Ricardian (Richard III)

Ricardians are people interested in altering the posthumous reputation of Richard III, King of England (reigned 1483–1485). Richard III has long been portrayed unfavourably, most notably in William Shakespeare's play Richard III. In an effort to turn this around and paint such characterizations as politically motivated, Ricardian historians' work has produced editions of documents from Richard's reign, research, and articles which have contributed to scholarship of England in the 1480s.

The two most notable societies of Ricardians are the Richard III Society and the Richard III Foundation, Inc. A much smaller organisation, the Plantagenet Alliance, comprising collateral descendants of Richard III, is also considered to be Ricardian.

Ricardian historiography includes works by Horace Walpole and by Sir George Buck, who was the king's first defender, after the Tudor period.

Ricardian fiction includes Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time and Sharon Kay Penman's The Sunne in Splendour. Elizabeth George writes of the fictional discovery of an exonerating document in her short story "I Richard". Science Fiction writer Andre Norton, in the 1965 novel Quest Crosstime, depicted an alternate history in which Richard III won at Bosworth and turned out to be one of England's greatest kings, "achieving the brilliance of the Elizabethan era two generations earlier".

The Richard III Society was founded in 1924 by Liverpool surgeon S. Saxon Barton as The Fellowship of the White Boar, Richard's badge and a symbol of the Yorkist army in the Wars of the Roses. Its membership was originally a small group of interested amateur historians whose aim was to bring about a re-assessment of the reputation of Richard III.

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