TITULUS REGIUS

#england #bosworth #monarchy #kingrichardiii

It started with the wall, – so hideously plain that it seemed to bleed passive aggression. Have you ever noticed how walls aren’t quite square when you’re really paying attention? Not dramatically, not enough to be called damaged, just enough to suggest it had lived a difficult life.

“Do you trust me?” she asked.

“Define trust” he said.

“That’s not a good sign” she said.

It’s one of the quieter tragedies of history that Richard III – a man historically framed as somewhere between a pantomime villain and a particularly vindictive pencil, might have actually been England’s greatest loss, well, since 1066 anyway.

The battle at Bosworth in 1485 was less a thunderous conclusion to dynastic squabble, and more a theatrical stumble into the waiting arms of Henry Tudor, whose own claim to the throne had all the lineage of a pub quiz answer scribbled in crayon. But like so many things in life, political dynasties, fairy-tale marriages, or anything labelled “new and improved” – the truth rarely wins the edit.

The Yorkists, as it happened, had more than just an aesthetically pleasing flower. Richard’s claim stemmed through Lionel of Antwerp, senior to John of Gaunt (from whence the Lancasters oozed forth), and was crowned in the legal perfume of Titulus Regius, Parliament’s own “he’s our guy” decree.

Did you know that everyone is a little dead really? – Every day that passes, we are always slowly dying. But not Richard, be it fate, or more likely, the wavering affections of the Stanley family, he took it one step further and died, as did a version of England that might’ve been.

And what might that England have looked like? For one, no Henry VIII stamping through Christendom like a hormonal bulldozer with a divorce complex. The monasteries would still be intact, those ancient welfare hubs and ecclesiastical hotels, not flogged off like knock-off furniture during a Tudor yard sale. Catholicism would’ve lingered like a wine stain on the national flag, and perhaps we’d have eased gently into humanism, rather than smashing stained glass and telling monks to get proper jobs.

Succession might have seen fewer migraines. With no Elizabeth of York to glue Lancaster to York in holy political matrimony, we’d have avoided the eventual Stuart import (hello James VI and I) and the fractious Unification side quest. England and Scotland may have courted, yes, but like wary pen pals rather than bitterly wed bedfellows.

Foreign policy would have been less “send ships and hope” and more Burgundian brunch. Trade with Portugal and Burgundy could have blossomed, cloth towns buzzing like bees in velvet, and colonisation would still occur, not as Protestant missionary theatre but as commercial venture. The Cabots would still sail, only their sails wouldn’t flap to hymns but to ledgers.

Of course, there are thorns on this unpicked rose. Yorkist power structures meant barons still loomed large, feudal hangovers lurching at the banquet, and Richard’s coffers were about as flush as a monk’s bedside drawer post-dissolution. The Reformation would still crack Europe in half, and Catholic England might have been left clutching its crucifix whilst the rest of the continent reshuffled its saints.

And let’s not forget, Tudor England gave us myth, the Golden Age, the Shakespearean lie. A Yorkist England, for all its charm, might have lacked the propaganda department. No spin, no Gloriana, no imperial selfie, just justice reform, local councils, and a country trudging steadily rather than sprinting loudly.

So no, Richard’s England wouldn’t have been a utopia. But it might have hurt less.

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