I'm thinking that it might be time for me to weigh in on an important and pressing controversy, The Princes Project:

The Richard III Foundation, Inc. is respectfully requesting that the bones in the Tower, that are alleged to be the sons of Edward IV, be subjected to modern scientific examination and the treatment of DNA analysis.

The examination of the bones will not only bring closure to their identity, but it will also bestow them with an appropriate and lasting place in the annals of history.

King Richard III, the reigning monarch from 1483-1485, has through the writings of Sir Thomas More and William Shakespeare been vilified for over 515 years.

It is imperative that we put to rest the resolution of one of England's greatest historical mysteries. But, it is equally paramount that we provide justice for a man wrongly accused.

"... the purpose and indeed the strength of the Richard III Society derive from the belief that the truth is more powerful than lies - a faith that even after all these centuries the truth is important. It is proof of our sense of civilised values that something as esoteric and as fragile as reputation is worth campaigning for."

Needless to say, Hollywood has always been glad to pitch in. From the 1939 classic Tower of London starring Basil Rathbone (with Boris Karloff as Richard's club-footed executioner) to this 1962 classic Tower of London, starring Vincent Price:

I enjoyed both films when I was a kid. It could even be argued that villains are a good thing. They help children learn the difference between right and wrong. Richard is one of those historically agreed-upon villains who has occupied that important historical niche of evil for so long that a good argument could be made for leaving him there.

Truth be damned.

Now, while I am a compromiser by nature, I don't agree with the philosophy of truth be damned, because the truth interests me, dammit! Not only is the truth at minimum interesting, but in many cases it is actually important.

The reason I care about the truth is primarily because I am unlucky enough to have an insatiable curiosity to know what happened. I care about what happened more than I care about the value of the narrative.

How much value does the traditional Richard III narrative have today? To be sure, it had great value to Henry VII. And Henry VIII, and Elizabeth I. Because after all, the original Tudor claim to the throne was shaky at best, and while Henry VII did defeat and kill Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth (thus putting an end to the War of Roses), he really had no right to the throne, and had the Princes in the Tower been alive, he wouldn't have stood a chance of being crowned. So he benefited enormously by the boys' disappearance. Interestingly, it has never been established with any certainty that they were in fact murdered, how they died, or even when. What was established by Henry VII and continued by his progeny was the legend of the arch-villain Richard III.

It would be all too easy to be flippant here, and simply toss in the famous Churchill Goering quote that "history is written by the victors," because clearly Henry VII was the victor, and history was his to write. (And to erase in the case of the Titulus Regius.)

But to write history that works, there's more to it than winning. There's also more to it than truth, because the truth is nearly always contested by the losing side. History has to be made easy to swallow by ordinary people (who must be willing consumers if the cultural integrity is to be preserved). It must be popular with the people. Like it or not, people want heroes and they want villains. It would not have done for Henry's subjects to see Richard III as a product of his times and his culture and not much different from the guy who killed him. It had to be reduced to a narrative. Good and evil.

("Evil" king on left, "good" king on right.)

Even Bosworth Field:

Henry hired chroniclers to portray his reign favourably; the Battle of Bosworth Field was popularised to represent his Tudor dynasty as the start of a new age, marking the end of the Middle Ages for England. From the 15th to 18th centuries the battle was glamorised as a victory of good over evil, and as the climax of William Shakespeare's play about Richard's rise and fall, it provides a focal point for critics in later film adaptations. The exact site of the battle is disputed because of the lack of conclusive data, and memorials have been erected at different locations. The Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre was built, in 1974, on a site chosen based on a theory that was challenged on the battle's quincentenary.

Was that a good thing? Should truth be subordinated to moral considerations based upon good and evil?

I mean, really. Where do hopeless romantic searchers for the "actual truth" like me get off demanding answers? Is it simply to satisfy some emotional "need to know"? I like to think curiosity is more grounded in wanting to know, but there may be some emotional need as well, and I'd be dishonest not to acknowledge at least the possibility.

Of course, then there are the Post-Modernist deconstructionists, who simply want to shatter all narratives for the sake of shattering them, to serve their larger cause that There Are No Truths. (Which sounds suspiciously like an assertion of truth to me, and thus a contradiction in terminology at the outset.) They suffer from the same primitive need to confirm what they want to believe, and they want to believe that nothing is true. That strikes me as profoundly illogical, because things did happen, and sometimes they can be confirmed with research. If, for example, DNA can be recovered from the bones that were found in the Tower, modern methods could determine whether or not they contain genetic material which would place them in the royal family. (However, this would not be enough to satisfy extreme skeptics of the conspiracy theory mindset, especially now that the narrative of DNA testing integrity has been shattered.)

None of this is to argue that Richard III was a great guy, or that Henry VII was a villain. I don't get my jollies looking for emotionally satisfying narratives. The problem is, I get annoyed when other people do, because it tends to cloud their thinking. Wanting Richard III to be a villain should not be a reason for maintaining his villainous niche. But wanting him to be a hero is equally silly, and reminds me of the Abyssinian sainthood of Pontius Pilate.

On the other hand, I don't want to think too hard about what might have happened had Henry VII not been perspicacious enough to satisfy his subjects' need for a villain.

His son might not have been king, America might never have been English, the United States as we know it might not exist, and we might not have many of the cultural standards we take for granted today.

And needless to say, (if I may quote Richard Nixon) "that would be wrong."