LEICESTER: England's slain king Richard III, exhumed from an undignified grave beneath a car park, will finally be buried with honour on Thursday in an unprecedented ceremony filled with pageantry and poignancy.
Some 530 years on from his brutal demise, the last English monarch killed in battle will be laid to rest in Leicester Cathedral, across the street from where his remains were located in 2012 in a feat of archaeology.
The story of the king in the car park has captivated Britain in the build-up to Thursday's spectacle and caused people to reconsider the tale of a man long caricatured as a villainous tyrant.
The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, the spiritual head of the Church of England, will preside over the reinterment, while Queen Elizabeth II has sent a personal message that will appear inside the order of service.
Her daughter-in-law Sophie, the Countess of Wessex, will attend on the sovereign's behalf, as will the queen's cousin Prince Richard the Duke of Gloucester, patron of the Richard III Society and a blood relative of the slain king.
Packed in with wool and linen, Richard's battle-scarred bones are sealed inside a lead ossuary contained within an oak coffin made by Canadian carpenter Michael Ibsen, one of his closest living relatives.
"The ceremony can't be downcast and sad because he died 530 years ago," said Ibsen, Richard's nephew 16 times removed.
"But it's going to be an interesting mixture of quiet solemnity with a sense of contentment that he is, at last, being given the burial that he ought to have been given in the first place, regardless of his reputation."
Comments
Comments are closed.