunchback). 

With the discovery of his skeleton under that car park in Leicester, the dreaded words "crooked spine" were used to describe what the osteologist saw in the makeshift grave. "Oh no," I thought, "and I haven't mentioned his back in any of my books." Visions of Shakespeare's "crookback" monster creeping about the stage arose, and I just couldn't believe in all my research that such a disability wouldn't have been mentioned in the contemporary sources I had studied.

Why not I asked myself? Because scoliosis--even to the degree Richard had--can be disguised. By clever tailoring, Richard's fashionable, padded jackets and bespoke armor hid the slightly raised right shoulder and jutting ribs from all but those who saw him shirtless.

The condition didn't seem to hamper his fighting ability as you can see in this BBC film focusing on a young man in Leicester today, Dominic Smee, who has almost the exact same degree of scoliosis as Richard. I have met Dom and can attest that his scoliosis is barely noticeable under clothes.

It was only when the king was killed at Bosworth, stripped naked and tied to the back of a horse that the shape of his torso was revealed to the soldiers lining the route back to Leicester. It was probably when somebody cried, “Why, he was a crookback!” that the story of him being a hunchback was born and eagerly exploited by the usurping Tudors. No one writing during Richard’s life ever mentioned a disability, but historian John Rous, of the Rous Roll, did mention uneven shoulders in 1491 (6 years after Richard's death in Henry Tudor's reign).

Thanks to science and an amazing discovery in 2012, we now know the truth! 

Next week, on our way to the release of The Lost King feature film: Richard's children--were there three or four?