Der reine Tor / The Pure Fool.

"Hey! Come here and ram it into this slit!” (Richard Wagner: Das Rheingold — the Ransom of Freia - “Hey! Komm her und stopf mir diese Spalte!”)

PEER REVIEW ADJUDICATION Manuscript: Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason Author: René Descartes Journal: International Journal of Critical Thinking and Inclusive Epistemology Decision: REJECT — Substantial Methodological Concerns The committee acknowledges the author's ambition to establish a secure foundation for human knowledge. Unfortunately, the manuscript falls considerably below contemporary academic standards. 1. Excessive use of the first person The author's repeated employment of “I,” “me,” and “my” introduces an unacceptable degree of subjectivity. His central proposition, “I think, therefore I am,” is particularly problematic. The committee recommends the more neutral formulation: “Cognitive activity was observed, suggesting the possible existence of an associated subject.” 2. Inadequate referencing The manuscript contains virtually no citations from peer-reviewed research published within the past five years. The author appears to regard his own reasoning as sufficient evidence for his conclusions. This is unacceptable. 3. Lack of methodological transparency The author claims to have doubted everything. No sampling procedure, control group, preregistration or reproducible dataset is provided. It remains unclear whether the experiment was conducted under laboratory conditions. 4. Unsupported ontological assumptions The author's inference from thinking to existence has not been independently replicated. Reviewer Two further observes that the existence of the thinking subject cannot be assumed merely because that subject asserts it. 5. Ethical considerations The proposed experiment involves the systematic destabilisation of the participant's entire understanding of reality. No institutional ethics approval or psychological safeguarding protocol is mentioned. Final adjudication The committee regrets that the author's considerable intellectual enthusiasm is not matched by an adequate familiarity with current academic practice. The manuscript may be reconsidered upon submission of a complete literature review, an approved methodology and independent verification of the author's existence. Reviewer Two's confidential comment: “Who exactly is this ‘I’ who imagines himself entitled to think?” — F. Nietzsche Editorial note: Reviewer Two's report has itself been rejected for its hostile tone, absence of recent citations and failure to declare a conflict of interest.

Urgent news on Jensen Huang. ONE MORE IS COMING. Our Multiplication of Folly theorem (recently published on X) has survived its first encounter with empirical evidence. Three alleged extramarital relationships have been reported. Our revised actuarial forecast is FOUR. One more, gentlemen. The #mathematics demands it. THEOREM — The Multiplication of Folly A married man discovered to possess a mistress and a girlfriend may prudently be presumed to possess at least two of each. Corollary I — The Wealth Effect Above $10 billion, amorous liabilities increase logarithmically with net worth. Opportunity compounds faster than discretion. Corollary II — The Disclosure Principle The number discovered is a sample, not a census. The undisclosed population remains a latent variable. Corollary III — The Investigation Damping Effect Once lawyers, investigators and nondisclosure agreements appear, the rate of discovery declines. Folly continues; reporting becomes selective. Corollary IV — Corporate Contagion An external mistress constitutes counterparty risk. An internal girlfriend constitutes systemic risk. Both may precipitate a liquidity event — usually involving the wife. Corollary V — Conservation of Folly Folly is neither created nor destroyed. It merely migrates from the bedroom to the boardroom. LATEST ACTUARIAL FORECAST Wife: 1 Reported additional relationships: 3 Modelled total: 4 Outstanding prediction: 1 Wealth multiplier: ACTIVATED Investigation damping: 0.6–0.75 Scientific credibility: NEGLIGIBLE Conclusion: Our model is running hot. We await the fourth observation with the serene confidence of men who have invented their own mathematics. All projections are satirical inventions, not allegations or factual predictions. Reported relationships remain subject to verification. Q.E.D. — Quod Erat Demonstrandum. Journal of Applied Amorous Actuarial Science, Vol. IV. Peer review pending. Shareholder losses not hypothetical.

**THE MULTIPLICATION OF FOLLY** Third Observation — The Huang Event Theorem: A married man discovered to possess a mistress and a girlfriend may prudently be presumed to possess at least two of each. Corollary I — The Wealth Effect: Above $10 billion, amorous liabilities increase with the logarithm of net worth. Capital creates opportunity; opportunity compounds folly. Corollary II — The Disclosure Principle: The number of women discovered is not the number of women involved. It is merely the current sample size. Corollary III — The Corporate Contagion Effect: An external mistress constitutes counterparty risk; an internal girlfriend constitutes systemic risk. Both may trigger an unscheduled change of management. Corollary IV — The Law of Conservation of Folly: Folly cannot be destroyed. It can only be transferred from the bedroom to the boardroom. Updated fictional actuarial forecast: Wives: 1 Mistresses: ≥7 Girlfriends: ≥7 NVIDIA employees: ≥3 Wealth multiplier: ACTIVATED Confidence interval: WIDENING All counts beyond reported allegations are satirical inventions, not factual claims. Conclusion: Our model is running hot. Further observations are expected, but the principal investigator has unfortunately resigned. Q.E.D. Journal of Applied Amorous Actuarial Science, Vol. XXXIV. Peer review pending. Shareholder losses actual.

**Grace and Fate**. Russell Brand, Christianity and Nietzsche — a final reflection I have written a good deal about Russell Brand over the past few days. Before leaving the subject, I should like to clarify my position and draw together two rather different philosophical traditions that have informed my reflections. First, I do not assert Brand's innocence. Neither do I accept the verdicts without reservation. I harbour reasonable doubts concerning aspects of the evidence and the process: the extraordinary passage of time, the reliability of retrospective recollection, the nature and independence of corroboration, and the inherent difficulty of reconstructing intimate encounters nearly two decades after the event. The mixture of convictions and acquittals does not resolve these concerns, although it does not, in itself, undermine the convictions either. The jury heard evidence unavailable to me. I claim no superior knowledge of what actually happened. But legal finality is not epistemic certainty, and respect for a verdict need not entail the surrender of independent judgment. More importantly, my argument about the possibility of human transformation does not depend upon Brand's innocence. It remains relevant even if every conviction is factually correct. Much of what I have written has drawn upon Christianity, although I am not myself a Christian. I live within a civilisation profoundly shaped by Christian ideas of sin, repentance, forgiveness and redemption. One need not believe in God to recognise the moral significance of that inheritance. “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” What an extraordinary sentiment, and how rarely we encounter it today. It expresses neither approval of wrongdoing nor indifference to its victims. Rather, it acknowledges something uncomfortable about ourselves: our common fallibility, the accidents of circumstance, and the uncertain distance separating our own respectable lives from those of the condemned. Christianity insists that no human being is necessarily reducible to his worst deeds. The sinner may repent. The prodigal may return. Even a life apparently wasted may acquire a new meaning. None of this abolishes responsibility. Repentance cannot be used to erase injuries inflicted upon others, and forgiveness cannot reasonably be demanded of those who have suffered. Nor can Brand's general spiritual transformation establish repentance for particular acts he continues to deny. Nevertheless, Christianity holds out the possibility that the man who stands before us today need not be morally identical to the man who committed yesterday's sins. Yet how readily our supposedly Christian society forgets this. We seem increasingly disposed to make punishment into a public entertainment. The convicted man must not merely answer for his actions. His entire existence must be retrospectively explained through them. His subsequent efforts become irrelevant, his family shares in the disgrace, and his future is treated as though it has already been forfeited. The law may rightly demand accountability. But the public appetite for annihilation is something else. Here Nietzsche enters the argument. In Also sprach Zarathustra, particularly Von den Taranteln, he exposes the resentment that so readily disguises itself as righteousness. He mistrusts those in whom the urge to punish is powerful, those who discover a peculiar satisfaction in condemning others while calling their revenge justice. The distinction is fundamental. Punishment may be necessary without the pleasure of punishing being virtuous. But Nietzsche's challenge goes much further than an indictment of public cruelty. Christianity offers redemption through repentance, forgiveness and grace. Nietzsche rejects the metaphysical consolation upon which that promise rests. For Nietzsche, there is no divine absolution to await, no heavenly tribunal to reverse an earthly judgment, no providence guaranteeing that our suffering will ultimately be justified. There is only life itself, and the question of what we shall make of it. His answer is Selbstüberwindung: self-overcoming. Not the abandonment of one's nature, nor the pretence that the past never happened, but the demanding work of mastering oneself, transforming one's relationship to existence and refusing to remain imprisoned by what one can no longer change. And beyond self-overcoming lies the still more formidable ideal of amor fati. To love one's fate. Not merely to endure what has happened, nor to persuade oneself that every misfortune was secretly a blessing, but to affirm one's existence without wishing the irreversible past away. This is not resignation. Nor is it submission to authority. Brand may continue to deny the offences and challenge his convictions. If he believes himself wrongly condemned, amor fati does not require him to make a false confession. It requires something altogether different: that he confront the reality of his situation without surrendering the remainder of his life to bitterness. Nor should he seek too easy a refuge in the identity of the persecuted martyr. That, too, may become a form of dependence upon one's persecutors, another way of allowing others to determine who one is. Here, then, is the tension between Christianity and Nietzsche as I understand it. Christian redemption holds that a man need not remain what he was, because repentance and grace can give his life a new beginning. Nietzschean self-overcoming holds that a man must become more than he was, not by escaping his past, but by learning to affirm his life in its entirety. Christianity offers forgiveness for what has been done. Nietzsche demands the strength to live with what cannot be undone. The Christian hopes to be redeemed. Nietzsche's higher man must overcome even the need for redemption. These are not interchangeable ideals. Indeed, Nietzsche regarded the Christian interpretation of suffering as one of his principal adversaries. To reconcile them too comfortably would be to misunderstand both. Yet they confront us with a common challenge: whether a human life is exhausted by its past, and whether we possess the generosity—or the strength—to imagine that it might still become something greater. I do not know whether Brand has achieved the transformation he professes. His conversion may be profound, imperfect, self-serving, sincere, or some complicated mixture of these. We cannot read his soul, and we ought to be suspicious of those who claim that they can. But I reject the suggestion that his future must be nothing more than an indefinitely extended sentence upon his past. The claims of justice remain. So do those of the victims. But neither requires us to celebrate the destruction of a human being. And those who take such pleasure in another man's downfall might profitably examine their own motives before congratulating themselves upon their virtue. The past may demand an answer. It need not have the final word. And so I wish Russell Brand Godspeed. Nietzsche would remind me, of course, that God is dead. Perhaps that makes the old blessing more poignant, rather than less. For if no divine grace is coming to deliver us from our fate, we must find within ourselves the strength to overcome it. And if grace survives at all in a godless world, perhaps it survives in our willingness to extend to others the mercy we might someday require ourselves. Godspeed, Russell. And above all, werde, der du bist.

**Die Wunde und der Wille**. Russell Brand, Parsifal und Nietzsche – eine abschließende Betrachtung Ich habe in den vergangenen Tagen einiges über Russell Brand geschrieben. Bevor ich das Thema abschließe, möchte ich meinen Standpunkt noch einmal verdeutlichen und die verschiedenen Gedanken zusammenführen. Ich behaupte nicht, dass Brand unschuldig ist. Ebenso wenig akzeptiere ich die Urteile vorbehaltlos. Ich habe begründete Zweifel an bestimmten Aspekten der Beweisführung und des Verfahrens: dem außergewöhnlich langen zeitlichen Abstand, der Zuverlässigkeit rückblickender Erinnerungen, der Art und Unabhängigkeit der bestätigenden Zeugenaussagen und der grundsätzlichen Schwierigkeit, intime Begegnungen nach nahezu zwei Jahrzehnten zuverlässig zu rekonstruieren. Dass die Geschworenen Brand in einigen Anklagepunkten schuldig und in anderen nicht schuldig gesprochen haben, beseitigt diese Fragen nicht – auch wenn daraus allein noch kein Zweifel an der Richtigkeit der Schuldsprüche folgt. Die Geschworenen haben Beweise gehört und Zeugen erlebt, die mir nicht zugänglich waren. Ich beanspruche keineswegs, die Sachlage besser beurteilen zu können als sie. Doch Rechtskraft ist nicht dasselbe wie Erkenntnisgewissheit. Ein Urteil verdient Respekt, ohne dass man deshalb sein eigenständiges Urteilvermögen aufgeben müsste. Vor allem aber hängt mein Argument für die Möglichkeit menschlicher Wandlung nicht von Brands Unschuld ab. Es behält seine Bedeutung selbst dann, wenn sämtliche Schuldsprüche sachlich zutreffend sind. Vieles von dem, was ich geschrieben habe, beruht auf christlichen Vorstellungen, obwohl ich selbst kein Christ bin. Ich lebe in einer Zivilisation, deren Verständnis von Sünde, Reue, Vergebung und Erlösung über Jahrhunderte vom Christentum geprägt wurde. Umso bemerkenswerter finde ich, wie bereitwillig wir dieses Erbe vergessen, sobald uns ein hinreichend unbeliebter Sünder gegenübersteht. „Dort könnte auch ich stehen, wäre da nicht die Gnade Gottes.“ Welch außerordentlicher Gedanke – und wie selten begegnet er uns heute! Er entschuldigt kein Unrecht und schmälert nicht das Leid der Opfer. Er bringt vielmehr eine Erkenntnis unserer gemeinsamen Menschlichkeit zum Ausdruck: dass wir alle fehlbar sind, dass Lebensumstände eine Rolle spielen und dass niemand seiner eigenen Tugend allzu sicher sein sollte. Stattdessen scheinen wir zunehmend geneigt, aus Bestrafung ein öffentliches Schauspiel zu machen. Der Verurteilte soll nicht lediglich für seine Taten geradestehen. Seine gesamte Existenz wird rückblickend durch diese Taten erklärt, seine späteren Bemühungen werden für bedeutungslos erklärt, seine Familie wird in die Schande hineingezogen und seiner Zukunft wird jeder Wert abgesprochen. Nietzsche erkannte diese Lust am Strafen in Also sprach Zarathustra, insbesondere in Von den Taranteln. Er misstraute jenen, in denen der Drang zu strafen besonders mächtig ist – vor allem dann, wenn sich Rachsucht als Gerechtigkeit verkleidet. Zwischen Gerechtigkeit und der Freude daran, einen anderen Menschen leiden zu sehen, besteht ein entscheidender Unterschied. Erstere mag notwendig sein; Letztere verdient unser Misstrauen. Doch ausgerechnet über Nietzsches großen Gegenspieler Richard Wagner gelange ich zu meinem abschließenden Gedanken. In Parsifal muss der reine Tor Versuchung und Leiden erfahren und durch Mitleid zur Erkenntnis gelangen, bevor er die Wunde des Amfortas begreifen kann. Durch Mitleid wissend. Aber Parsifals Vollendung besteht nicht einfach in seiner eigenen Erlösung. Er wird zum Erlöser anderer. Seine Selbstüberwindung erfüllt sich darin, dass er Amfortas heilt, Kundry von ihrem Fluch befreit und die Gemeinschaft des Grals wiederherstellt. Die Verwandlung des Einzelnen wird zum Akt des Mitgefühls gegenüber einer leidenden Welt. Erlösung dem Erlöser! Nietzsche weist auf ein grundlegend anderes Ziel. Seine Selbstüberwindung führt nicht zur Erlösung durch göttliche Gnade und bedarf auch keiner Absolution durch andere. Sie verlangt, dass der Mensch sich seinem eigenen Dasein stellt, seinen Groll überwindet und schließlich selbst das bejaht, was sich nicht mehr ungeschehen machen lässt. Amor fati. Das eigene Schicksal zu lieben bedeutet nicht, sich ihm bloß zu unterwerfen. Noch weniger bedeutet es, Unrecht gutzuheißen oder Taten zu gestehen, die man nach eigener Überzeugung nicht begangen hat. Brand mag die Urteile weiterhin bestreiten. Er mag versuchen, sie aufheben zu lassen. Doch die Verurteilung und ihre Folgen sind inzwischen Tatsachen seines Lebens geworden, unabhängig davon, wie die zugrunde liegenden Ereignisse tatsächlich verliefen. Nietzsches Herausforderung besteht darin, weiterzuleben, ohne zuzulassen, dass diese Tatsachen alles verschlingen, was von seinem Leben noch bleibt. Ebenso wenig sollte Brand allzu leicht Trost in der Rolle des verfolgten Märtyrers suchen. Auch sie kann zu einem weiteren Gefängnis werden – zu einer weiteren Möglichkeit, das eigene Selbst durch die Handlungen anderer bestimmen zu lassen. Hier liegt schließlich der Unterschied zwischen Wagner und Nietzsche, wie ich ihn verstehe: Wagners Parsifal überwindet sich selbst, um zum Erlöser anderer zu werden. Nietzsches höherer Mensch überwindet sich selbst, um sein eigenes Dasein vorbehaltlos bejahen zu können. Der eine findet seine höchste Bestimmung im Mitleid mit dem Verwundeten. Der andere in der Kraft, das Leben selbst mitsamt seiner Wunde zu bejahen. Das sind keine identischen Ideale, und ihren Gegensatz sollte man nicht künstlich auflösen. Doch beide verlangen, dass der Mensch mehr wird als die bloße Summe seiner Vergangenheit. Diese Möglichkeit habe ich während der gesamten Auseinandersetzung verteidigen wollen. Man muss einen Menschen nicht freisprechen, um sich seiner endgültigen Verdammung zu verweigern. Ebenso wenig muss man die Ansprüche der Gerechtigkeit leugnen, um die Freude an seiner Vernichtung infrage zu stellen. Die Vergangenheit mag Rechenschaft verlangen. Sie muss deshalb nicht das letzte Wort behalten. Und so wünsche ich Russell Brand Gottes Geleit. Nietzsche würde mich freilich daran erinnern, dass Gott tot ist. Ein Grund mehr also, in sich selbst die Kraft zu finden, den Weg fortzusetzen – und vielleicht unterwegs auch die Wunden anderer zu heilen.

Who knew? They knew:

A piece for 11th November. View article

Dear Dispatches Team, Your recent investigations have prompted me to reconsider certain conversations I have had over the years with an old friend, known to his acquaintances—and, at his own insistence—as “Deadly D.” D is something of a local legend. A gentleman of formidable appetites and apparently inexhaustible romantic energy, he has frequently entertained us with accounts of his adventures among exceptionally beautiful women. According to his own testimony, his partners were often left in such a state of physical exhaustion that walking normally or sitting comfortably afterwards presented considerable difficulties. At the time, we attributed these colourful accounts to masculine vanity, a lively imagination and perhaps a rather excessive sense of personal achievement. I now wonder whether we were insufficiently attentive. Unfortunately, I have never met most of the women concerned, cannot independently verify D's accounts, and have no reason whatsoever to suppose that anything unlawful occurred. Nevertheless, I can testify with considerable confidence that D did tell us these stories. Indeed, with sufficient encouragement, I dare say I could recall some of his more extravagant turns of phrase, although I would naturally resist any suggestion that my memory could be improved by editorial enthusiasm. There is, of course, the tiresome distinction between evidence that somebody said something and evidence that the thing described actually happened. As a former student of philosophy, I have always regarded this distinction as rather important, although I appreciate that it sometimes complicates an otherwise compelling narrative. Perhaps there is room for a documentary examining the transformation of male sexual boasting into retrospective biographical evidence. Working title: Deadly D: The Women, the Witnesses, and the Uncomfortable Chairs. For the avoidance of doubt, this letter is satirical, contains no allegation of wrongdoing against my friend, and should not be mistaken for a witness statement. Yours faithfully, A Concerned Contemporary Witness

England's Black Legends On Desmond Seward's Richard III: England's Black Legend Desmond Seward's Richard III: England's Black Legend, first published in 1983, is a splendidly readable prosecution brief masquerading, at times, as a historical biography. Its subject is the last Plantagenet king, whose short reign, violent death and enduring infamy have supplied English literature with one of its most compelling villains. Its deeper interest, however, lies in the curious process by which a man's reputation becomes evidence of his crimes, and those crimes, whether proved or merely alleged, become evidence of his reputation. Seward sets out to rescue Richard III from his rescuers. For centuries the king had laboured beneath the terrible reputation bestowed upon him by Tudor chroniclers and perfected by Shakespeare. Then came the revisionists, most famously Josephine Tey in The Daughter of Time, determined to recover an honourable and capable ruler from beneath the accumulated calumnies. Seward will have none of it. The revisionists, he believes, have allowed sentiment to overcome historical judgment. Richard was a ruthless usurper, a calculating politician and, in all probability, the murderer of his nephews, the Princes in the Tower. The traditional black legend, suitably corrected for historical inaccuracies, is substantially true. There is a perfectly respectable historical argument to be made here. Richard seized the throne from his nephew Edward V, executed political opponents, and presided over the disappearance of two boys committed to his protection. His responsibility for their fate is a serious and enduring possibility. One need not be a romantic Ricardian to insist, however, that probability and proof are not interchangeable. What makes Seward's book so revealing is the manner in which its author's certainty appears to grow with every retelling, even when the underlying evidence remains unchanged. Consider his treatment of Earl Rivers. Richard, having arrested Rivers in April 1483, sent him a reassuring message that all would be well. Rivers was subsequently executed without trial. Seward interprets the earlier reassurance as an act of calculated deception and tells us: "with hindsight we know that he must have had every intention of killing Rivers as soon as possible." It is an extraordinary sentence. Hindsight establishes that Rivers was eventually killed. It does not establish precisely when Richard decided upon his death. Yet the eventual outcome is made to prove an earlier intention, while that inferred intention confirms the portrait of Richard as a man combining exquisite courtesy with murderous cynicism. What begins as a plausible interpretation becomes an apparent fact. On its next appearance, the apparent fact can serve as evidence for another interpretation. The argument is cumulative, but not necessarily cumulative in evidence. Something similar happens with the death of Henry VI. His death in the Tower in 1471 was almost certainly violent, but the identity of his killer remains uncertain. Nevertheless, Seward's illustration caption attributes the murder, or at least its personal supervision, to Richard. The historian has moved from the unsolved death of a king to the identification of his murderer. Once Richard's character has been established, it begins to perform much of the evidential work. The difficulty is not that character is irrelevant to historical explanation. A man's conduct, habits, ambitions and previous actions may provide valuable evidence concerning his motives. The difficulty arises when the historian's reconstruction of character becomes so comprehensive that nothing can count against it. Courtesy becomes hypocrisy. Piety becomes camouflage. Political prudence becomes conspiracy. An apparent contradiction merely demonstrates the villain's remarkable capacity for deception. The accusation has become unfalsifiable. This is the great temptation of biographical history: to explain each particular deed through an already established character, and then employ each deed to reinforce the character from which it was supposedly deduced. Seward's reliance upon Sir Thomas More is especially instructive. More was an extraordinarily gifted writer, whose portrait of Richard helped shape the historical tradition inherited by Shakespeare. But More was also a moralist and literary artist, composing a study of tyranny with all the resources of Renaissance rhetoric. Seward recognises something of this literary character, yet places considerable confidence in More's integrity and historical testimony. What ought to invite caution becomes a further reason for belief. And there is the additional complication of the audience. Richard III has never been merely an historical person. He is a theatrical character, a political symbol, a monster of nursery history and an object of romantic rehabilitation. Shakespeare's Richard is so magnificently wicked that an innocent Richard would almost constitute an offence against literature. The public wants its villain. Nor is this appetite confined to distant centuries. We remain fascinated by the discovery that a celebrated person has concealed a darker nature. Once the revelation is made, the entire biography can be reorganised around it. Former admirers become retrospective witnesses for the prosecution. Old jokes acquire sinister meanings. Excesses previously applauded become unmistakable warnings that everyone somehow failed to recognise. The mask that once entertained an audience becomes the face by which its wearer is judged. It is here that Seward's method becomes more interesting than his verdict. The historical Richard may indeed have been guilty of the worst crimes attributed to him. But the reader ought to be persuaded by evidence of those crimes, not by the accumulating momentum of a narrative in which guilt has gradually become inevitable. A dozen suspicious circumstances do not necessarily constitute twelve independent pieces of evidence. Several may derive from a single hostile source, an inherited rumour, or the assumption of a particular character. Repetition can create an impression of corroboration where there is little more than narrative consistency. Yet to question this process is to risk being accused of sympathy for the villain. Seward's epilogue supplies an instructive example. Richard's defenders, he concludes, share with their hero an inability to face facts. The disagreement has ceased to concern the reliability of particular evidence; it has become a defect of character in those who question the accepted interpretation. Thus the black legend acquires its final protection. To doubt it is itself suspicious. There is another irony. Richard's enemies did not wait for Shakespeare, or even the Tudors, to express their suspicions. Rumours about the Princes circulated during his lifetime, as the contemporary account of Dominic Mancini demonstrates. The black legend was not simply invented by the victors at Bosworth. But rumours circulating at the time are evidence that people entertained suspicions, not necessarily that those suspicions were true. Contemporary testimony deserves consideration; it does not acquire infallibility from its antiquity. Nor should we permit the obvious exaggerations of the traditional portrait to establish the opposite conclusion. Richard's actual scoliosis, confirmed by the discovery of his skeleton in Leicester, tells us nothing about his moral character. Yet neither does the absurdity of Shakespeare's exaggerated deformity establish Richard's innocence of murder. A crooked spine is not evidence of a crooked soul. Its correction is not an acquittal. The greatest strength of Seward's book is its narrative vitality. The Wars of the Roses emerge as a world of ambition, dynastic calculation, betrayal and extraordinary personal courage. Seward understands the drama of late medieval politics and has little patience for sentimental accounts of its participants. His Richard is a compelling figure, often more psychologically interesting than the gallant victim of the opposing tradition. But historical drama has its own dangers. The requirements of a satisfying narrative are not necessarily those of an honest inquiry. History is lived forwards, in ignorance and uncertainty, but written backwards, with the ending already known. The historian knows who will die, who will triumph, whose reputation will survive and whose name will become a byword for wickedness. The temptation to treat that outcome as the inevitable revelation of an essential character is almost irresistible. The more accomplished the storyteller, the greater the danger. For a black legend performs a remarkable transformation. It begins with allegations about what a man has done. It proceeds to a judgment about what sort of man he is. Finally, the judgment about what sort of man he is becomes sufficient reason to believe almost anything alleged against him. At that point the historical investigation has quietly become a morality play. None of this establishes Richard III's innocence. Nor is it necessary to establish his innocence in order to criticise the means by which his guilt is asserted. Indeed, the distinction is indispensable: the stronger the accusation, the more important it is that the evidence should bear its own weight. Seward may be right about Richard. He may even be right about the Princes. But his book repeatedly invites the reader to enjoy the certainty of a conclusion before the evidence has earned it. And there is something deeply English about the resulting spectacle. We have a remarkable talent for elevating individuals into legends and an equally remarkable appetite for their destruction. The saint, the hero, the genius, the libertine, the tyrant: each receives a recognisable mask, and heaven help the wearer who attempts to remove it. Richard III lost his crown, his life and, for centuries, the possibility of answering his accusers. His literary identity survived them all. Perhaps the final lesson of England's Black Legend is not that Richard was innocent or guilty, but that once a man has become a sufficiently satisfying villain, the distinction between what we know about him and what we believe ourselves entitled to infer begins to disappear. The man dies. The mask survives. And the audience demands another performance.

Komm! Komm! Holder Knabe! Lass mich dir blühen! Dir zur Wonn’ und Labe gilt mein minniges Mühen. Come, come, handsome boy! I’ll be your flower! All my loving care is for your delight and bliss!

I'm offering free advice today, ask away.

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