Royal badges of England Wars of the Roses. The retrospective usage of the name for all Geoffrey's male descendants became popular in Tudor times probably encouraged by the added legitimacy it gave Richard's great-grandson, King Henry VIII of England. Badges came into general use by the reign of King Edward III. The king himself deployed many badges alluding to his lineage, as well as new personal devices. Royal badges of England In heraldry, the royal badges of England comprise the heraldic badges that were used by the monarchs of the Kingdom of England. Heraldic badges are distinctive to a person or family, similar to
Exhumation and reburial of Richard III of England by Turi King and others has shown that historical rates of false paternity are around 1–2% per generation. Professor Michael Hicks, a Richard III specialist, has been particularly critical of the use of the mitochondrial DNA to argue that the body is Richard III's, stating that "any male sharing a maternal ancestress in the direct female line could qualify". He also criticises the rejection by the Leicester team of the Y chromosome evidence, suggesting that it was not acceptable to the Leicester team to conclude that the skeleton was anyone other than Richard III. He argues that on the basis