The answer depends critically on the prior probability assigned at the beginning, the rarity estimates used for each piece of evidence, and the completeness of the evidence set. The researchers described their modeling as “conservative,” meaning they had structured the assumptions to avoid overstating the confidence level. Under more generous assumptions, the odds would be even more extreme. Under more skeptical assumptions — such as assuming that there might be many individuals with all of Richard III’s specific characteristics buried at Greyfriars — the odds would be lower, but still very high.
The debate about appropriate confidence thresholds for historical identifications is a genuine academic discussion. A 99.999% probability is not the same as certainty; it implies that one in a million such identifications under the same evidence framework would be wrong. Given the rarity of such cases — there is no large population of medieval king-identification attempts against which to calibrate this estimate — the figure is better understood as an expression of the extreme convergence of independent evidence than as a precise prediction about error rates.
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## Bosworth: The Last Battle of the Plantagenets
The Battle of Bosworth Field on August 22, 1485, was the last occasion on which an English king died in personal combat. Richard III’s death that day ended the Plantagenet dynasty’s three-and-a-half-century rule — though the Plantagenets themselves might have described their dynasty differently, the continuity of the male royal line from Henry II to Richard III runs through a direct ancestral chain.
Henry Tudor had landed at Milford Haven in Wales on August 7, 1485, with a force that various sources estimate at between two thousand and five thousand men. He had spent most of his adult life in exile on the Continent, first in Brittany and then in France, cultivating supporters and waiting for an opportunity. The opportunity came when discontent with Richard’s rule, combined with the absence of any viable Yorkist alternative, made Tudor’s cause viable.