'Antihero' from PeterD - 'Richard III'

Hero or villain?  Murderous wicked uncle or rightful king?  Shakespearean villain or victim of Tudor propaganda?  The jury is out on Richard III, but over 500 yrs after his short reign he still sparks debate, which is more than can be said for many medieval monarchs.

Anyway my submission to the Antihero challenge round is the last of the Plantagenets based on the Perry miniatures special edition of Richard III rising up from the parking lot following the discovery and subsequent verification of is skeleton.  It is a lovely figure and really a joy to paint with such character that it responded well to even basic work.  I primed this in flat black rather than my normal  white, as I felt that the black would better capture the tarmac and provide a good undercoat to the plate armour.  I tried to keep the actual paints simple with some basic shading and washes as the combination of the figure sculpt and the undercoat worked wonders. 

While I'm on the subject of this mini, I want to give a plug for the best representation I've seen yet of the figure over here Gonzaga at Fornovo 1495.

As to my opinion on Richard, probably he was most of the above and likely involved in the deaths of his nephews.  However, he lived in a bloody era and I don't think is crimes were any worse than this of the so called "good" kings who happened to survive long enough to kill off their rivals and rewrite the history books.  Simple fact checking shows that 5 of the last 9 Plantagenet Kings lost their thrones to usurpers (Edward II, Richard II, Henry VI, Edward V and Richard III), and the fates of most of them reads like an episode of "Missing Persons" - last seen on such and such a date at Castle X. Richard was if nothing else a good soldier, a solid supporter of his brother Edward IV (at least while he was alive) and a very brave man.  He also went down swinging, being the only King after the Norman Conquest to die on the field of battle.