The DNA discovery contributes nothing to the resolution of these questions. Richard’s mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome profile, now documented, could theoretically be compared against remains believed to be those of the princes if such remains were ever made available for testing — the two princes shared both their mother’s mitochondrial lineage and their father’s Y chromosome, so comparison would be possible. But this is prospective speculation rather than an existing avenue of inquiry.
What the discovery has contributed, quite genuinely, is a humanizing correction to the most extreme dehumanization in the historical record. The man whose bones were found under the car park was a real person who died at 32 in a military engagement, who had a real physical condition that affected his body’s appearance, who ate well and suffered from parasites common to his time, and who was buried without ceremony by a successor who preferred him forgotten. That the historical record had buried him almost as thoroughly as the car park itself is a fact that the archaeological and genetic science has, in this case, partially undone.
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## The Questions That Remain
Five centuries after Richard III’s death, the bones recovered from Leicester have answered some questions with a degree of certainty that would have seemed impossible before the development of modern DNA analysis. They have also, in answering those questions, clarified the boundaries of what can be known.
The question of where he was buried: answered. The Greyfriars Friary choir, Leicester, beneath what became a council car park.