The excavation of the full skeleton proceeded carefully over the following days. What emerged was a complete burial, with one significant omission: the feet were missing, probably because the grave had been slightly too short and the body had been arranged to fit. The skull was propped up, consistent with the same constraint. The hands may have been tied, though this interpretation remains uncertain. There was no evidence of a coffin or shroud.
The skeleton lay face-down in a slightly undignified position, consistent with an unremarkable burial — not the ceremonial interment of a head of state but the practical disposal of a body that had recently been displayed publicly and was now, from the political perspective of the new regime, simply something to be buried.
The most immediately striking feature visible to the archaeologists was the spine. It was S-shaped — a severe and pronounced scoliosis that would have been immediately apparent in life. It was not the exaggerated hunchback of Shakespeare and Tudor propaganda, but it was a real and significant physical condition that would have made one shoulder noticeably higher than the other and may have caused recurring pain.
That observation was, in itself, potentially significant. One of Richard III’s contemporary chroniclers, John Rous, had described the king as having unequal shoulders. The description was sometimes dismissed as another element of Tudor defamation. Looking at the skeleton in the ground, it was not.
—
## Reading the Bones
The formal skeletal analysis was carried out by Jo Appleby, an osteologist at the University of Leicester. Her assessment addressed the skeleton’s age, sex, physical condition, and the nature and timing of the injuries it had sustained.