channonyarrow

The one in the icon is Richard II, who had, possibly, the most interesting death of any British monarch - his body, when it was displayed, was encased in lead from the neck down. Supposedly he wilfully starved to death, but the theory, given the situation prevailing in England at the time and the fact that no one really liked him, is that he was tortured to death and the lead was an attempt to hide that. He was not a good monarch, and in many ways influenced the crap that went down when Edward IV died suddenly about a century later. His brother (Richard III) took the throne; a lot of people supported that because after the experience of Richard II they didn't want a juvenile king and regency, as they would have gotten if Edward's oldest boy was crowned, but then a lot of shit happened and it all went horribly, horribly wrong. I really admire Richard III, and at first I thought that was the icon, but then I had to re-evaluate that. For one thing, it doesn't look at all like him, durn it.

There are, undoubtedly, other Richard Plantagenets in the world, but I'm pretty sure that the icon was tagged as Richard II.

I like how the British monarchy only had about six names until Prince Albert.