So much more is known about Richard from his bones—mostly physical—and I have incorporated those findings in creating my character. It goes without saying the most crucial was the debilitating scoliosis. I am indebted to Dominic Smee for allowing me a glimpse into the psychological side of his own life given that the young man is living with the same degree of scoliosis as Richard’s. Dominic is convinced that, like him, Richard tried to hide his affliction and thus trusted only a very few good friends after the onset in his late teens. The bones also revealed that Richard had consumed wine rather heavily in the last two years of his life. What a fascinating tidbit! And I take full advantage of the fact by allowing it to support my theory all along that Richard was a reluctant king and was in a spiral of depression from the Fall of 1483 when Buckingham turned traitor until he died at Bosworth. He drank to drown his dark, depressive thoughts.

The most fully realized fictional character in the book is my Kate Haute. Richard did have two, and possibly three illegitimate children. Katherine did marry Pembroke, and John of Gloucester was captain of Calais, and both were integrated into Richard’s household during his marriage to Anne. Dickon, also known as Richard of Eastwell, is very much more conjecture than fact, but until someone proves otherwise, I think he was Richard’s son (of a mistress, who could have been Kate!). No one knows who the mother of Richard’s bastards was, but when I discovered from Rosemary Horrox’s Study in Service that one Katherine Haute had received an annuity from Richard while he was still duke of Gloucester, I conjectured, as did Horrox, that she might have been his mistress.

April to July 1483 is one of the most complicated few months in English history, and as well as the fate of the darling little princes, no one quite knows why Richard turned on Will Hastings and so hastily executed him. Passionate about the law, Richard’s denying poor Will a trial will always be fodder for Richard detractors. I have spent many an hour pondering what could have made Richard so angry, and my explanation is, I hope, plausible.

We do not know how Katherine Plantagenet died, but the records show the earl of Pembroke was a widower not long after Bosworth, and so I invented the manner of her death to coincide with the new “sweating sickness” that appeared in the summer of 1485. Losing his brother, his heir, his wife, and then Katherine in the space of two years seems to me to be more than one man could bear, given the enormous burden of kingship also thrust upon him unexpectedly. And no, I do not think Richard usurped the crown. That was Henry Tudor’s road to the throne, not Richard’s!