What drew you to Richard in the first place?

For me, it was the very partisan treatment (as I only learned later) of him in Thomas Costain's THE LAST PLANTAGENETS, which I read when I was around 12 or 13 years old. I hadn't learned "the Tudor Myth," had never seen or read Shakespeare's play or seen a film of it, so what Costain wrote was all that I knew. But what I DID learn in Costain's book was that Richard had been BADLY TREATED by history, and that "fair play for the underdog" called for his rehabilitation. So OF COURSE I was "on his side" right from the start! It wasn't until I was "at university" that I read THE DAUGHTER OF TIME, and of course THAT "solved the mystery," didn't it, even it was a work of fiction? I also found other more recent studies in the univesity library, and was troubled to learn that some "bitter-enders" and "mossback holdouts" among these more recent writers STILL believed that Richard WAS at least morally responsible for the death of the Princes. I simply could NOT understand how ANYONE could arrive at such a position! I read PM Kendall, and even though he WAS a Yank, he seemed to be more "fair" to Richard, but EVEN HE seemed to retain some "doubts," or at least didn't believe that the mystery had been absolutely solved in Richard's favor. It was only later on that I came to realize that the mystery was "open-ended" and that the REAL satisfaction was in the exploration of the mystery itself rather than in personalities, such as Richard the Sinned-Against vs. Richard the Monster. Yes, the "Tudor Myth" WAS wrong about certain details, such as that Richard had a withered arm or that he definitely killed Henry VI with his own hand (after all, I have heard of PLENTY of people dying of "pure displeasure and melancholy" in MY life!) But even a brief stint as a member of the Richard III Society in the 1980s left me unable to hold up my right hand and swear that I believed that Richard was NOT responsible for the deaths of the Princes, and since for me that was the "Shibboleth" which separated "Ricardians" from the "infidels," I felt that I had to leave the Society. What brings me back "into the fray" is NOT Richard Himself, but rather the pleasure of exploring the Mystery.