The DNA evidence contributed two distinct elements to this convergence. The positive mitochondrial match — the complete match with Michael Ibsen’s genome and the near-match with Wendy Duldig’s — supported the identification by confirming that the remains shared a maternal lineage with documented descendants of Richard III’s sister. This was a direct positive confirmation: if the documented genealogy was accurate, these results were expected. If the remains were not Richard III, this result would require an extraordinary coincidence.
The Y-chromosome mismatch was a finding of a different kind. It did not undermine the identification — the Bayesian synthesis incorporated it without significantly reducing the confidence level — but it raised a separate historical question about the Plantagenet paternal line that the evidence cannot resolve. The mismatch is real. Its location in the chain of descent, and its historical significance, remain uncertain.
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## What Science Cannot Answer
The bones under the car park did not contain answers to the questions that have most occupied historians and the public imagination when it comes to Richard III.
The fate of the princes in the Tower remains unknown. Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, disappeared sometime in or after the summer of 1483 and were never seen again. Various theories have been proposed: that Richard III ordered their deaths, that other individuals with political motives — including Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, or even Henry Tudor — were responsible, that they survived. Skeletal remains found in the Tower of London in 1674 were believed by many to be the princes and were interred in Westminster Abbey, but the Church of England has not permitted forensic testing of those remains, and their identity has never been scientifically established.