Elizabeth's New Show: History’s Greatest Fails

0:00I should have brought it, but I found a photograph. I was clearing out a box of photographs, which sounds like a task that only happens in novels, but I was actually doing it. I found a photograph of you in my parents' kitchen. Don't know what you were doing there. I do know. It was my 21st birthday party. I remember that party. Do you? Yeah. And when I was looking at the photos, I didn't really remember much, but I was like, fuck no, there's Elizabeth. I don't think I really knew you that well up until that point. Because how we met, we were both at university together. And I was dating your friend.

0:34You were. But I remember you being the year below. And at that stage in life, it feels like a really big age gap. And I was like, who's this young buck? And I don't think we ever really spoke that much. But I was just aware that you're in the vicinity. And Rick, my then boyfriend, referred to you as Dollar. He did. That was your name, as far as I was concerned. But then I was invited as Bricks Plus One to your 21st. And it was really lovely because as you say, it was in your family home. There was a marquee. I remember thinking, oh, that's grown up. You're making me sound a bit posh. And over the years, we've fallen in and out of contact because our friendship was only really established through podcasting.

1:17And that's when we reconnected. And I feel like that's when we had our first proper conversation. and during the course of that conversation, I remember Richard III coming up. Hello, this is Elizabeth Day from the How to Fail podcast. I wanted to share something I'm genuinely excited about. One of my favourite UK wellness brands, Ancient and Brave, has just launched in the US. I've used two of their products in my daily routine and they've made a tangible difference. The first is True Creatine Plus. With added taurine, vitamin D and magnesium, it supports physical performance, energy and cognitive function.

1:56It's easy to take at home or on the go, whether I'm working out or not. I also use their clinically studied True Collagen, a pure, potent and powerful staple that supports skin elasticity and hydration, as well as whole body health. It's EU sourced, so free from growth hormones or antibiotics, Plus, it's neutral in taste and dissolves effortlessly into coffee or smoothies. Or a cup of tea. I would say that as a Brit, wouldn't I? Ancient and Brave are proud members of 1 % for the Planet, meaning that 1 % of their sales go to environmental causes. Wellness that feels good and does good too. Go to ancientandbrave.com forward slash planet and use the code HOWTOFAIL.

2:40That's HOWTOFAIL, no spaces, all one word, for$10 off any purchase. So, yes, I remember the conversation. There were two things that we spoke about. The first was Peloton. Yes. Our other obsession. And my exercise bike radar went off. And the second was you, I think, admitted straight off the bat to being a Ricardian. Yes. There's no admission to it, Dan. I don't need to confess it. I'm not ashamed of it. Well, maybe you should be. I know you think that because you are obsessed with the Tudors. You have such a hard on for them that you've fallen for every single piece of Tudor propaganda you could do.

3:22And that's why I'm thrilled that we're having this conversation. Because not only have we bonded over the years as friends, but we're both history graduates. Both history graduates, and as any history graduate will tell you, there are two sides to any argument, one right and one wrong. We will establish which side of those we rely on. Why don't we start? Hello, this is History's Greatest Fails with me, Dan Jones. I'm a medievalist, broadcaster and author. And I'm Elizabeth Day, a fellow author and podcaster. We're old friends and fellow history graduates, and in this podcast, we're going to dig into failures of historical proportions.

4:04To understand why failures make history. Now, before we begin, some housekeeping. Yes, if you were expecting how to fail, don't fret, my podcast hasn't changed. As this is our first collaboration, we're marking this very special moment by giving you the debut episode of History's Greatest Fails on both of our feeds. And to catch the rest of this series, indulge your inner history nerd by subscribing to my podcast, This Is History, A Dynasty To Die For. Now, let's get stuck in.

4:39you elizabeth day i put this to you are a ricardian you're in love with richard iii in some kind of uh sick fetishistic way and um i think that the failure of the last plantagenet monarch who brought down the glorious house of plantagenet which i've been spending season after season narrating the story of on my podcast uh this man for some reason you think is totally marvelous i if you can just explain, first of all, why you're such a Richard III obsessive. I will explain, but before I do, I'd like to point out there that you've done something that many Ricardian women have to constantly, constantly address, which is that you have accused me of being in love with Richard III, which automatically from the outset undermines my historical prerogative to put this case.

5:31And one might suggest that your argument is going to be the weaker because of it, because you've gone personal from the start. And actually, there's an enormous amount of historical fact that I can draw on to put my case. Well, you go ahead. But before you do, can I just say, not just women who are in love with Richard III. Okay, that's your defence. That's one of my defences, yeah. I've got a few more. So I became fascinated with Richard III at quite a young age. I think I was around 10 or 11. And I don't know if you remember the erstwhile, much lamented, Discovery magazine. Discovery magazine.

6:10Were you ever a subscriber? Just context for listeners and viewers. Elizabeth, as a child, was maybe the geekiest child that ever lived. I take that as a compliment coming from you. It was a compliment.

6:25Discovery Magazine was a history periodical for kids. And I loved it so much. I loved it so much. And they did an entire issue on Richard III and Henry VII. And I think there is something somewhat mystical about the allure that Richard III has for so many people. And I think maybe it's because it's what we all love. It's an unsolved mystery. It's an unsolved true crime story for many of us. And I, since reading that copy of Discovery magazine, have been obsessed with the fact that Richard III was wrongly accused of murdering the princes in the Tower. That's one of the things that we're going to address in this episode, but we're also going to address what you have claimed, which is that he brought down the Plantagenets.

7:14He had a very brief reign of around 26 months, I think. And so we're going to discuss whether that shortness is in and of itself a failure. But before we do that, let's just for the sake of clarity for listeners, like spell out who Richard was before the reign. Because I think that what often happens with discussions of Richard III is that they're played backwards. And when you read the story forwards, I think what you see with Richard III is a personal tragedy and a good object lesson in the way that politics in particular can spiral very badly when you have these decision trees of bad decision leads to two more options for bad decisions and things get worse and worse and worse.

8:02But first of all, I think you have to start with who is Richard? Well, Richard, born in 1452 for sort of broad context, the same year as Leonardo da Vinci. For most of his life, he is a significant political success. One of three brothers of Richard, Duke of York, one of three sons, sorry, of surviving sons to significant political adulthood of Richard, Duke of York. The elder of which is Edward IV, who defeats the House of Lancaster at the Battle of Towton in 1460 and becomes the first Yorkist king of England. Richard III is actually extremely competent, but probably in a way too competent in the sense that he can't sort of grasp the broader political implications of what he's going to do.

8:49So on the death of Edward IV in 1483, Richard has effectively a binary decision to take. Does he allow Edward IV's son, the young Edward V, who has been effectively captured by the Woodville family, the family of Edward IV's wife, widow? Side note, obsessed with Elizabeth Woodville. Why are you obsessed with Elizabeth Woodville? Because she's called Elizabeth, number one. And she's one of the founders of my Cambridge college, Queen's College. And I find her story fascinating because she was a commoner and she'd been married before and so brought into this marriage with a king, children that she would, pre-existing children, his stepchildren.

9:30And I find that all very interesting. And then the sanctuary in Westminster Abbey of it all. you really like reality television correct i love reality tv and that's what history is i totally agree that is in no way a criticism and the woodville marriage with edward the fourth is precisely that it's just a sort of weird kind of jumble of all these oddball people interacting with each other and then suddenly this is amazing moment of revelation where the king turns up and goes guess what i've got something to tell you all gather round i got married to someone completely inappropriate yes whose brother is a championship jouster yeah it's such they're such a glamorous family anyway i've gone off on a tangent so edward the fourth he's in tracts his marriage he's got the two children up until the point of edward the fourth dying richard duke of gloucester has been like the right-hand man but he has this decision to make in 1483 as to whether he's going to allow the new king effectively to be captured by the other side of the family.

10:34And when he decides he's not, that he's going to force himself on the situation. It's where the sort of spiral begins. And every decision he makes thereafter starts to drag him into this sort of zero-sum politics where if he backs off at this point, if he can't anymore surrender to the Woodfields because it becomes kill or be killed. He has made enough decisions at that point when the princes are in the tower that have been extremely ruthless and politically calculated that it seems to me utterly bizarre and out of keeping with his 15th century brutal politics head on. And if you've been born in 1452, you know politics is kill or be killed.

11:21If he doesn't kill those princes in the tower, He's insane. Let's hypothetically say that I agree with you for the purposes of this. It doesn't have to be hypothetical. Is it therefore fair to say that that was a successful decision? And so this whole notion of Richard III being a failure is irrelevant? I think it's a necessary political decision, but it can also be morally abhorrent. I think the slight red herring about his failure or success is that we zoom in on the princes in the tower instead of the Battle of Bosworth. The Battle of Bosworth is connected to the princes in the tower in the sense that when you fight a battle, you're inviting God's judgment.

12:03And so Richard fights his battle against Henry Tudor and God decides. We tend to, I think, when we look at this from our sort of post-Enlightenment, rational 20th, 21st century worldview, you think that stuff about God, well, yes, they go to church a bit more than we do, but that's the only difference. No, this is like baked into your understanding of the world, which is that by fighting this battle, God will decide who was right and who was wrong. But anyway, I think it's the broader point is that Bosworth is the big failure, the failure to defend the crown once he'd won it. And once he'd taken such drastic steps to get it.

12:43Allegedly, allegedly taken those Some of the steps aren't alleged. I mean, the killing of Hastings, for example. Yes. Let's not focus on the killing so much. Hastings was a grown-up. Titulus Regius. So that was an act of parliament that was passed that said that he was totally within his rights to be king. So having passed that, was there still the necessary motive to do off with the princes in the tower um well it depends on when we think they they've been done away with exactly and isn't that interesting because there's no proof i refer to my earlier point and why do you think no bodies have ever been found well there are two bodies were found under the under the staircase and and they're in westminster abbey in the urn that christopher wren sort of rather beautifully made for them um and i don't think it's going to happen in the near future but i don't i think we're probably closer to it than perhaps we have been, that testing could be carried out on the remains that are in those urns to see if they are indeed the princes in the tower.

13:52Now, of course - Because the late Queen Elizabeth said, absolutely not. I think there's a, yes. I mean, this would have to be signed off by the royal family and also by Westminster. But the sort of hypothetical about the remains of the princes in the tower is that even, and this speaks to the whole case of Richard III and our perception of historical failure, I think, even if some hypothetical DNA testing were done on the remains of the Prince of the Tower against known family members, and it said these are definitely the remains of the princes, it still wouldn't change most people's minds. It's true.

14:33Because you'd still go, well, I think Henry, not you, but also you, would say, no, no, well, I think Richard III wouldn't have done that. I think somebody else did it. It doesn't really change because this is a case where the facts are incomplete and the case is probably unprovable. And so there's enough space within this discussion always to make up your mind about what you think and then argue the facts towards that conclusion. Yes, there's a tremendous poignancy to it, because either you believe, as I do, that he was grossly maligned and unfairly so, and his body lay undiscovered for centuries.

15:21and he fought valiantly at Bosworth, by all accounts. He was a great warrior, but his body was inflicted with degrading wounds and then history inflicts him with further wounds in terms of his reputation. Or you believe, as you do, that he gradually painted himself into a political corner because of the desperate amount of pressure he was under. And either way, there's a sense of tragedy to that. Yes, I totally agree. I would like to make the case now more broadly, moving on from the princes in the tower, as to why Richard III does not deserve to be consigned to the failure bin of history. I see, okay.

16:05And I would like to draw attention here to the fact you said that he was an excellent political enforcer and strategist for his brother. And his brother put him in charge of the kingdom in the north. and by all accounts he executed that incredibly well and he was very popular and he often stood up for the common people against the nobility which was very rare for that time he also as we well know when he was king introduced trial by jury he translated a lot of laws into english so that people could understand them and that for me speaks of such a progressive leader who existed way before his time.

16:45And in a way, because of all of the drama around his very short reign, we sort of forget that. When I started this podcast, I honestly felt like I was learning a brand new language overnight. Scripts, artwork, scheduling, tech. Suddenly, I was the entire team and it was kind of overwhelming. There were so many moments I wished I had a proper business partner to help me figure it all out. That's why I love Shopify. It's the commerce platform behind millions of businesses, and it gives you everything you need in one place. You can build a beautiful online store in minutes with hundreds of ready to use templates.

17:26Their AI tools help you write product descriptions and even polish your photography, which is a lifesaver when you're spinning 100 plates. And you can manage everything, inventory, payments, analytics, without juggling 10 different tabs. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing. Sign up for your£1 per month trial today at shopify.co.uk slash fail. That's shopify.co.uk slash fail. This episode is brought to you by Fandango. People say fans are too distracted these days, But the truth is, when a great movie hits the screen, you show up. You stay glued, invested, part of the story.

18:09And without fans like you, there'd be no cinema magic, no shared moments. So head to Fandango.com to get tickets, stream, or rent or buy top movies and series. Fandango loves fans. Yes, I agree. And I think that one of the things that, you know, whenever we think about history, this is a cliche, but it's forgotten a great deal, particularly when history is discussed online in kind of, you know, social media debate and stuff, as Richard III very often is. is that, of course, this is an incredibly nuanced case and that to judge Richard III as either failure or success is, of course, to ignore the arguments on both sides.

18:57Yes, there are many ways in which he was an excellent lieutenant to his brother and had the makings of a successful king, starting out from the worst possible position for a king, which is a usurper with another claimant to the throne very close to him, a whole bunch of enemies, and needing to fight a battle early in his reign, which, as it turns out, went the wrong way. But I think that the great failure to win at Bosworth, if we place these on the historical scales, does outweigh everything else. But I would add to that and say that my sort of premise in this miniseries, in this idea of thinking about historical failures, isn't so much to think about failure or not failure, do we need to rescue them?

19:49It is, as you do so brilliantly on your podcast, to say, what do we understand from cases of failure? And if we start from the premise that no matter how hard Richard tried or how many good things he did, ultimately his reign ended in failure. What do we learn about the way we think of history from that failure? And here's what I've been thinking about Richard recently, which is we are always looking back, and you've mentioned Tudor propaganda already, we're always looking back at the 15th century through the lens of the 16th. And a lot of that is through Shakespeare, but Shakespeare had his sources as well earlier in the 16th century.

20:31Once Richard was dead, Battle of Bosworth, we can agree, he at least was dead, and Henry Tudor had taken the throne. It's often said that then an enormous amount of Tudor propaganda was pumped out to blacken the name of Richard III. And I've been thinking about that in the context of the specific politics of the world we're living in today and how cultural propaganda, as it were, works. It's not the case of a sort of early Tudor CIA pumping out psyops against Richard III. It's once the fact is he's dead and lost and God has passed his judgment at Bosworth and there's a new regime. That regime is creating a kind of story around itself.

21:15Henry marries Elizabeth of York. They have the sort of white and red rose that implies there were two sides that are now united again. but I think what you also see is that once it's clear well this is the new regime do I want to be in with them or out with them a narrative starts to emerge a cultural narrative starts to emerge well that guy died and seem you know he's dead and gone and that world is over and we're I'm going to start writing the world as I see it now and you see this evolve throughout the first half of the 16th century until you get to about to the 1540s Grafton's Chronicle Hall Hollinshed.

21:51And they have these amazing frontispieces, which see Henry VIII as the combination of the two houses. And they start to create, I think organically, I think without top-down direction, to create this satisfying narrative that says, in 1399, Richard II was deposed. And that was a sort of original sin. And it splintered England into these two noble factions of Lancaster and York, and they grew apart. And then all of the sins of the age were contained within this monster, Richard III, who then had to be killed to expunge the moral stain. And now we live on the other side of it. Here is the new regime.

22:30And people write towards that for lots of different reasons. One, because it offers the opportunity of political advancement and not political persecution. Another, because again, there is this sort of picturesque narrative neatness to it. And when you get to Shakespeare, looking back through the lens of all of that writing, you think, well, Shakespeare writes Richard III. What is he aiming to do with the play Richard III? Is it to yet again make the case that Richard III was guilty? Really? He's not in the business of making historical arguments. He's in the business of making moral arguments, right?

23:07Of saying, I want to tell a story that's about some deep element of humanity. And I want my audience in whichever sort of Southwark theatre it might be, to engage with that. And I need a story that's instantly familiar. They don't need to bother with the plot. It needs to be as simple as Batman or whatever. Every time we watch a new Batman film, you kind of know, the Joker's the bad guy, Batman's the good guy, it's Gotham City, they're going to fight each other, Commissioner Gordon, I know all these characters, now tell me this story again and draw some new morality out of it or give me a new kind of brilliant performance from it.

23:37And I think that's what Shakespeare's doing with Richard. he's like i want to i want to explore the concept of of how evil and power interact with each other i'm going to use the story of richard because literally everybody knows it by now and they know the shape of this story and so when that's being done it's it's taking this historical failure and using it for the for an artistic purpose but now here we are sort of 500 years later we kind of crunch all those things together and say yes bloody Shakespeare Tudor shill out there blackening the name of Richard III for political purposes Shakespeare had a political bone in his body with regard to the 15th century also the fact that we are sitting here talking about Richard III all of these centuries later and the fact that figures like Philippa Langley exist Your friend, yeah.

24:31Your friend and mine, Philippa Langley, who is one of the foremost Ricardians of our age. I think she'd be offended by one of her. I mean, the foremost Ricardian. The foremost Ricardian of our age. And essentially single-handedly responsible for finding Richard III's body under an R sign for reserved in a council car park in Leicester. and it was the first day of that dig she had raised I think it was 36 ,000 pounds from members of the public and they had enough money I think to exhume six bodies and it was the first day within the first few hours minutes even that they disinterred what would later be proven to be Richard III's skeleton and his feet were not part of that skeleton because the wall to a council building had been built, the foundations had chopped off his feet, basically.

25:25If that wall, if that council building had been sort of two inches to the left or the right, we might not have found it. It's an extraordinary thing. And the fact that we're still talking about that, and the fact that so many of us watched that documentary of Philippa walking across the car park, seeing the R painted on the tarmac and thinking, I have a feeling that it's here. in a way that's a kind of success there are so many historical figures that are forgotten about and actually that we're still talking about him is in and of itself really interesting and carry on down no i i was going to totally agree with you and i think that actually we say that again i'm going to totally agree with that just that you make all your preposterous ricardian statements and I say I totally agree with you.

26:18Failure is more interesting to us, I think, in terms of history. Or if not failure, isolated, then the rise and fall. You know, the story of the Knights Templar, you know, world dominance around the Mediterranean at any rate, and then calamitous collapse. You know, Napoleon conquers Europe and then ends up exiled in Helena. you know these um the stories like this have again that sort of the tragic shape to them are just deeply fascinating to us as as people but i also wanted to ask you um about philipa langley and about the the dig and the the sort of weird funeral of richard because you reported that when you were on the observer yes newspaper before we get on to that i just want to say something about failure, which I think is really interesting, that you ultimately believe that Richard III's reign was a failure because it ended at the Battle of Bosworth.

27:16And that is true, but also... Can we just clip that bit? How interesting. Ultimately, failure is also about taking risks, managing risk, and living boldly and taking the risk that you might fail spectacularly. But there's a broad argument to be made that isn't it better to live that way than to play it very safe? Is that the question? I don't know. I don't know if it's a question of more of a philosophical musing. Yes. Because I actually also don't think that things are failures just because they end. That ultimately what you have contributed in this case to history, to trial by jury, to the fact that we're still discussing his legacy now in this podcast studio surrounded by busts, historic stone sculptural busts, is just a fascinating thing.

28:11So I would say that things aren't failures simply because they end, but I think your argument would be it's the nature of the ending. Yes, I think I... And I'll come back to Philippa Langley. Yes, please do. I think I mostly agree with that, and maybe this will bring us back to Philippa Langley. I wonder if Richard III's time is really now. I think we're living in an age that is more and, you know, this is everything that How to Fail and your philosophy is about. It's like that failure is not something to be ashamed of. Failure is something to learn from and grow from. We're unusual in that being a sort of a dominant cultural understanding.

28:49It's a sort of quite progressive, modern way of thinking. And for most of, my instinct is that for most of history, failure is sort of shameful and all sorts of other negative connotations. And so we've just sort of entered this period where Richard is really the perfect character because there are questions about his supposed guilt. I've started calling it supposed guilt. He might have won. There are sort of issues around his disability. He is a sort of the perfect character to be re-examined, loved, fetishized back to Philippa Langley. That is so beautifully put. Thank you. Yes, well done. I didn't even have something sarcastic to say after that.