This is all so exciting! Wouldn’t it be marvellous if the remains did indeed turn out to be Lady Eleanor? The woman whose status and existence made a king of Richard of Gloucester. And to think, it’s not that long ago that we didn’t even know her name for certain. Now John Ashdown-Hill knows even more than he did ten years ago and has a reconstruction of her face:
http://tinyurl.com/j6oy32c
With no DNA evidence, how can this be proven?
LikeLike
The congenitally absent left upper second premolar that the remains share with Lady Anne Mowbray (Lady Eleanor’s niece, TMK p.230) is a good start but DNA might emerge at some stage anyway.
LikeLike
Interesting – is this the evidence cited to identify one of the skulls from the Westminster Urn?
LikeLike
I remember reading that one of the “Mary Rose” crew had a congenitally missing molar, and he was no relation to either of them. DNA is the only way to go
LikeLike
That would be the case if any samples of Lady Anne were kept before her reburial fifty years ago. She was Lady Eleanor’s sororal niece and thus would be mitochondrially identical.
Until then, other similarities will have to be relied upon, such as dental similarities visually observed or photographed in Lady Anne’s case with her aunt’s evidence. They were much more closely related than either were to Edward V, for instance.
LikeLike
[…] in 1468 taking the forefront instead. This, of course, is Eleanor Boteler, or more correctly, Eleanor Talbot, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury. Possibly the only novel in which Eleanor has played a […]
LikeLike
[…] in about 1394, was nearly fifty years older than Edward, imprisoned from 1469-73 when he died, and Lady Eleanor herself was over six years older. In other words, Edward IV need only to have lived to 49 to ensure […]
LikeLike
[…] Eleanor: The Secret Queen: The Woman Who Put Richard III on the Throne. An analysis of the life of Eleanor Talbot, the woman said to have been married to Edward IV, Richard’s elder brother, before making […]
LikeLike
[…] Eleanor: The Secret Queen: The Woman Who Put Richard III on the Throne. An analysis of the life of Eleanor Talbot, the woman said to have been married to Edward IV, Richard’s elder brother, before making […]
LikeLike
[…] Eleanor: The Secret Queen: The Woman Who Put Richard III on the Throne. An analysis of the life of Eleanor Talbot, the woman said to have been married to Edward IV, Richard’s elder brother, before making […]
LikeLike
The New Murrey and Blue blog 
Leave a reply to before the second sleep Cancel reply