Richard III of England due to the fact that it helped to legitimise Henry VII's seizure of the throne. The Richard III Society contends that this means that 'a lot of what people thought they knew about Richard III was pretty much propaganda and myth building.' The Tudor characterisation culminated in the famous fictional portrayal of him in Shakespeare's play "Richard III" as a physically deformed, Machiavellian villain, ruthlessly committing numerous murders in order to claw his way to power; Shakespeare's intention perhaps being to use Richard III as a vehicle for creating his own Marlowesque protagonist. Rous himself, in his "History of the
Cultural depictions of Richard I of England Cultural depictions of Richard I of England Richard I of England has been depicted many times in romantic fiction and popular culture. The Scots philosopher and chronicler John Mair was the first to associate Richard with the Robin Hood legends in his "Historia majoris Britannae, tam Angliae quam Scotiae" (1521). In the earliest Robin Hood ballads the only king mentioned is "Edward our comely king", most probably Edward II or Edward III. However, Sir Walter Scott's novel "Ivanhoe" popularised Mair's linking of the Hood legends to Richard's reign, and it was taken up by later novelists and by cinema. Typically