Ricardians accept as facts: that first the young king
Edward V was placed under the protection of his uncle Richard III; that Richard III himself was then crowned as the new king instead of young Edward V; and finally that the young king disappeared at some point over the coming years, never to be seen again. However, they dispute the initial common assumption by many, that Richard III was personally responsible for the disappearance (or perhaps murder) of Edward V. Richard III's reign lasted for only two years, and his short reign came to a violent end on 22 August 1485 at the
Battle of Bosworth; the last battle of the
War of the Roses. In the aftermath of the battle, Richard III's body was not given a proper state funeral, and the location of his remains was soon forgotten; there was even a belief, now proved false, that they had been thrown into the
River Soar in
Leicester following the
Dissolution of the Monasteries. Ricardians assert that many of the original assumptions about Richard III's motives and likely responsibility relating to these events were not supported by the facts of the day, that these assumptions were most probably instead the result of the political claims of his successors, and that they were most probably mistaken assumptions. The two most notable societies of Ricardians are the
Richard III Society, and the Richard III Foundation, Inc. A third much smaller Ricardian organisation, composed of "collateral descendants" of Richard III, was the
Plantagenet Alliance. In 2012, the Richard III Society was instrumental in leading an archaeological effort to positively locate and identify the long-lost remains of Richard III, which resulted in the discovery and retrieval of the remains from beneath a Leicester car park. Subsequently, much popular historical interest was generated in this historical period. Such historical interest resulted in the review and publication of many articles and documents regarding Richard's reign, which have contributed to the scholarship of latter 15th-century
England. After their discovery, Richard III's remains were first scientifically evaluated, then formally re-interred within the interior of
Leicester Cathedral on 26 March 2015. Their re-interment occurred amidst days of solemn ceremonies and pageantry.
Notable Ricardians Ricardian
historiography includes works by
Horace Walpole and by Sir
George Buck, who was the king's first defender, after the Tudor period. Ricardian fiction includes
Josephine Tey's
The Daughter of Time and
Sharon Kay Penman's
The Sunne in Splendour.
Elizabeth George writes of the fictional discovery of an exonerating document in her short story "I Richard".
Science fiction writer
Andre Norton, in the 1965 novel
Quest Crosstime, depicted an
alternate history in which Richard III won at Bosworth and turned out to be one of England's greatest kings, "achieving the brilliance of the
Elizabethan era two generations earlier". Other notable Ricardians include: •
Laurence Olivier, actor •
Tallulah Bankhead, actress ==Richard III Society==