Talk:Richard III of England

A suggestion

Re Section: Discovery of Remains. Just a suggestion. It reads "Forensic pathologist, Dr Stuart Hamilton stated that this injury would have left the King's brain visible ...," with another later reference to "the King," ande later calling him "Richard."
As the paragraph is still building evidence for this wretch being Richard, shouldn't it still read "the man" or "the skeleton" at this point, so as not to jump to the conclusion and derail the argument? (The ideal phrase would be "the subject," but that word is somehow antithetical to a ruler (as it turns out) and would thus be a distraction.) I'm not arguing for spoiler-avoidance, but rather for a logical progression of ideas. WHPratt (talk) 14:55, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

I think that would be a reasonable amendment. Deb (talk) 18:33, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Agree. Have gone ahead and made a change there, thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:38, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Well, this is good, but there are a couple more references to a "king" and a couple of mentions of "Richard" in the paragraph. I don't think that, in this section, the identity should be assumed until the point where the authority declares that it's probably His Ex-Majesty. After that, call him by name all you want. I'm not arguing for drama or mystery (everyone reading this knows who it is), just the citing of the facts before the conclusion. Thanks for your patience! WHPratt (talk) 12:25, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

I have no objections if you wish to make the changes you suggest. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:32, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll do that. WHPratt (talk) 13:30, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Reference section tidy-up

Hi all. Just a quick note to explain what I've been up to over the last week or so. Substantively, I made five changes to the article references:

1. I applied a consistent style, as previously there were a few different conventions being used.
2. I added as much bibliographic data to the sources as I could find.
3. Where possible, I switched references to paper books to freely-available online editions.
4. If a source was not actually referenced by an inline citation, I removed it (this was only actually the case for one source).
5. I tried to make sure that bibliographic data for a source was only given in one place, to avoid duplication/redundancy. (For long sources like books and academic articles which might generate multiple citations to different pages etc., I put the bibliographic data in the list of sources and ensured the individual citations link to their source. Shorter sources like news articles and web pages which are unlikely to generate multiple distinct citations are just given in the list of citations.)

Note that I've made heavy use of the WP:CS1 templates, in addition to Template:Sfnp. That choice is more-or-less arbitrary, so if editors don't approve of these it shouldn't be much work to switch to something else now that the data is all in a tidy format. I also assumed from the presence of a bibliography that it should be used (rather than giving a source's bibliographic data in its first occurrence in the citation list), and I've included "long" sources in the list of sources, even if they are only cited once. But both of these judgments are also easily changed, if required.

I hope that's overall a helpful intervention. Let me know if I've made any missteps and I'll happily correct them. Also sorry for monopolising the edit history, I've been making lots of small edits while taking breaks from working on something in the real world... Charlie A. (talk) 12:42, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Richard's achievements during his short reign

The article is being reassessed here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Richard_III_of_England/GA4#GA_Reassessment and it has been pointed out that the "King of England" section only addresses Richard of Gloucester's rise to the throne and the opposition he later met, but fails to point out what he actually did during his reign. I think this is a valid point, especially because some interesting things can be said about his achievements during his reign, despite having a single parliamentary session, like perfecting the system of bail, starting to issue laws in English instead of Latin to make sure the common people could understand them, lowering taxes on imported books, which ultimately led to a wider distribution of knowledge, etc. Would anyone like to help out setting up a subsection like "Achievements" or "Reforms"? There certainly is plenty of literature out there to reference. Isananni (talk) 17:47, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Pronoun Trap

The following sentence from #Exile_and_return appears to have suffered over time from cutting and pasting clauses and whole sections, and I can't seem to back-trace the intended meaning.

Following Warwick's 1470 rebellion, in which he (1) made peace with Margaret of Anjou and promised the restoration of Henry VI to the English throne, Richard, William, Lord Hastings and Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers (2) escaped capture at Doncaster by Warwick's brother, Lord Montague. On 2 October they (3) sailed from King's Lynn in two ships; Edward landed at Marsdiep and Richard at Zeeland.

(1) He, Richard? He, George? He, Warwick? Grammatically, the antecedent would be Warwick and that makes no sense at all.

Yes, it was Warwick who made peace with Margaret, and I've amended the wording to make that clearer.Deb (talk) 21:07, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

(2a) The fact that George was omitted in this list makes me think that (1) is "George". If not, did George escape elsewhere or from someone else? (2b) If Anthony Woodville is 'Earl Rivers', we need a comma after the title. Arthur, the English king, went to bed has a different meaning than Arthur, the English king went to bed.

(3) As constructed, this would mean that Edward and George (they) left everyone else behind.

I would have simply edited the phrase, but I'm as likely to destroy the meaning as I am to improve it. Last1in (talk) 19:35, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Conflict: Benevolence tax

This page says he got rid of it, the page it links to says he tried to implement it and parliament stopped him - is this page actually true - it turns out there's quite a large conflict between was he a dick or a nice guy 217.45.105.241 (talk) 11:48, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

He was definitely a "Dick", but no one is all good or all bad. Deb (talk) 11:59, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

But what's the truth regarding any contributions (via abolishing or trying to use) this Benevolence tax and how specifically that affects his overall dickishness - please focus on the conflict, not dickishness (your own or his) 217.45.105.241 (talk) 16:14, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

PS sarcasm used to be considered the lowest form of wit, then it became shitty puns - FYI 217.45.105.241 (talk) 16:15, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

In my opinion, I've already fixed the wording. Deb (talk) 17:38, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Removal of out of place image

The King, by Alexander de Cadenet, 2016, based on an x-ray of King Richard III. Photographic print on aluminium.

Hi, I would like to remove this image, it is obviously an artist's artistic imagination which shouldn't be in that section, at the very least. At best, I can see that it's an x-ray, but the crown symbolism and all that, it feels out of place. Richard almost certainly did not still have his crown at Bosworth when his skeleton was discovered. Yourlocallordandsavior (talk) 07:22, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Good idea to post here, as the image has been in place for some while. I thought the article was Featured; but it was demoted some time ago. I'm not sure what one might expect in the section concerned. I'm not enamoured - mostly because it's very modern indeed, all rather self-consciously sparse and entirely process-driven. But let's see who joins the discussion. Haploidavey (talk) 08:53, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Suggest it should be in not in the "In culture" section (and certainly at Cultural depictions of Richard III of England) but not in the "Discovery of remains" section. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:58, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes (if I understand you correctly) it would be better suited to the cultural depictions article. Its current placing too easily causes confusion (it looks, for all the world, like a mortuary lab image. Plus crown) Haploidavey (talk) 09:17, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

It could go here in the "In culture" section. But that might still be unjustified by WP:WEIGHT, and it would certainly require some explanation in the text. The best place for it would probably be the Cultural depictions of Richard III of England article. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:29, 17 April 2022 (UTC)