Buckingham Palace might just have given away a very big secret. For years, there has been debate about the standing of a certain duke inside royal circles and now a brief social media post could have revealed how the Palace really feels about him. And it appears that an ultimate royal rebel might just have found redemption.

The man in question is Richard, Duke of Gloucester and later King of England. He’s better known as that arch baddie, Richard III, the man who is said to have done away with his own nephews to secure the throne. But the Royal Family has just compared him to one of their most popular and diligent members, a man who is held in high esteem by The King and pretty much everyone else who knows him. So does the comparison mean that one very difficult duke is getting the thumbs up?

Let’s start at the beginning. Right now, the Royal Family has its very own Richard, Duke of Gloucester. The present day Prince Richard, who has just turned 80, was a first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II and began life as fifth in line to the throne. He’s now number 31 but remains one of the hardest working members of the Firm, taking on hundreds of engagements every year. His latest foray has seen him head to Leicestershire where he spent time at the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre, built on the site of the fight where Richard III lost his crown and his life. Richard, Duke of Gloucester also headed to the Richard III Visitor Centre, focused on all things Ricardian.

The Royal Family marked this with a post that said ‘’From one Richard, Duke of Gloucester to another!’’. It might not be a ringing endorsement but it’s certainly drawing a comparison between them and not an unaffectionate one. The current duke might have looked slightly perturbed by the waxwork rendition of his namesake (take a look, you won’t blame him) but the link between them is headline news on royal social media.

Richard III and his fans will be thrilled. For years, he’s been the king everyone loves to hate. If The Crown did medieval, then Richard would have had a season all to himself. Born at the start of the Wars of the Roses, Richard ended up at the heart of that conflict and saw his older brother crowned King Edward IV when their House of York took control. When Edward IV died, Richard put the new king, his 12 year old nephew, into the Tower of London and made himself monarch. The young King Edward V was never seen again. Richard III lasted two years. Another relative, Henry Tudor, thought he should be king and it all ended at Bosworth, quite literally for Richard, whose body was taken to nearby Leicester on a cart and buried quietly at Greyfriars church.

In the interests of keeping Henry Tudor’s family happy (a smart move, given their tempers), Shakespeare turned Richard into the arch villain to end all villains. Think Disney cartoon and Marvel menace combined then ramped to the max. The Bard’s version is so miserable and malevolent that it’s impossible to find anything to like about him. And in the absence of any real opposition to that telling, it became the received wisdom for centuries.

In recent times, Richard has had something of a revival. In 2012, his skeleton was discovered beneath a car park in Leicester city centre which gave him the air of underdog that anyone who wants to be popular in Britain needs as by default. Greyfriars had long since disappeared and been replaced by neatly marked white lines and a machine that needed coins. Once the bones were verified as those of the last Plantagenet monarch of England, Richard was given a  king’s funeral, albeit over 500 years late and with a stop at Bosworth which seemed, to some at least, like a memory he’d rather not have.

In attendance was Sophie, now Duchess of Edinburgh, and Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Well, you can’t bury a king and not send a royal or two. But the current duke is also patron of the Richard III Society which was set up a century ago to reassess how we all look at Richard III. Its mission statement is to ‘’secure a more balanced assessment of the king and to support research into his life and times.’’ It was founded by a doctor called Saxon Barton in 1924 who, along with other historians, was inspired by a belief that history hadn’t been fair to Richard III. One hundred years later, it’s still going strong.

Richard, Duke of Gloucester became patron of this society about Richard, Duke of Gloucester in 1980. He’s said previously that the strength of the society lies in its ‘’belief that the truth is more powerful than lies; a faith that even after all these centuries the truth is important.’’

So, does this latest social media post from the Royal Family show an inclination to redeem this difficult duke? Is it an admission, as some historians contend, that Richard III wasn’t really all that bad at all and was painted in a bad light to justify the Tudor takeover? King Charles III did study history at Cambridge and may well have done a deep dive into his predecessor’s politics. That would certainly be a feather ruffler. Richard III has been nothing but controversial and, once upon a time, saying he was possibly, maybe, potentially even not all bad was like confessing to eating kittens.

Or maybe there’s some monarchical guilt involved. Richard III was King of England for 788 days. Charles III will overtake that tally on December 8^th 2024 meaning that by the time he delivers his Christmas Day speech, he will have relegated Richard in the length of reign list. Perhaps this rather flattering comparison for the 15^th century Duke of Gloucester with the 21^st century one is a kind of sorry, not sorry from the man who holds his crown now (and he didn’t even have to give him a horse).

Either way, it is fascinating to see how attitudes change across time. The years pass, the rows fade and all that was once angry becomes a distant memory that slowly drifts further away until all that is left is a social media post that not everyone who sees it even notices. Royal or otherwise, time will take its toll for all. One Duke of Gloucester has been replaced by another who wants to see if the stories we tell are everything we believe them to be. And the Royal Family is linking them together in a way that can’t help but raise questions about whether a difficult royal duke has finally found royal redemption.