No doubt many will disagree. But I have been interested in Richard III for thirty years or more, and have slowly evolved to this view of him. I read Josephine Tey's novel a long time ago, and thought it charming, but no closer to the truth than Shakespeare's play.
To Thomas More, on the other hand, I give some credit, simply for the manner of his testimony to the truth as he saw it. That's no time-server, no court flatterer; and when what he says is confirmed by contemporaries such as Dominic Mancini (who is completely independent), the second continuation to the chronicle of the monks of Croyland Abbey, (which emanates from John Russell, Bishop of Lincoln, an eyewitness) the Great Chronicle of London and Philippe De Commynes, it's difficult to deny that Richard was already painted very black in his own time, long before the "Tudor propagandists" got to work.
In the specific matter of the murder of the Princes, only Richard had both opportunity and motive; further, it is imposing very great strains on credulity to think that the boys could have been murdered without his involvement, approval and instigation, and even more to suppose that it was done without it, but that Richard never said a word.
What is to be said about the deaths of Hastings, Rivers, Grey and Vaughan? What about that of Henry VI? You can say that they, or some of them, had it coming. But these were certainly judicial murders, and only "judicial" by colour of the fact that they were ordered by <i>raison d'etat</i>.
What of the behaviour of all parties at Bosworth? The Stanleys took their chance that their son and nephew, respectively, would be murdered, and came in on Henry's side. Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, refused to fight at all. Richard's main battle, under his own eye, engaged with no enthusiasm. They were pushed back and their leader, Norfolk, slain, despite a far superior position and a numerical advantage. It was probably that which triggered Richard's last charge. If he didn't charge, he was gone anyway. But the men who went with him were his own household only - about a hundred, it appears - and they were men who knew that their fortunes rose and would fall with his.
So who actually fought for the last Plantagenet King? Precious few, it would appear. Henry Tudor was no prize, and his claim to the throne laughably exiguous. He could be just as ruthless as Richard, too. But nevertheless, he was universally preferred.
Why is it that we have "Tudor propagandists" - anyone, apparently, who wrote anything ill of Richard - but no "Yorkist propagandists" until Horace Walpole? Why did England settle so quickly and so irrevocably into Tudor rule, despite the shortcomings of Henry VII and his son? The two attempts by pretenders, despite foreign support, were put down with laughable ease. Nobody sighed for the days of the Yorkists, it seems. Not then, anyway.
And now? I must confess I don't understand the allure.