"Recreating Richard" Topic

On Channel 4 was a documentary about Richard III, centring around his physical abilities in "Richard III The New Evidence".

The problem historians were having was now his scoliosis had been confirmed by the finding of his skeleton- his spine is so curved that they wondered how he could have fought on the battlefield. The problem they had is scoliosis is usually cured by surgery early in life, so no one has it any more.

Except they found one guy in his 20s who hadn't. More surprisingly he was a medieval re-enactor, often at Bosworth, and his mum had written a book about Richard.

The documentary basically gave him a crash course in medieval noble's martial life – they taught him to fight, they had a suit of armour made, and got him riding. It yielded some surprising results.

Fighting was exhausting- the twist in his spine meant the ribcage didn't allow breathing properly as his lungs don't expand fully. However he could fight.

Riding was initially a problem – the curvature put his weight on one side, which could send the wrong signal to the horse. Additionally he bounced too much. It didn't look good for the medieval saddle – a far lower tech and rigid structure. Surprisingly it actually helped- it held him in place.

The armour obviously had to be tailored over and above- the armourer had a problem because Dominic had no waist due to the problems with his ribs, so there was no where to rest the weight. The solution was to make it tighter and closer fitting to the back. This had the benefit of helping him support his own weight, and holding him in a good posture. After only 6 riding lessons he was able to hit a jousting target with a lance, and was able to ride in armour.

Analysis of his bones did show he was suffering – he was drinking a bottle of wine a day, and was not as fit as he could have been. Once unhorsed he not only had to fight on foot, exhausting at the best of times and compounded by the breathing problems, but he was suffering from too much high life.

Interesting, I had not heard that Dickon's condition was that bad. Some curvature, yes, but not even that noticeable to bystanders. Why this extreme pov now?…

The skeleton – they could easily recreate his body. Bodies are predictable – If you give have the femur, you can recreate the whole skeleton. Non standard features won't always be known, but sometimes inferred by the way the body reacts- bones under stress thicken, etc. The spine can only be put together one way.

Although the scoliosis was quite severe you couldn't really tell Dominic Smee, Richards "body double", had a problem until he took his shirt off.
There was no real comment about Richard by his contemporaries and I imagine people only became aware of it when his corpse was stripped after the battle. Also explains why Tudor was so disrespectful in displaying his naked body:

"…and had him covered from the waist downwards with a black rag of poor quality, ordering him to be exposed there three days to the universal gaze…."

And hence the start of the hunchback monster of Tudor propaganda.