... a University of Leicester archaeologist working in a trench cut into a parking lot uncovered what could turn out to be one of the most remarkable finds in modern British archaeology. Judging from the clamor that has met the discovery in Britain, it may lead to demands for Richard to be buried, like other British kings, in a place of honor like Westminster Abbey.
The archaeologist, Jo Appleby, noted signature characteristics that pointed strongly to Richard: a deformed spine, what she has described as a mortal battlefield wound in the back of the skull from a bladed instrument and a barbed metal arrowhead found between two upper vertebrae.
The remains were buried in the choir, an area of the priory church where Franciscan monks would have sat during ceremonies, close to the altar. It was in the choir that one of the most credible contemporary accounts said Richard had been interred.
But that pointer proved moot when Henry VIII seized and ransacked the monasteries in 1538, leaving priories like Greyfriars to crumble into rubble, to the point where centuries later, nobody had any precise fix as to where they once stood.
Unlike some folks who care a lot, I'm not especially interested in whether Richard was a good guy or a bad guy—but this story is great because of its huge range of details: isotope testing to see where this guy grew up, the body being found beneath a parking lot when people thought he was buried beneath a bank across the street, how the Tudors went out of their way to make Richard (the last Plantagenet king) look like a monster, etc.
Below the jump, watch Sir Ian McKellen in Richard III meeting Lady Anne in a morgue, confessing to her husband's murder, then seducing her over his corpse.
