King Richard III revisited

Forensic examination of skeletal remains exhumed in 2012 from the site of the former Church of the Greyfriars in Leicester, United Kingdom, revealed a gracile adult male of around 30 to 34 years of age with 11 perimortem injuries. These were consistent with descriptions of injuries sustained by King Richard III, the last Plantagenet King of England, at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. Combining these features with DNA analyses proved that the remains were those of Richard. The finding of a severe thoracic scoliosis with a raised right shoulder confirmed that the king did have a” hunchback” which was not a later invention of Tudor and subsequent chroniclers. This investigation provides an excellent demonstration of how contemporary forensic techniques can answer historical questions. The remains of the last Plantagenet king have been identified, his vertebral disease confirmed, and the nature of his last moments verified.