This is no Henry VIII to command obedience by sheer force of personali — Laura Ashe

"Richard understood his own reign through the distorting lens of the court he made for himself; he could not understand why the regality he regarded as his right was denied to him on the broader stage."

"Richard’s difficulties were many, but the essence of his personal feelings seems to have lain in the confluence of these two great ideas – the divinity of kingship and the perfection of peace – because for Richard, ‘peace’ in the sense that he valued it meant the complete obedience of every subject to the will of the king."

"The idea of the court sustained Richard, and he sustained it, at vast expense. He surrounded himself with courtiers who stood to gain from his largesse, and who therefore flattered and praised him as he wished. He experienced his court – his day-to-day life of hunting, or feasting, or games – as the place where the king’s will was enacted without question, and he believed that this was as it should be. But beyond his court circle all was very different, in ways which Richard seems not to have understood."

"Here and throughout the reign, the tendency was to focus criticism on particular individuals charged with corruption, rather than to address the structures which made such corruption endemic."

"The court was by definition in place of extreme instability, of faction and favourites, in which men could rise and fall as they pleased or displeased of the king. For the nation to function at large, this could not be the case. The noble men of the realm needed the security of their patrimony, their status and their rights; for them to support the king they needed to know that he would support the social structure which maintained them all. Richard had demonstrated, fatally, that everything was personal to him."

"Once again, the viewer is made to recognize the sheer glory of kingship, its otherworldly status, and Richard’s distance from his subjects. This majesty is revealed by the actual events of Richard’s life and death to have been empty at its heart."