The Royals!

[JackFavell]

What did I miss? Better go turn on the TV.

[JackFavell]

Oh.

[moira finnie]

I think he needs to choose his friends more carefully (and keep your BVDs on, Harry). The news on the BBC here says that this incident could lead to his winding up being disciplined by his commanding officer back in Britain...something about the rule that "officers should never bring the Service into disrepute, whether on or off duty."

And just as we all thought he was growing up a bit.

[Rita Hayworth]

...something about the rule that "officers should never bring the Service into disrepute, whether on or off duty."

I hope that he won't get too severely disciplined or court-martial-ed ... I just don't know what next of him. And, it is a sticky wicket because he is a royal subject in Britain.

[charliechaplinfan]

It was one of those headlines when I thought 'did I hear that right, surely not?'

I don't know what he was thinking, I'd hoped he'd grown up, his hearts in the right place and he can be such a force for good with his charity work, this will be such a set back for him. He's about 10 years too old to be behaving so stupidly.

[CineMaven]

Ah.

Well...he does have nice legs.

[JackFavell]

He's a cutie!

I understand the uproar, he IS a public figure, but other twenty somethings who have his looks and access to the good life would be doing this without a camera waiting to snap them in their most private moments. Oh, wait...maybe they would! in this day of facebook and such you never know. He did something quite stupid and I think that kids nowadays ought to learn something from it about social media - ANYTHING YOU DO MIGHT BE SHOWN TO YOUR GRANDMOTHER, so don't do anything that she might find distasteful were she to get a gander at it.

I still feel sorry for him, even though perhaps he should be reprimanded. Someone made this comment at a news site - it's kind of horrible that a man whose mother died because of the paparazzi surprisingly trusted those so called friends of his, his buddies or his bodyguards not to sell his photo for MONEY.

[CineMaven]

He did something quite stupid and I think that kids nowadays ought to learn something from it about social media - ANYTHING YOU DO MIGHT BE SHOWN TO YOUR GRANDMOTHER, so don't do anything that she might find distasteful were she to get a gander at it.

Especially if your Nana is the Queen of England. Yikes! How do you face her at Thanksgiving dinner? Oh wait, they don't celebrate Thanxgiving. Hope Harry can come back from this youthful hijinx. I say he's just being young. Can't trust anyone.

You have a point there about Diana...

[moira finnie]

Unfortunately (?), no pics of a "nekkid" Richard III are likely to pop up, but archeologists are now sniffing the trail of what may be the last resting place of the final Plantagenet monarch of England. Oh, if only Josephine Tey were around to read this.

From The Telegraph:

Digging for dirt on the Hunchback King
Archaeologists may have found the resting place of Richard III – but what is the truth about this mysterious monarch?
by Sarah Rainey

Under six feet of concrete in a car park in Leicester city centre, behind an old NatWest bank and the offices of a social services department, lie the remains of an ancient church that could hold the key to one of England’s most enduring mysteries.

In a nearby field, more than 500 years ago, two armies faced each other: one led by a young king, the last of the Plantagenet dynasty; the other by the Earl of Richmond, commanding a vicious troop of rebel soldiers. A decisive battle ended in the death of the King and the birth of a dynasty that would last for 122 years. Richard III was the king; the fight was the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. This was the battle that sowed the seeds of modern England, putting an end to years of bloody civil war and marking the start of a period of stability. After 30 years of rivalry and bloodshed between the Houses of Lancaster and York, the Wars of the Roses were over, the fight for the throne had been won and the king was dead. Richard’s wounded body was stripped naked and carried through the streets of Leicester on a horse by his victor, the Tudor Henry VII, before being thrown into a pauper’s grave.

For five centuries, Richard’s remains were thought to be lost forever. Now, archaeologists believe this city centre car park could be the unlikely resting place of the fallen king. In the early hours of this morning, experts from Leicester University began to dig two deep trenches into the concrete. Following ancient maps of the area, they hope to uncover the foundations of Greyfriars church, the Franciscan friary where Henry VII is said to have ordered his rival’s body to be buried. It is the first attempt to uncover Richard III’s burial site, and – if successful – could resolve centuries of fiercely contested debate about the king and his final battle.

“One has to admit that it’s a long shot,” says Richard Buckley, the archaeologist in charge of the project. “We don’t know precisely where the church is, let alone where the burial site is. It has the potential to be very exciting – Richard III is the only king of England whose burial place remains elusive.”

But the location of Richard’s remains is just one part of a much larger mystery surrounding his life and death. Never before – or since – has there been a monarch about whom history has had quite so much to say. Painted as a murderer and a tyrant, many believe he was responsible for killing his nephews, Edward V and the Duke of York (“the Princes in the Tower”), to facilitate his own accession to the throne in 1483. Portraits portray the 32-year-old ruler as deformed and ugly; Shakespeare, in his 1591 play Richard III, describes the king as a “poisonous bunch-backed toad”, a demonic womaniser and a coward.

Members of the Richard III Society, an organisation dedicated to uncovering the truth about his reign, hope that finding a grave could help clear the sullied reputation of a “much-maligned” king.

“So much dirt has been thrown at Richard; his burial represents one of the worst injustices of all time,” says society member Philippa Langley. “The history of the time was written by the Tudors, who could say whatever they wanted. Whatever we find, it will tell us a huge amount about his true nature.”

Archaeologists digging in the Leicester car park this morning are unlikely to shed much light upon Richard’s actions during his life, but the discovery of royal remains could reveal much about his appearance. DNA testing – which may be possible if Richard III’s remains have been preserved in silt – could show whether the Shakespearean portrayal of the king (hunchbacked, with a withered arm and stooping limp) resembled reality.

“Richard was first called a crookback, or a crouchback, by a schoolmaster in York six years after his death,” explains historian Alison Weir, author of The Princes in the Tower. “X-ray analysis shows that portraits of him were painted over after he died to show one shoulder higher than the other. Ambassadors who met Richard don’t mention anything about him having a raised shoulder – if there was any deformity, it is likely to have been slight.”

Philippa Gregory, author of The Tudor series, agrees. “This is a king whose reputation was blackened and destroyed by Shakespeare. It’s important that we don’t take his word for it; his was very much a victors’ history. Finding Richard III’s body could be extremely important archeologically – I imagine there will be talk of a proper burial, perhaps in Westminster Abbey or Fotheringhay Castle [in Northamptonshire], where he was born.”

Even less is known about Richard III’s death. Historians still don’t know how he was killed or by whom – and for years there was controversy surrounding the location of the battlefield. In 2009, an archaeological survey revealed that Ambion Hill in Leicestershire, believed for centuries to be the site of the Battle of Bosworth, was in fact in the wrong place. The proper site is located between a cluster of rural villages, more than a mile away from the award-winning visitor centre built by Leicestershire county council in 1974. Visitors are now directed past the original flag and memorial stone, down a muddy path to a field where the battle is thought to have taken place.

“Location has proven to be an issue in the past – and exactly where Richard III is buried in Greyfriars church will be interesting,” says Anne Curry, professor of medieval history at the University of Southampton. “If he’s found near the high altar, it’s an indication that he was held in relatively high esteem. It won’t do much to redeem his reputation, but it’s an important historical fact.”

Conflicting accounts of the king’s injuries could also be resolved by the dig. Some historians believe he was beaten around the head with a poleaxe; others that Henry VII’s standard-bearers cut him open with their swords. After his death, legend has it that Richard III’s head was split open on Leicester’s Bow Bridge and his coffin used as a horse trough. “Obviously he would have been wearing full armour when he died, but we’d expect some evidence of trauma to be found on the skeleton,” explains Buckley.

There are some who believe the Leicester dig is futile, as Richard III’s remains are no longer at Greyfriars church. In 1611, a local map-maker claimed that the king’s body had been exhumed during the dissolution of the monasteries and thrown into the River Soar.

“This probably isn’t true,” says Weir. “Robert Herrick, mayor of Leicester in the 17th century, built a mansion on the [Greyfriars estate] land and he erected a pillar marking the place where Richard’s body was buried – so he obviously thought it was still there. There are records that Sir Christopher Wren saw the pillar during one of his visits.”

Exactly what the archeologists will find over the next fortnight remains a mystery – much like Richard III’s life and death. To his dedicated followers, however, it’s a chance to put right centuries of biased history propagated by the Tudors. “Richard rode into battle at the very front of his army; no other ruler did that,” says Langley. “When he died, that era of knights and chivalry passed forever. Finding his final resting place is the first step in doing justice to the last, great warrior king.”

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Here, here! I can't wait to find out more.

[JackFavell]

WOW! What a great find, if indeed this is the right spot. I hope it is! I'm wondering if there is a way to test DNA to figure out if it's his body (that is if they find something)... who do they match it to?

[charliechaplinfan]

I'm excited about Richard III, it's such great news, I do hope they're on the right track. Richard III might have been badly treated by history and Shakespeare, the evidence nowadays is that those boys in the tower were not his nephews, although it doesn't explain what happened to his nephews, I'd love to see this mystery unravel further. I like the fact that he's possibly buried under an urban car park in Leicester, it's so plain.

As for Harry, he has been stupid but his protection officers are also to blame, they didn't take anyone's mobiles, they didn't try to stop him, by accounts. Harry has such a cheeky chappy personality that I don't think it will seriously dent him, it'll just make him feel stupid.

[charliechaplinfan]

Kate's expecting a baby, I'm thrilled, more good news in the jubilee year and this little mite will be in next in line to the throne after William, even if she's a girl and has a younger brother. I think after Elizabeth I, Victoria and Elizabeth II we've satisfied ourselves that queens are just as good as kings.

[Rita Hayworth]

Kate is expecting ... thanks for telling us about it ... Allison, this is wonderful ...

[JackFavell]

Wow! That's wonderful news! How far along? I imagine that they waited to release the good news.