The remains found beneath a Leicester parking lot are those of Richard III of England, but the testing has raised more questions than it answered.
Following extensive, international DNA testing, researchers are 99.999% sure that the bones found in the city of Leicester in 2012 are those of Richard III. Richard was born in 1452 and ruled England only briefly, from 1483 until 1485. His reign was never a peaceful one, questions of the legtimacy of his ascension and the proper line of succession led to a divided country and continual war during his two years on the throne.
Richard was killed on August 22, 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field, the last English monarch to die on the battlefield. While there were various accounts of what happened to the body, the remains of Richard III were lost until they were uncovered during a construction project.
Since that time researchers, led by Dr. Turi King from the University of Leicester Department of Genetics have been attempting to confirm the identity of the remains. They compared the mitochondrial DNA from the remains to that of Michael Ibsen and Wendy Duldig; modern, female-line descendants of Richard III. The results of their work are published in the December 2 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications.
“Our paper covers all the genetic and genealogical analysis involved in the identification of the remains of Skeleton 1 from the Greyfriars site in Leicester and is the first to draw together all the strands of evidence to come to a conclusion about the identity of those remains. Even with our highly conservative analysis, the evidence is overwhelming that these are indeed the remains of King Richard III, thereby closing an over 500 year old missing person’s case,” said King in a statement.
They also made comparisons to modern male line descendants of Henry Somerset, 5th Duke of Beaufort. These comparisons, however, revealed that the line had been broken at some point. Without further analysis of additional remains it is impossible for the researchers to say when the break occurred.
That break in lineage could call into question the legitimacy of the Tudor line including Henry V, Henry VI and the Tudor Dynasty which includes Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.
“The combination of evidence confirms the remains as those of Richard III. Especially important is the triangulation of the maternal line descendants. The break in the Y-chromosome line is not overly surprising given the incidence of non-paternity, but does pose interesting speculative questions over succession as a result,” said Professor Kevin Schürer.
Depending on when it occurred the break could even call into question the legitimacy of the rain of Richard III himself, prolonging the controversy which cut short his reign and ultimately claimed his life.
The team next plans to sequence the complete genome of Richard III to learn more about the monarch and, ultimately, English history.
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