I’ve been watching the proceedings of today’s celebration of a king much disputed, all the more because his place of rest was so disputed and frankly unknown. Through a significant amount of clever detective work his remains were unearthed and so we witnessed the real Return Of A King.
In the car park where his remains were found was the letter ‘R’, designating a reserved parking bay. Directly under this ‘R’ was the remains of the king, named Richard. Was nature or the gods trying to tell us something all along? On top of this the stones from the Greyfriars Church in which he was buried were removed during the Reformation and used to build the current St Martin’s Church – cathedral actually – where he is now lying in state until Thursday. It’s strange how things come together for the Return Of A King.
The Real Return Of A King: A Zombie Chronicle – Are We Human?
Why is this important to me? Apart from several of my relatives being of the Ricardian persuasion, the discovery of his bones prompted me to begin writing a trilogy, Return Of A King, that stretched thousands of years into the past, through the turbulent early post-Roman days of Britain, right up to the modern day period where lack of superstition or respect for the dead led to the ultimate overthrow of the species Homo sapiens, assuming that’s what we really are. I have completed two of the three required novels, the third will follow soon.
The whole idea of unearthing mortal remains to me is not so much sacrilegious because that’s down to personal beliefs, but certainly undignified for the deceased. Having laid there for well over five centuries, his tissues mingling with the local earth, it’s interesting to speculate as to whether or not he was spiritually comfortable in place, even if the living regarded his resting place as ignominious?
To be fair to the archaeologists, today they and the church have gone a long way towards making good their unearthing of his remains; giving a king the long due respect of a stately funeral and burial is almost certainly a good thing – maybe the ghost/soul/spirit/essence of King Richard will see the positive side of the whole proceedings.
It is interesting to contemplate what would have happened if Richard had succeeded in defeating Henry Tudor at Bosworth Field:
Henry VIII would not have existed, certainly not as the king he was, creating a schism in the Church dividing Catholics by creating the Church of England. There would not have been a Church of England, certainly not in that form; people would have remained Catholic for a continuing period. As a result there would not have been the splinter groups that arose from that break from Rome. Consequently there would not have been the Act of Uniformity in 1559 leading to the Pilgrims fleeing England from Plymouth in 1620.
Extrapolating from there is probably pointless as it would be fictional with too many suppositions to be credible. The one thing we can be sure of is that the world would not look as it does today. Would that be a good thing? Or would we end up with a completely different set of problems? Would Catholicism be dominant? Would Islam be nothing more than a regional religion? Catholicism is a strong religion, so it’s not unreasonable to assume it could well have a strong grip on our world today.
And all if Richard III had been the victor.
What’s your take on it?
Books by the Author – available worldwide on all good eBook stores:
Return Of A King: A Zombie Chronicle (first in trilogy)
Return Of A King: A Zombie Chronicle – Z Factor (second in trilogy)
The Common Cold: A Zombie Chronicle (first in Trilogy)
The Common Cold: A Zombie Chronicle – Cabin Fever (second in Trilogy)
The Common Cold: A Zombie Chronicle – Dez Rez (third in Trilogy)
The Common Cold: A Zombie Chronicle Trilogy – three books in one
The Animus Portal
Fierce Alchemy
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