I was
present recently at the inaugural meeting of Ireland’s branch of the Richard
III Society and one of the questions before us was, what are we going to do? We need, it was agreed, a crackingly good
programme for our first year - a couple of accredited speakers and perhaps a
study event - to catch the eye of potential new members.
What would interest people? Overwhelmingly the topics suggested dwelt on that
body in the car park. The King’s now verified scoliosis, for instance; how would it have
affected him as a warrior? Or how about the recently disclosed evidence of his ringworm infestation;
what did it tell us about his life and times? And those battle wounds, so
clearly visible on his bones after more than 500 years; which of them would
have been the actual death blow?
Now I’m not
squeamish about death and disease. Medical sciences were my subject long before
I was a novelist. And yet I find myself slightly uneasy about this taste for
recreational autopsies. Are we maybe watching too many television forensic
investigator shows?
When King
Richard’s remains were found last year I felt enormous gratitude to all those
from Philippa Langley onwards, who had made it happen, and also for the science
that made identification a certainty. I have mixed feelings about the facial
reconstruction but on balance I welcome the reminder it has given us, if
nothing else, that Richard was a young man.
Thirty three. The wounds to his skull and pelvis bear witness to the violence
of hand to hand combat. Do we need to analyse his death any further than that?
He went to Bosworth Field understanding perfectly well that he might not
survive the day, and perhaps he didn’t much care. His wife was dead, his son
was dead, and the Cousins’ War was a nest of vipers.
There are
instances in history where there might be some justification for breaching the
privacy of the doctor’s consulting room. Did Henry VIII have syphilis, or
diabetes, or McLeod Syndrome? Would one or any of those diagnoses explain his destructive nature and his
frequent recourse to the axe? Would it make him a more forgivable figure?
Haemophilia
in Queen Victoria’s numerous descendants certainly had profound consequences
for the Romanov dynasty. If the Tsesarevich Alexis hadn’t been haemophiliac the
Tsarina wouldn’t have fallen under the thrall of Rasputin and Russia might have
learned to love its German Empress. Perhaps, perhaps.
And if we know why haemophilia
has apparently disappeared from the remnants of Europe’s royal houses - monarchs
now know better than to marry off their daughters to first cousins - it
would still be interesting to know where the gene sprang from. Could Victoria’s mother have been a carrier?
Or was Queen Victoria the unfortunate source of a spontaneous mutation? Such
things do happen.
George III’s
porphyria, a diagnosis that is still debated, led to the Regency, but the life of the
nation wasn’t greatly affected. Life went on. Revolution didn’t come to our
shores and eventually political reform did. Yes,
it would be interesting to have a firm diagnosis, but it would hardly change
our view of George’s reign. A more
interesting point would be whether his porphyria (or whatever else it was) has
now been bred out of the Royal Family? But actually it’s none of our business.
As for King
Richard, my thoughts are that he should be laid quickly and finally to rest. A
Catholic funeral mass and a tomb worthy of an anointed King. No more picking over his bones, no judicial
reviews, no soi disant descendants bickering about his resting place. And no
more forensics. He died a violent and horrible death along with many others, on Bosworth Field. Time to
close the autopsy file.
