For those in York who have been keeping Richard’s flame alive, this is a bittersweet time.

more than 5,700 signatures on a petition calling for Richard to be reinterred there. Leicester’s petition had more than 2,000 names.

Yorkists hope the queen will intervene on behalf of her 15th-century predecessor, though Buckingham Palace said it is not getting involved.

Richard had few links to Leicester, apart from dying in battle nearby in 1485. Historians agree he had strong ties to York.

He belonged to the House of York, one of two branches of the ruling Plantagenet dynasty. William Shakespeare’s play Richard III opens with the lines: “Now is the winter of our discontent/ made glorious summer by this son of York” — a punning reference to Richard’s brother, King Edward IV.

Richard spent much of his childhood in the county of Yorkshire. As an adult, he ran northern England during his brother’s reign, and he is sometimes called the country’s last northern king.

Ormrod says there is evidence Richard wanted to be buried in York Minster, the city’s medieval cathedral.

York has not always made a noise about its ties to a king who for centuries was Britain’s most reviled monarch. Richard was defeated at the Battle of Bosworth Field by the forces of Henry Tudor, who took the throne as King Henry VII, ending a bloody tussle over the crown known as the Wars of the Roses.

Tudor historians painted Richard as a villainous usurper and accused him of multiple crimes — most famously, the murder of his two nephews, the “Princes in the Tower.”

Richard’s supporters hope the discovery of the king’s remains will lead to a reappraisal of his reputation.

For those in York who have been keeping Richard’s flame alive, this is a bittersweet time.

Mike Bennett, who runs York’s small Richard III Museum, said he had been circulating a petition for months — since the reports of the skeleton’s identity emerged — “but it’s only since the bones have been declared to be him that others have jumped on the bandwagon.”

Still, Bennett will be delighted if Richard comes home to York. It would give a boost to his small museum tucked into