Was this the face?

Fascinating and infuriating.  The BBC has posted quite a bonny facial reconstruction done from Richard III's skull.  Quoth the project's Ricardian, "It doesn't look like the face of a tyrant. I'm sorry but it doesn't."  Of course it bloody well doesn't—this is PR as well as science, and they've taken pains to give him a pleasant expression for the cameras.  Skulls don't have faint smiles and fresh complexions.  And anyway, what does a tyrant look like?  Could she pick one from a line-up?  It's the belief in physiognomy as destiny that made me hurl The Daughter of Time across the room, forty-some years ago, and jump upon it howling.

I am all for a re-evaluation of the last Plantagenet; but I would not be at all surprised to find him a rather good king who valiantly overcame his disability and did away with his nephews for the benefit of state and self.  In short, a mess like the rest of us, not the god of Yorkist idolatry, a white rose unblemished.  Not that I admire Henry VII either, though I'd hate to have lost his son's daughter, that magnificent, unpleasant Queen.

Nine