The courage to change with Richard III

People often don’t change, even when they say they want to. And one of the reasons is that they’re afraid. Real change almost always takes courage.

Even changing your mind takes courage. What if you have been wrong all these years?

There was a fascinating example of this in the programme about Richard III, The King In the Car Park, last night.

A worldwide group of fanatical fans of Richard III, the Ricardian Society, campaigned for, and supported, an archaeological dig to find his body. I’ve bumped into them before (because I’m a regular visitor to Richard III’s home town, Middleham in Yorkshire) and I know they’ve been pretty obsessive. They always argued that Shakespeare’s portrayal of Richard was all Tudor propaganda: he wasn’t a hunchback, he didn’t have a withered arm or an evil sneer. In fact, he was a jolly nice man and a good king.

In a million-to-one shot, the dig found his body. And while he wasn’t a hunchback, he did have severe scoliosis.

The Society’s representative on the dig, Phillippa Langley, was in tears as the image of Richard that she’d lived with for years crashed to pieces.

But as the follow-up research moved on, things changed for Phillippa. The DNA confirmed that this definitely was Richard. His injuries were studied, and it became clear that his body had been abused, as with certain defeated leaders nowadays. And the facial reconstructors got to work, so that eventually, she came face to face with her hero.

And by the end of the story, she was joyful.

I salute her courage. It look guts to face the truth, to rethink her reality, to change her mind.