| Sir Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester | 
Age: 29 (born 2 October, 1452)
Spouse: Mary of Burgundy (24, b. 13 February 1457)
Traits: 6 pts
+4 Battles (base 3, +1 from 'Reserved' trait)
+2 Personal Combat
+2 Survival (base 1, +1 from 'Pessimistic' trait)
+5% income (Austere)
-2 Charisma ('Pessimistic' and 'Reserved')
Temperaments:
Phlegmatic - dominant:
- Austere: This character disdains pomp and pageantry, instead preferring a plain & simple (the uncharitable might say 'rigidly spartan') lifestyle. +5% income, -1 Charisma.
- Reserved: This character is a stoic who generally keeps to him/herself and exercises strict control over their emotions. While this means they're not likely to make reckless moves in court or on the battlefield, they can come across as unfeeling robots to others. +1 battle rolls, -1 Charisma.
Melancholic - subservient:
- Pessimistic: This character is always looking at the negative side of things. They may be right in some cases - when you suspect every man you meet to be a bad guy, you're probably right at least one out of ten times - but it doesn't exactly make them endearing. +1 to survival rolls, -1 Charisma.
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Richard, Duke of Gloucester is the youngest son of his namesake Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York and failed claimant to the English throne. From birth he was afflicted with scoliosis, a disorder that left his spine unnaturally curved and forced him to wear heavy padded clothing to mask the resulting hunchback. Despite his disfigurement, Richard grew up to be a diligent lad, who would rigorously spar until he collapsed from exhaustion in an (unsuccessful) effort to set his back right. He also got along with his family, who by and large loved and accepted him even in spite of his humpback, from his parents to his elder brothers Edward, Edmund and George and his many sisters from Anne, future Duchess of Exeter to Margaret, future Duchess of Burgundy. In return, he gave them his similarly unconditional love and loyalty.
What a shame, then, that his father York and brother Edmund, Earl of Rutland were killed at the Battle of Wakefield and their heads spiked above Micklegate Bar when Richard was only eight years old. And so, for the first time in his life, the soon-to-be Duke of Gloucester - then living at Middleham Castle, the seat of his father's Neville ally the Earl of Warwick, and acquainted with his host's daughters - learned true hatred and wrath.
Like their remaining middle brother George, Richard was too young to help Edward of March avenge their butchered kin. Nonetheless this quiet and ponderous last son of York understood what it meant when that eldest brother of theirs returned in glorious triumph from the battlefields of Towton to be crowned Edward IV, and even before hitting puberty he took in the sight of the head of Margaret of Anjou - the Queen of the House of Lancaster, and the woman who had York and Rutland's heads spiked - rolling on Tower Hill after a later clash at Wallingford with a decidedly unchildlike nonchalance. Upon reaching the age of 14 two years after that, he was assigned as ward to Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland and a former Lancastrian who had demonstrated his own allegiance to York by helping to destroy the Lancastrian Duke of Somerset and his Scottish at Carlisle soon after Wallingford, and served diligently in his new capacity for four years. In that time he unwittingly played a small but crucial part in causing the downfall of another Margaret, his guardian's daughter Queen Margaret Percy; it was he who recovered his nephews borne by Margaret after she handed them off to a Flemish artist, and honestly informed both Edward IV and Northumberland that Margaret had told him that she trusted that Fleming more than anyone else in the court (for some reason which she did not explain to him in particular), which in turn planted the seed of fear that she was having an affair behind Edward's back in the minds of half the realm.
Having been emancipated at 18, the young Duke of Gloucester was assigned to serve as Lord Chancellor of Wales and later Lord Captain of Calais, and again he served quietly, faithfully and dutifully in both offices. Some years later, while his other brother George of Clarence was fighting in Ireland, Richard was married to the noble lady Mary - then only living child to Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy, Europe's wealthiest and most warlike magnate; as it turned out, the marriage was key to a renewed Anglo-Burgundian alliance against the Crown of France, whose wearer King Louis had supported the House of Lancaster against Richard's own House of York time and again. Soon after conceiving a son with his new wife, Richard was directed to aid his father-in-law in a war against the German city of Neuss, which had done him offense by evicting Burgundy's ally from their halls of power, and to bring him round to support Edward IV's own invasion of France. This Gloucester did his best to accomplish, helping Charles storm Neuss' walls and reduce its gates to splinters with gunpowder-filled 'rams' before 1474 ended.
Unfortunately for all parties involved Charles was a muleheaded man with more ambition & pride than sense, overly determined to realize his dream of a new Lotharingia stretching from the Low Countries and the Moselle Valley to Arles, and drunk on his victory over Neuss he decided to press his luck with an invasion of Lorraine rather than any actual part of France. Disgruntled though he may have been at being ignored, the ever stoic and dutiful Richard followed his father-in-law into defeat after defeat at the business end of Swiss pike columns, until Charles finally got himself killed at the 1477 Battle of Nancy where he attempted to take on a Swiss and Lorrainer army several times larger than his own in the middle of a snowstorm. Richard was left to pick up the pieces that were left of the once-proud Burgundian army, and combining them with his own battered English detachment, he led this badly bloodied host on a desperate struggle to preserve the Burgundian possessions from French encroachment and at the same time assist his brother's armies in western & northern France wherever he could. In these dark years where he frantically raced from battlefield to battlefield and engaged French armies often several times larger than his own with little room for personal comfort or even sleep, the only help he got from home came in the form of the Dukes of Buckingham and Suffolk, the brother-in-law of Queen Elizabeth Woodville and husband to his older sister Elizabeth of York respectively. With their support, and despite the odds arrayed against him, Gloucester managed to keep Burgundy in the fight and persist as a thorn in France's side until 1479, when to his deep anger and disgust the Burgundian peers cut a separate peace deal with their French adversary behind his back and that of his other sister Margaret, Charles the Bold's widow.
Abandoned by the Burgundians, Richard and the other Englishmen made their way to Normandy, where they linked up with the main English host under Edward IV himself and were present at the great yet greatly inconclusive bloodbath of Quessigny, 1480. He was present at the signing of the Treaty of Picquigny later that same year, where the five-year war was brought to an end and yet England managed to secure only a slice of Aquitaine for all their efforts and all the blood shed; a great injustice, Gloucester thinks, which he blames on the Burgundian nobility for abandoning the fight. Since then, Gloucester returned to his duties as Lord Captain of Calais, and privately seethes with resentment over what could have been. Coincidentally, his focus on the southern half of the Kingdom of England has also left him in position to attend his eldest brother's deathbed, bringing him both unmeasured grief and hidden opportunities to slip out from the shadow of the Sun of York...
As a man, Richard could hardly resemble his brothers Edward IV, Rutland and Clarence less. Where they are fair and strongly built, he is dark and slender, though years of exercise and warfare have left his muscles well-honed and taut. And where they are full of vitality, vigor and fire, he is much cooler and sterner in temperament, quiet and calculating with little love of pageantry, all bite and no bark. His experience trying to direct an entire front of the Hundred Years' War's latest phase while chronically outnumbered by the French foe, undersupplied by his increasingly reluctant Burgundian allies, and almost entirely cut off from his family and home have left him gaunter and grimmer than ever. Still, though his hunchbacked countenance and cold manner may be off-putting to many, the youngest son of York is a loyal brother and friend to those few who truly know him. Moreover, with his older brother Clarence still alive and ahead of him in the line of succession (as well as all of Clarence's progeny), none have reason to fear that this particular Duke might snuff out his nephews borne by Woodville, even if their mother's constant grasping for more power and titles has increasingly concerned him over the past years. 'Loyaulte me lie' (loyalty binds me) goes the White Boar's motto, and for the foreseeable future at least, he is determined to not give anyone cause to doubt the truth of those words. |
| Richard's family & relations | Mary of Burgundy, Duchess of Gloucester, Richard's wife - 24, b. 13 February 1457
Lionel of Calais, Richard and Mary's son - 6, b. 11 January 1475
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Richard is:
Brother to George, Duke of Clarence; Anne Holland, née Plantagenet of York; Elizabeth de la Pole, née Plantagenet of York; Margaret of Valois-Burgundy, née Plantagenet of York
Paternal uncle to King Edward V, his siblings & paternal half-siblings (incl. Margaret Percy's issue and Arthur, Viscount Bourchier)
Uncle in both blood and law to Philip, Duke of Burgundy
Brother-in-law to Elizabeth Woodville, Anthony Woodville and their siblings
Brother-in-law to Jane Howard, Clarence's wife
Brother-in-law to Henry Holland, 3rd Duke of Exeter, and uncle by marriage to his children
Brother-in-law to John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk, and uncle by marriage to his children |
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Dover Castle and the Gloucester estates
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