The New Murrey and Blue blog

Well, here is an article that manages to blend my two favourite kings, Richards II and III, although overwhelmingly Richard II. It concerns actor
Mark Burghagen (BBC, Opera North, York Mystery Plays), who has produced a short film based around Richard’s plight after being usurped by his first cousin, Henry IV. Richard is pictured in his prison cell in Pontefract Castle, pondering his fall from power, and coming to terms with his own humanity.

“…Although Richard is frequently maligned in history books as a tyrant with inflated ideas of his own majesty, Burhagen takes a more sympathetic approach, believing that Richard was simply ‘the wrong man at the wrong time, pushed into the role of king too young (he came to the throne aged just 10 in 1377) and pressured by a gang of powerful, ambitious uncles’….”

I confess to sympathising with Richard II. Like Richard III, I think he was a man ahead of his times. Certainly he was out of place in 14th-century England, when the nobility always thought in terms of financial gain through war and fighting. He preferred peace, making a monumental clash inevitable.