The paper also reported new findings on Richard III’s probable physical appearance. Genetic markers associated with hair and eye color — identified through analysis of the ancient nuclear DNA, which the team had also successfully sequenced in part — indicated that Richard almost certainly had blue eyes. His hair color was more probabilistic: the genetic markers suggested he was likely blond as a child, with the expectation that his hair would have darkened to brown as he aged, which is a common pattern. These findings were compared against contemporary portraiture. The researchers concluded that the portrait known as the Arched-Frame Portrait, held by the Society of Antiquaries of London, appeared to be the most consistent with the genetic data — though they emphasized that portrait matching against genetic markers is an interpretive exercise, not a definitive verification.
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## The Archaeology of Loss
The Greyfriars excavation did not happen in isolation. It was the outcome of a sustained research effort combining historical documentary work, genealogical research, ground survey, and finally excavation — a process spanning roughly eight years from the formation of the Looking for Richard project to the discovery of the remains.
The documentary research that had identified the car park site was the foundation of the entire project. Without Ashdown-Hill’s argument that Speed’s river-throwing account was probably an invention, and his identification of the Greyfriars choir as the likely burial location within the friary complex, the excavation would not have had a specific enough target to be meaningful.
The genealogical research that identified Joy Ibsen and subsequently Wendy Duldig as living maternal-line descendants of Anne of York was an equally important precondition. Without a living comparator, the mitochondrial DNA from the skeleton could have been analyzed but not compared against any known reference point. The entire edifice of DNA identification rested on the chain of female descent having remained unbroken through 19 and 21 generations respectively — a chain that came close to ending several times when daughters died without issue.