Richard III of England

Richard III was King of England from 26 June 1483 until his death in 1485, the last king of the Plantagenet dynasty and its cadet branch, the House of York. He was created Duke of Gloucester in 1461 after his brother Edward IV took the throne, and when Edward died in 1483 Richard was named Lord Protector for Edward's twelve-year-old son and successor, Edward V. Before Edward V's coronation could take place, the marriage of his parents was declared invalid, his children were barred from the succession, and an assembly of lords and commoners proclaimed Richard the rightful king; Edward and his younger brother, known as the Princes in the Tower, disappeared from the Tower of London soon afterward. In August 1485 Henry Tudor landed in Wales and defeated Richard's army at the Battle of Bosworth Field, where Richard was killed, becoming the last English king to die in battle, and Henry Tudor ascended the throne as Henry VII. Richard's remains, long thought lost, were identified through a 2012 archaeological excavation in Leicester and reburied in Leicester Cathedral in 2015.