PART FIVE

Richard, Protector and King

Sunday, 3 February 2013

A sample of Michael Ibsen’s DNA had been taken at the beginning of the dig and [Dr. Turi] King had sequenced it in her labs, identifying its particular code. If Richard’s DNA matched that of his alleged seventeenth-generation nephew [Ibsen], it would be the final piece of evidence that the Greyfriars remains were those of the king. The test would also check for the male Y-chromosome…

Michael Ibsen had asked for the result of the investigation to be revealed to him first privately. Turi King met him in an office in the university then brought him to meet Simon Farnaby, Richard Buckley and me.

As Michael entered he was in shock, his face ashen. King began with the news that a Y-chromosome had been found…She then revealed that the mitochondrial (female line) DNA was a complete match…

Was I surprised the DNA was a perfect match? Yes and no. The project had run so smoothly, from the finding of Richard’s remains on the first day, exactly where I thought they would be, to the carbon-14 date, the osteology, scoliosis, insult wound and facial reconstruction. Although I believed from the very beginning that the remains were those of Richard, I had been assailed by fears and doubts throughout the process…

At 11 a.m. on Monday, 4 February 2013, Richard Buckley made the historic announcement: “It is the academic conclusion of the University of Leicester that the individual exhumed at the Greyfriars in August 2012 is indeed King Richard III, the last Plantagenet King of England.”

—Philippa Langley, The King’s Grave