Two Kings (History Plays, Book 4)

Afterword

This is based on Shakespeare's Richard II, a bit more loosely than some of my other history play adaptations.
So Richard II is a bit of an odd little play. It's completely in verse which is fun, but it has some major deviations from history, some of which Shakespeare would know, some he didn't. So, let's get into the play itself.
Richard was rumored to be gay, due to his favorite Robert De Vere, Robert doesn't appear in the play, however Richard is basically a queer coded villain the play. He's nasty and self absorbed and bitchy and flamboyant and kind of cool, except he's very narcissistic. For this reason, he's not really likable in the play believe me I tried to like him. Like most characters who are queer coded, at the time Richard kind of had to appear villainous because of political sentiment. However, he's not really a likable character.
Richard's wife, Anne, is in the play a good bit. But here's the thing, historically, she died very early into Richard's reign, well before the majority of the events of the play. Richard had Robert at court after Anne's death a little. So it's kind of odd that Shakespeare included Anne, other than to put a female character in it. Except at time she wouldn't have been played by a woman, it would have been a male actor on stage that Richard's professing his love to so yeah answered my own question Shakespeare was keeping it kind of gay. All right. Moving right along.
I kept Anne alive and reversed her and Robert in the book to match the play rather than reality.
So, was Richard really gay?
Robert De Vere was only five years older than Richard so a relationship is plausible.Robert married twice, to women, and had kids with them so, that kind of knocks out that he's gay, bi if anything. And we're not talking Piers Gaveston 'beard' marriages either, Robert had several children and clearly willingly married a woman not just for show. He had an affair with his second wife, cheating on his first wife, so he was interested in women. His first wife was Richard's first cousin, who was good friends with Richard, so that would technically explain his presence at court. Also he and Richard were avid hunters so they had a shared hobby.
My general theory of history is 'people are gay', so I'll go with that we have reason to believe Richard might have been gay, or bi, but I am also going to make the case that he was asexual. He had no children, ever, granted he may have been infertile due to inbreeding, but he didn't go out of his way to have affairs either. Most men at the time had at least one affair maybe more, and we have no record of any of his. And he and his first wife had no kids, okay, but Richard made no attempt to marry again for a couple years after his wife's death. When he did, it was a political alliance to a child who wouldn't legally come marry him for many years, ergo, he really was not too concerned about having someone in the marriage bed.
Yet he had no other real lovers that we know of and we typically find out this stuff if only because he's the king he can do what he wants so it's not usually a huge secret if he was pulling a what we call a 'Edward IV' and sleeping around. His own father had a long time mistress, as did his grandfather, and uncle. He'd have had no reason to hide it.  Richard named Edmund Mortimer, his closest cousin (grandson of Lionel, next in line after him) his heir. Richard didn't seem to have plans to procreate considering he picked an heir was kind of done with it. So, I'm personally going to make the case that in reality, Richard was asexual/grey-ace, which would explain his affection for his first wife they were friends, whatever, same with him and Robert. Did they have sex? Maybe, but I think a point can be made Richard had a low/no sex drive and that that's actually more likely than him being gay or bi. I like this theory, because just like my gay theory, as hard as it is for contemporary scholars to believe, not everyone is into sex. Like, literally, he might not be sex repulsed like Henry VI pretty much was we know, but he could have just been super grey ace, low low sex drive, did not care. Like, people have always been asexual just like they've always been gay. Also that would align with everyone thinking he's crazy, because he as just, not into sex and all of them didn't get that.
However, I made him bi in the book because the general consensus of history is he had an affair with Robert, but he also clearly had a nice relationship with Anne, so we'll assume that both were sexual relationships ergo, bisexual, my history head cannons aside.
Henry V appears in this, but not the play. In the play there's just a weird throw away line that he's at the bar, though historically he'd have been thirteen, and he would have been at war with Richard in Ireland. So about that.
Richard was awfully close to our little Harry, teaching him warfare all that. Do I think that anything untoward went on so far as sexual abuse? Not really, largely because Henry goes on to lead a super successful if short life, we're not seeing any reason to believe he had anything but a healthy relationship with his cousin. Would we know? Maybe, but Henry doesn't seem traumatized in fact he winds up burying Richard properly so that's clearly an okay relationship, which is kind of interesting that Henry had a rocky relationship with Bolingbroke, yet not with Richard who acted as a father figure. It's not talked about a lot but it's there so far as movements we know Henry was in Richard's court, Richard trained him in warfare which Henry loved. The cousins would also share a love of good wine, nice clothes, and likely dogs, so seems like they'd have gotten on well when they did interact.
Was Richard insane? I'm going with, eh, probably not. Thing is, at the time Richard's critics said he was, but historically they did that about people they didn't like. So, let's go with the facts.
Richard was badly inbred, his parents were first cousins.
Richard was noted to have 'outbursts' of words just blurting things out from childhood. He also was noted to have a stammer.
Richard was noted to have odd neurological symptoms from childhood.
In none of his official portraits does he have a beard.
Let's get the beard out of the way: plenty of men just can't grow a good beard, that's it, he just probably shaved because it didn't come in well or at all.
So, other than the inbred thing, the blurting things out and movements would be more indicative of Tourette's or something similar, because Tourette's manifests earlier, usually near childhood. Also, Tourettes while noticeable doesn't affect functioning all that much, that is, it's not disorganizing his thoughts. And Richard functions throughout his reign, pretty damn well. He seems to be making organized decisions and choices that wouldn't be indicative of someone with a severe personality disorder like scholars suppose. Something like schizophrenia, like in the novel, would manifest in late teens to adulthood, and would be much more prominent, again, Richard was functioning really fine throughout his reign, making decisions, banishing his cousin, like maybe he made poor choices but they clearly had thought out motives.
The consensus was for years that Richard did have schizophrenia, at least for the end of his life. But if you really look at it, his behavior was pretty sound, or at least, well thought out. He did get fed up with the Lord's Appellate, and that type of thing, but most of Richard's problems were child-king syndrome, he'd had all these advisors too long, now he's a man and can make his own decisions, advisors don't want to give that up.  Also he lost his wife and a half-brother, and prior to that lost his mother, so he had a decent amount of grief affecting him as well.
So, I kept Richard schizophrenic because yeah, let's talk about mental illness, like he could have had it. I don't personally believe so. But since in Shakespeare's day he would been considered mad, I kept with that.
So, why did Richard cancel Bolingbroke's inheritance? Well, again, it's unknown. Literally no one actually knows why he did it. Now historically asking for land was a 'thing' that like widows or orphans might have to do. If a man died, his wife and kids if the kids were too young to inherit, would be destitute. So sometimes the widow or the child would ask for the land from the crown, who is holding it in the mean time. That's just how it worked so he's basically kind of saying 'you are untrustworthy like a woman or child you have to come and make a case and ask for it' which is not usually, as in at all, done for a fully grown 33 year old man to have to do, however be aware this 33 year old man is currently banished and tends to get in a duel within five minutes of being on English soil. Also, it genuinely appears Richard treating little Henry V, as the heir to the Lancaster dukedom, he was giving him a hugely healthy allowance, letting him be in court and witness everything he'd need to know to be king. He apparently referred to Henry IV's return as "he's coming for your inheritance (Harry)", cause legally little Harry was too young to hold it, but by that and the way Richard treated him, he was simply assuming he'd invest the kid when the kid got old enough, he's considering his father irrelevant, the guy is banished he's legally out of the picture. Some sources claim that Richard never offered him to come and get it, if he didn't simply put, he was already seemingly planning on investing his son. Anyway.
Let's get into the theories:
Shakespeare's theory or the standing one of the time: Richard did it to steal the money to fund his own wars in Ireland. I really don't think that's the case because it was super easy for Bolingbroke to come and ask for the land. Like super easy, Bolingbroke just had to show up and ask and he'd get it back or raise an army, so I don't see Richard expecting to keep that land. Also Richard had lots of money of his own, the royal coffers were full! He had funded his war, that was over.
Richard was afraid of giving Bolingbroke the power without knowing his state of mind: kind of likely, that's why I went with it in the novel. That's a huge sum of money to just hand to a person who up till now has been kind of stabby and unreliable.
Richard wanted to give it to Henry V somehow: ah possible, maybe, kind of credits Richard with critical thinking he may not have had, but Henry V was playing soldier with Richard, they were buddies, maybe he was hoping Bolingbroke wouldn't show up and he could give it to Henry V. Also he was already raising him and giving him an allowance, Richard would have to be a blithering idiot not to assume that the boy would petition for his inheritance in a few years, he was likely planning to invest him as a Duke when he came of age, but the child however smart is twelve.
Richard was insane: again not really likely like his actions have motives, he has several great motives already for doing it, we don't know which but plenty of motives.
John of Gaunt told him to. Now, John of Gaunt agreed to banishing Bolingbroke and was on good terms with Richard for most of his life. Did John have some deathbed letter/confession thing suggesting Richard not hand it all over to Bolingbroke? Orders from his uncle might explain Richard's sudden action, and if this was just word of mouth and not written down that would be why we have no record.
My personal favorites are John of Gaunt suggested it, and Richard just wanted to check his cousin's state mind.
So, why did Bolingbroke decide to just take the crown when he came there to take his dukedom back? Well, Bolingbroke is a religious fanatic, who wants to like, storm Jerusalem and 'take it back' (from whom? The people who it belongs to? I don't know) anyway he's been on two tours in Lithuania. The guy is a zealot, and now probably has PTSD. Meanwhile, Henry Percy and others are king-making. I doubt it took a lot to work Bolingbroke up against his cousin. His cousin who of late has been rumored to be homosexual and has spent a lot of time with Bolingbroke's eldest problem. Yeah. That's where this is going. At the time homosexuality was completely linked with pedophelia (these guys married like twelve year old girls, but whatever we're just gonna move on). I've found zero records that could give us a clue to what the Bolingbroke-Richard-Harry dynamic was at the time, but I doubt it was great. Even if Bolingbroke didn't think his cousin was abusing his son, he probably wasn't thrilled his kid was hanging out with Richard who everyone is saying is unhinged and now has just 'stolen' his land. So, not really mysterious as to how they might have worked Bolingbroke up to take the crown.
How did Richard die? Well his bones/corpse shows no signs of violence and recent studies have shown that he died of starvation which is truly awful. Shakespeare has him be murdered because that's what was thought at the time.
Did Bolingbroke order it? I mean, maybe. He sent the prison keeper letters to the effect of "he'd better not still be alive". Later in life when he himself was dying he thought his illness was a punishment over Richard's death so I don't think he really wanted his cousin dead. Bolingbroke was wound up to do what he did I don't think he really wanted to be king.
Did they starve Richard or did he starve himself? I kind of go with option 1, not gonna lie. Now, Richard is known to have been petty and dramatic, so a hunger strike isn't out of character. But it takes hell of a lot of self control to starve oneself to death and Richard was kind of a spoiled baby, I don't see him holding out to death just to get Bolingbroke's attention. I think he had slightly better survival instincts than that. If anything I think he thought he was gonna get out and get the throne back. I think it's more likely someone said 'eh Bolingbroke said not to kill him, but he didn't say we had to feed him' and months later when Bolingbroke is like 'btw where's Richard at I wanna see if he wants to go be banished his turn to be banished sucker' and they men at court are like 'oh he's super dead we quit feeding him like a really long time ago'. I realize they didn't say it like that, however.
A couple of points on the starvation.
1) he was first imprisoned starting September 29 1399, and he was announced dead February 14, 1400. However, only on January 16, 1400 did Bolingbroke (supposedly) order his death. That's not really enough time to properly starve to death. A healthy, 6 foot tall man (he was), should have had muscle mass and some body fat. You can starve in about three weeks, but that's slim, and again he should have been fully healthy at the time of imprisonment. And it's hard to believe from September - February, no food passed his lips? No wine? The man was starving he couldn't catch a rat in the castle? Anything? No loyal servants smuggled him food? That's somewhat unlikely of a timeline for a death due to starvation.
2) We knew he was highly malnourished at the time of his death, due to analysis of his bones. Ergo he was starving at some point. However, for starvation to damage your bones, that takes upwards of six months, minimum of six months to start that process. He wasn't in custody that long. Even assuming he got no food from the end of September to February that's shy of five months. And we have no reason to believe that they quit feeding him immediately, he was in the Tower for a few days and signed away the crown he was fed then.
3) When Bolingbroke arrested him at Conwy castle, he specifically asked if Richard had eaten. And when the reply was negative he had no in two days, Bolingbroke insisted Richard eat bread and drink wine, before they had any negotiations. First of all, what the hell kind of question is that? Bolingbroke you're here to arrest and murder the man, why are you concerned if he had breakfast? Also, two days isn't a horrible fast for a healthy adult man, like, why does Bolingbroke care?