History is Written by the Biggest Liar.

Well, it worked for a while, didn't it? Referring to the body of Richard III being discovered beneath a parking lot. The joke is playing on a gag from Blackadder S1E1, where Edmund accidentally decapitates the king, whom Edmund thought was stealing his horse. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t9qaYpPyfz0/URBzS_IfPMI/AAAAAAAAUBY/wDvTSGetYQQ/s1600/66190_4288074489309_136643974_n.jpg

       Most people know the claim that history is written by the victor. The person who won the war, spread the rumor faster, and occasionally the person who threatened the chronicler, gets to decided what is put on the record as the true events. Act 5, scene 5 of Richard the Third shows Henry Tudor as the new king, pious and merciful, fighting for peace in the kingdom, not just a man out to advance his own station.

Inter their bodies as befits their births.

 Proclaim a pardon to the soldiers fled

That in submission return to us,

And then, as we have ta'en the sacrament,

We will unite the white rose and the red. (5.5.15-19)

     Not only is it in Henry's interests to play the good guy, it is in Shakespeare's interests to write him that way. Queen Elizabeth I was, after all, Henry's granddaughter. I doubt any monarch would be pleased if a popular playwright claimed their ancestor's claim to the throne (and thus their own) was weak or illegitimate, let alone a bad person.