Given the recent reburial of King Richard III with hundreds paying respects, how good a king was he? Does he deserve any respect?

by Schlid
TheVegetaMonologues

Your question is phrased in such a way that it's probably going to be difficult for anyone to answer in a way that is satisfactory to the subreddit guidelines.

His reign was short, and was taken up more by efforts to protect and solidify his power than anything else. After their claim to the throne was delegitimized, he imprisoned his two young nephews in the tower of London to limit their mother's family's ability to threaten his power. I'm assuming that will vacate most people's ability to respect him as a man. Indeed, he lost a good bit of popularity over that, and within a few months of his accession to the throne he was at work quelling a rebellion of gentry who were loyal to his late brother.

Perhaps most notably, when he died at Bosworth Field, his forces initially outnumbered Henry Tudor's, but he was abandoned by Lord Thomas Stanley, who waited a ways back from the battlefield until it was underway to pick a side, which ought to show you what he thought of him.