The Wars of the Roses (adaptation) IV", Hall wrote, "underlying these plays is the curse on the House of Lancaster. Bolingbroke deposed Richard II to become Henry IV. Richard II was a weak and sometimes a bad king, ungoverned, unbalanced; he could not order the body politic. Yet for Shakespeare, his deposition is a wound on the body politic, which festers through reign after reign, a sin which can only be expiated by blood-letting. The bloody totalitarianism of "Richard III" is the expiation of England." John Jowett argues the production very much reinforced the teleological assumptions upon which the Tudor myth is based; "it generated an
Ricardian (Richard III) facts: that first the young king Edward the V was placed under the protection of his uncle Richard III; that Richard III himself was then crowned as the new king instead of young Edward V; and finally that the crown prince disappeared at some point over the coming year, never to be seen again. However, they dispute the initial common assumption by many, that Richard III was personally responsible for the apparent murder of Edward V. Richard III's reign lasted for only 2 years, and his short reign came to a violent end on 22nd August 1485 at the Battle