richard III

[kylejustin]

not strictly research, but an interesting article on richard III......the university of leicester, leicester city council and the richard III society are working together to uncover richard III's remains fromt he medieval monastery of the grey friar's.

the claim to have the mitochindrial DNA of his billion times grand niece, and ordinary woman, and hope to identify his remains using that DNA. wouldn't it make more sense to have permission to dig up his father, or brothers for the y DNA? and maybe his mother to prove the mitochondrial DNA? i mean this woman may not be the descendant they think she is.....with all the hiccups and secret adoptions going on down the centuries i would think they would get DNA of an actual relative......if the body was not thrown in the river after all. which they allege is just a rumour, but i think henry VIII dissolving the monasteries and throwing th ebody of his grand uncle in the river is more likely than the body just sitting there in leicester square 500 years later. they say the reason they think it is a myth is because a grave marker exists.....known since 1612....i think some better research should be done!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_III_of_England

[Olde Crone Holden]

I agree Kyle - dodgy in the extreme and an awful lot of assumptions are being made here.

I personally doubt that DNA evidence is going to prove anything in this case because there are too many loopholes the biggest of which are - it may not be Richard III buried there AND the "direct female descendant" may not be the direct descendant of Richard III even if she does have the same mitochondrial DNA - so would thousands of other women both then and now.

OC

[margaretmarch]

I suppose if nothing else it will be an exercise in checking whether the paper trail to the niece is in fact correct.

I would imagine the University would have quite strong evidence to endorse the place of burial so really not much of a gamble that his remains are in fact there.

Margaret

[grumpy]

I dunno, what does it matter if they did find a body which may be ascribed to Richard III. Whatever way he has been dead since 1485. I would rather

find out for certain what happened to his nephews.

[kylejustin]

i do wonder why they have havnt dug up the medieval kings and done the tests on them. they have bones in urns in westminster abbey charles II found in the tower of london and thought were the prrinces in the tower.

if they have issues with digging up royals, it's not like they want to exhume queen victoria......i don't think digging up royals from the stuart dynasty and beyond will harm anyone....all immediate descendants are dead, so not like anyone can challenge the hanoverian succession!

[Rusty]

Has anyone read 'A Dangerous Inheritance' by Alison Weir? I'm just over halfway through and finding it quite hard going because the author keeps jumping backwards and forwards between Kate Plantagenet (bastard daughter of Richard III) and Lady Katherine Grey (sister of Lady Jane Grey). According to the blurb the 'novel skilfully mixes fact and fiction, telling a page-turning story within a framework of historical authenticity'. I've got to the bit where there is speculation of where the Princes in the Tower are and why has no-one seen them, it is a fascinating story though I doubt that after all this time anyone will ever get to the truth of anything that happened then. They seemed to just twist things to suit themselves (so what's new?) inventing pre marriage agreements to invalidate the present wife/husband/children so that they can cast off the old and on with the new, then when that doesn't suit they'll invalidate the present marriage and either go back to the first one or marry someone else. With all of this going on plus extramarital affairs etc. I wouldn't have thought that anyone could with any certainty trace their blood-line back to that branch of the Royal Family. If only the author had written it in chronological order it might be a bit easier to unravel all the plots and sub plots, still I'll carry on until the end it might all become more clear!

[Olde Crone Holden]

My mother had no sisters but her mother did. So her mother's sister's daughtrs have identical mt-DNA with mine. they are not descended from me, nor from my mother and I am not descended from them. We do all have a common female ancestor though and because we are all still alive, lol, we know that to be our mutual great grandmother.

If we did not have that present knowledge then in 1000 years time, if they dug us all up and compared our mt-DNA, they might say we are descended from each other - we aren't, we just have a common ancestor and DNA cannot tell us who that was.

OC

[Lynn The Forest Fan]

Has anyone read 'A Dangerous Inheritance' by Alison Weir? I'm just over halfway through and finding it quite hard going because the author keeps jumping backwards and forwards between Kate Plantagenet (bastard daughter of Richard III) and Lady Katherine Grey (sister of Lady Jane Grey). According to the blurb the 'novel skilfully mixes fact and fiction, telling a page-turning story within a framework of historical authenticity'. I've got to the bit where there is speculation of where the Princes in the Tower are and why has no-one seen them, it is a fascinating story though I doubt that after all this time anyone will ever get to the truth of anything that happened then. They seemed to just twist things to suit themselves (so what's new?) inventing pre marriage agreements to invalidate the present wife/husband/children so that they can cast off the old and on with the new, then when that doesn't suit they'll invalidate the present marriage and either go back to the first one or marry someone else. With all of this going on plus extramarital affairs etc. I wouldn't have thought that anyone could with any certainty trace their blood-line back to that branch of the Royal Family. If only the author had written it in chronological order it might be a bit easier to unravel all the plots and sub plots, still I'll carry on until the end it might all become more clear!

I am waiting to get this book from the library, I agree about it getting confusing when 2 different stories are being told at the same time, I seem to have read a few books recently that are like this. I have just read The kingmakers's daughter by Phillipa Gregory, which is about Anne Neville, Richard's wife, which is very interesting. I am a bit confused as to who this "neice" is supposed to be descended from, I thought Henry VIII had killed off all the Plantagenant descendents?

[Rusty]

I am waiting to get this book from the library, I agree about it getting confusing when 2 different stories are being told at the same time, I seem to have read a few books recently that are like this. I have just read The kingmakers's daughter by Phillipa Gregory, which is about Anne Neville, Richard's wife, which is very interesting. I am a bit confused as to who this "neice" is supposed to be descended from, I thought Henry VIII had killed off all the Plantagenant descendents?

When I ordered the book months ago I was 18th in line and they only had one book! Mine looks brand new so they must have got another one in stock.

This isn't a time in history that I know much about so I found it all interesting, I just wish it hadn't been written in such a confusing manner. I did a Google on the characters and found out that Elizabeth Bowes Lyon was descended from one of them, so I suppose you could say that our throne has now been returned to it's rightful owner (via several people who may or may not have been bastards!), but I wouldn't like to bank on it. Isn't there a Pretender somewhere (Australia?) to the British throne?

Anyway Lynn I hope that you enjoy the book when you finally get it.

Margaret.

[SmallTownGirl]

... Anne Neville, Richard's wife, which is very interesting. I am a bit confused as to who this "neice" is supposed to be descended from, I thought Henry VIII had killed off all the Plantagenant descendents?

Anne's father was Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick
Richard Neville's father was Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury
Richard Neville (the Earl of Salisbury one, not the Earl of Warwick one - keep up) was the son of Ralph de Neville and Joan Beaufort.
Joan Beaufort was a daughter of John of Gaunt.
John of Gaunt was a son of Edward III.

STG

[Tippin]

I am a bit confused as to who this "neice" is supposed to be descended from, I thought Henry VIII had killed off all the Plantagenant descendents?

There were some 'Plantagenant's' that slipped through the net. One of them was Reginald Pole, the last Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury (he was the grandson of George, Duke of Clarence. George was the brother of Richard III, who was murdered (possibly by Richard) on the orders of Edward IV, who was George & Richard's brother....... what a family!!).

Also, Henry VIII himself was the grandson of Edward IV, his father having married Edward's daughter Elizabeth shortly after Bosworth Field to merge the families of York and Lancaster. I would guess the 'niece' was a descendent of either the Tudor's or one of Elizabeth's sisters.

[SmallTownGirl]

.. Plantagenant's ....... what a family!!).

[Sarcasm button on]
Unlike the Tudors, who were the epitome of good, decent, honest family values.
[Sarcasm button off]

STG

[Olde Crone Holden]

The living "niece" (is that who we are talking about?) is a direct female descendant of Anne, who was the sister of Richard III.

It's still dodgy logic and research. Mt-DNA is not unique, nor is Y-DNA for that matter, and I think it will be very easy to draw false conclusions from a match.

OC

[kylejustin]

i agree woleheartedly oc. it's dodgy like digging up the lady who sat for mona lisa.......

[Lynn The Forest Fan]

Thanks OC, that makes sense. I love the Tudor period of history & did the Wars of the Roses as part of my history A level, but I still find it very confusing as to who was who

[col48]

Isn't DNA subject to small mutations from generation to generation?

So by looking at OC's relatives' DNA one might still be able to tell that A was not likely to be descended from B but that they had a common ancestor C within x generations.
Say there would be about 50 mutations per generation (that's my invented figure). If A if the granddaughter of C, then expect 100 mutations between A and C; if B if the ggd of C expect 150 mutations but there is no reason for these to include A's mutations unless B was the daughter of A.

So comparing A with B: if 50 mutations, one is the daughter of the other; if 100, there is a two-step relationship (ie sister, grandmother, maternal aunt); if 250, there is a 5-step relationship between them and the dates might suggest the scenario just outlined;if tens of thousands of mutations they may be the same tribe but not closely related. If you also had C's DNA you could be that much more definite. Well, something like that, all dressed up in probabilities because in the real world would not be that neat, especially if the precise relationship was much more remote, as must be the case with Richard III and the present day.

[Olde Crone Holden]

col

Not when you are working with mt-DNA. Mt-DNA changes very very slowly - I think it mutates ON AVERAGE once in 40 generations. That is why it is a useful (?) tool for deep ancestry. Any woman alive today is likely to have the same deep ancestrasl DNA as a woman alive 40,000 years ago.

Autosomal DNA changes more or less every generation but you can only compare autosomal DNA for three generations at the present level of knowledge. (I think). Its use at present is for paternity cases and in forensic matters - child survivors of the Tsunami had autosomal testing to decide who their parents/mothers were, because nearly all the females in the area had identical mt-DNA.

OC

[Christine in Herts]

<snip> Isn't there a Pretender somewhere (Australia?) to the British throne?

<snip>

Margaret.

There was a TV programme where they looked at the records for one of the Queens whose King doesn't seem to have been around at the time her heirs had to have been conceived.

Having made that observation, they looked at who would have inherited instead, and worked their way down the lines until they reached a man in Australia. He didn't seem too anxious to claim the throne!

Christine

[col48]

OC

I've done a bit more reading up. Phew, it's complicated - and controversial in places! mtDNA: 1 mutation in every 30 and 60 generations, Y-DNA (the paternal line one): about 65 mutations per generation, autosomal: enough of a muddle that I'm not sure if there is a useful answer.

So 1 in 40, about 2.5% chance of a mutation in mtDNA in any one generation. The statistics need to be handled with care, but I think that still means that in 25 generations the chance of retaining identical mtDNA is only about 53%, there is a 34% chance of a single mutation, 10% of two mutations. [The assumption is that mutations are independent].

So it's a good telescope and a poor magnifying glass. Which is, I think, your point.

[SmallTownGirl]

There was a TV programme where they looked at the records for one of the Queens whose King doesn't seem to have been around at the time her heirs had to have been conceived.

Having made that observation, they looked at who would have inherited instead, and worked their way down the lines until they reached a man in Australia. He didn't seem too anxious to claim the throne!

Christine

Do you mean this ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britain%27s_Real_Monarch

STG