Anatomy of a downfall
This latest biography of Richard III opens with a startling rollcall of Ricardian failures: the shortest reign of a crowned king since the Norman conquest; the first and last king since Harold Godwinson to die in battle – and not killed defending his shores against invasion, but hacked to death by his own subjects. Considering this litany of catastrophes, Horrox’s subtitle seems entirely apt. The question of whether Richard III failed is never in doubt, but why he failed is carefully deconstructed.
Given the debate around this most contentious monarch, a complex and contradictory man emerges in this zippy narrative. Richard may have been disillusioned with his brother 'dward IV’s lascivious court, but that didn’t stop him revelling in the luxuries of kingship himself. Horrox is studiously even-handed, not least in regards to the disappearance of his nephews, the princes in the Tower. While Horrox acknowledges that Richard’s responsibility for their deaths is “the most likely scenario”, fitting the precedent of previous deposed kings, she emphasises Richard’s good intentions towards governmental reform at his accession, and his attempt to maintain a Yorkist status quo: 'dward IV’s regime stripped of his “toxic” Woodville in-laws.
Horrox rightly emphasises how the past 30 years of usurpation had eroded people’s faith in kingship, allowing Richard to imagine that he could depose a child-king without undue consequence. As history proved, he was wrong. Richard seems to have been genuinely shocked when his subjects took exception and rebelled against him. A misplaced eagerness to vindicate himself in battle proved his fatal flaw. When Henry Tudor’s rebel army invaded, Richard ploughed headlong into his own obliteration. Horrox is clear that the cause of that self-destruction was, ultimately, Richard himself.