—
## The Historical Fit
By the time the full skeletal analysis was complete, the evidence had already assembled a strong circumstantial case. The remains were of a male in his early thirties. He had idiopathic adolescent scoliosis, causing asymmetric shoulders. He had died from multiple blows to an unprotected head, with additional wounds consistent with post-mortem handling. He had eaten a diet consistent with high social status. He had been buried without a coffin or shroud in a location consistent with historical records placing Richard III’s grave in the Greyfriars choir.
Each of these points was individually consistent with Richard III. None was individually definitive. Scoliosis affects a significant portion of the population and is not unique to any individual. Dying in battle was not unusual in fifteenth-century England. Eating well was a marker of class rather than identity. The location was consistent with historical records, but historical records were also the basis for choosing where to dig.
The power of the identification rested not on any single piece of evidence but on their convergence. An individual with every one of these characteristics — the right age, the right sex, the right condition, the right injuries, the right diet, the right location — was narrowed considerably as a candidate. But the narrowing required independent confirmation. That confirmation would come from the DNA.
—
## Tracing the Living
The DNA analysis presented a particular challenge. Ancient DNA degrades over time, and the conditions in which a body is preserved affect the quality of the genetic material that can be extracted from it five centuries later. The conditions of the Greyfriars burial — no coffin, no lead lining, soil that had been subject to variations in moisture and temperature over five hundred years — were not optimal.