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
Richard III of England it was never published and nothing is known about its portrayal of the king. Marjorie Bowen's 1929 novel "Dickon" set the trend for pro-Ricardian literature. Particularly influential was "The Daughter of Time" (1951) by Josephine Tey, in which a modern detective concludes that Richard III is innocent in the death of the Princes. Other novelists such as Valerie Anand in the novel "Crown of Roses" (1989) have also offered alternative versions to the theory that he murdered them. Sharon Kay Penman, in her historical novel "The Sunne in Splendour", attributes the death of the Princes to the Duke of Buckingham.