I haven’t forgotten you, Richard III!
Well, of course we don’t know that Armitage will ever play Richard III — but this week was really a week for Thorin Oakenshield. If there were a Richard Armitage version of Richard III out there in spe, he would have been jealous of all the attention he lost to Thorin, especially just as the Leicester excavation project produced such apparently specular results. So this post tries to make up for that, a little, I hope.
Updates with technological suggestions regarding the planned Sunne in Splendour group read are found at the end of this post. A reminder that the event begins September 30th.
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If Richard III himself is getting restless, the fans are getting restless, too, as evidence at Richard Armitage Confessions shows:
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Source: Richard Armitage Confessions
Source: Richard Armitage Confessions
And I kind of suspect this is a moment when a lot of things may be going on behind the scenes. So does Frenz, apparently, in her urging to Armitage to strike while the iron is hot. One indication we’ve all seen — this really strangely worded supplement to the Leicester Mercury published by the University of Leicester naming Armitage as one of the most influential native sons. Trying to make him look British — and thus affordable and high cultural — and not Hollywood — and thus not expensive and fantasy hero –, much?
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Two Richard III tidbits from bloggers who support the King Richard Armitage fan initiative:
- Cute, h/t Grati: Leicester second graders share their awareness of Richard III.
- Fabo reproduces (and links to further information about) some Richard III fan art in a beautiful Art Deco style by Emma Vieceli — that incidentally also very much let me visualize how Armitage might look in this role.
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A snippet forwarded by Kathrynruthd from last week’s Sunday Times about the person on whose DNA the identification rests:
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So, yeah, given the current circumstances, the opportunity to realize this project looks better than ever, and I imagine that if people with influence are looking for indices of popular interest, they’re aware of the fan petition to have Armitage involved in such a project. I’m assuming that since I’ve been begging for your signature for a year now, if you’re going to sign, you probably have already. We’re now up to 970 signatures (our goal was 1,000 for King Richard Armitage Week 2012, so we really did make a lot of progress, with about 100 signatures garnered up to that week). If you haven’t signed, do it and push us over 1,000, a nice round number.
But the whole purpose of the website is not the collection of signatures, even if that’s the step we recommend. Indeed, if you want the best selection of accurate and current information on Richard III in the news, the place to go is that website — to which you can subscribe via email.
For instance, this month you find there:
- This page aggregates all relevant press coverage.
- a link to the live footage to the news conference announcing the find.
- Latest news, including links to information about the brewing battle about where the remains will be buried if they are affirmed as authentic. There’s also a link to really hilarious sketch, “Richard III: My Car Park Years.”
- And KRA remains neutral on the plan to bury the remains anywhere in particular. My suspicion is that if the bones are solid enough, there’ll be a state funeral and he’ll be buried in Westminster, but I’ve been wrong before. I know Kathrynruthd has a bet in place already for somewhere else.
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And now, on to the collective read!
Slightly differing information is posted in different places, but the event begins a week from today, on Sunday, September 30th.
The book is Sharon Kay Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour, the historical novel that (via his father) inspired Richard Armitage to pursue a Richard III project. If you have yet to buy it, by following these links (UK) and (US) to amazon via RichardArmitageNet.com, you can generate a commission that will be donated to charity.
During the week before the discussion, participants may post quotes to twitter and to the relevant facebook pages, but no spoilers! Discussion begins with chapters 1-5, which are to be read before the discussion. (Do you see me me letting my professor hang out there?)
For pros who already know how to use Twitter and/or have participated in an #ArmitageWatch event in the past, here are all the details in their simplest, most unadorned versions. The hashtag is #RA4R3, and the schedule follows the #GuyWatch and #LucasWatch evening times for North America.
Times are here, with my understanding that fans in Australian and NZ (where it will be Monday morning) can make the necessary calculations off U.S. times.
For those who can’t or don’t want to participate in real time or on Twitter (I’m thinking especially Europeans, eek, 2 and 3 a.m. for most of Europe) information on the Group Read can be found at the event page at Facebook, though note the reading schedule at the Institute of Armitage Studies facebook page is apparently one week ahead. About 40 people are listed as probable participants. I have to admit I’m not clear from that info where exactly the comments are to be left, but there are only two places, so it shouldn’t be hard to find the discussion once it starts.
The discussion, I’m told by Fanny, is intended to be freeform with no advance questions or themes. When you get there, drop your impressions and the things you want to talk about into your tweets or onto FB, and discussion will take on shape from there based on the desires of the participants.
BUT. I KNOW. MANY READERS ARE SAYING: TWEET? TWITTER? HASHTAG? The rest of this post is for you.
For those who know little to nothing about Twitter, but want to learn, it’s not so hard.
Sign up for a Twitter account, then go to tweetchat and enter the hashtag, and you should be all set to tweet.
Did that sound like Greek to you? I know it did to me and I’ve been tweeting for over a year now.
BUT: A great post here links to explanations of how to tweet and how to use the tweetchat function. It links you to information about how to start using Twitter, about what a hashtag is (the text you put in every message or “tweet” to allow other users with similar interests to find you, which always starts with “#”) and how to use a hashtag in tweetchat in order to find the “room” where the conversation is taking place and make sure you’re in it.
For newbies unfamiliar with twitter, I really recommend that you do use tweetchat. My biggest issue with Twitter as a beginner was that the information flow was simply overwhelming; using the tweetchat room (with the #RA4R3 hashtag) will streamline the information that reaches you and make sure it’s only about this group read. And apparently, tweeting from that room also guarantees that the hashtag will be added correctly to your posts, so it makes it easier to stay in the conversation.
In case you can’t figure out how to get there yourself, the tweetchat “room” for this event will be here.
I hope that helped at least a little.
I’m going to be accompanying the event with a weekly quiz question — yes, I’ve been warned my last questions were way too hard! I’ll try to make it easier this time. Because I can’t usually do anything in real time on Sunday evening, as I’m preparing for class on Monday, I will also attempt to follow the event with periodic blog entries.
Me + Richard Armitage 
Thank you! I’ve shared your post on the page and included : Happy Reading! Official start of reading chapters 1 through 5. Your comments, thoughts, impressions welcomed starting next Sunday all day here (on the facebook page) or Sunday 9pm in tweetchat #RA4R3
I hope that covers those in other time zones or who have conflicts Sun eve.
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Thanks for the clarifications!
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Facebook lists the READING of the chapters per week, discussions is each following Sunday.
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Thank you very much, Servetus! Now I see much clearer, how things will work.
Though I will not be able to join the live events, but 3 a.m. Sunday/Monday night just is not a time where I am able to discuss anything ;o) CD is hopefully happily snoring at that time ;o).
I will try to follow the collective read though and will try to post some (provocative ?) questions to start discussions around the currently read parts on Mondays. Who likes, is warmly invited to join in and discuss on KRA as well. (KRA posts use the hashtag #RA4R3, so will join in on the Twitter stream during the week and questions/posts go to Facebook as well, so can spread the discussion there.)
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I just had to sit down and read everything. I think for the organizers, who are already doing #ArmitageWatch, it’s easier to understand than for the rest of us 🙂
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Thx for the post! I’m ready for the group read. I kept notes as I was reading Sunne in Splendour last year, it was such an enjoyable read, I will always thank Richard for introducing me to this wonderful book.
As for Richard getting involved in the making of a Richard III series; I have a good feeling about all that’s been happening lately, now it’s the right time to make that dream come true, and I’m sure Richard is fully aware of it. He might be working so hard to financially be involved in the project; only time will tell.
Thank you again for all the updates 🙂
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yeah, we don’t get to see what goes on behind the scenes. I actually think that’s good in a lot of ways. I enjoyed universities a lot more when I was a student in them. Working behind the scenes is an entirely different story 🙂
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Long-time reader, first-time commenter. I’m not sure what you found strange about the wording of the Leicester Mercury article, maybe it’s down to differences in British and US English, but from this British reader’s perspective there’s not much odd about it.
Love the blog, thanks for writng and sharing.
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E, thanks for leaving a comment and welcome! I hope this won’t be the last time. Thanks also for your kind words about the blog.
(Aside from the fact that it appeared so suddenly, right after the dig results, which has for U.S. Americans the tinge of a publicity blitz — let’s get lots of great info about U of Leicester in the press all at once so everyone notices it! And there was tons of it that ten days or so — the development folks at a U.S. university would have been jumping up and down with all that press coverage in the major British press), this is what struck me about the article:
1) It’s hard for me to think of Armitage as “influential.” I can see why Leics would want to claim him, I’d definitely say “talented,” and sure, I can think of lots of other great adjectives to describe him, but I wouldn’t call him “influential.” He may be a great artist, but he doesn’t steer money or artistic productions or really anything. He’s not a captain of culture. By his own repeated admission in the press, he only goes there nowadays to visit his folks. So why feature him at all? From my perspective, people are typically featured in publications like that because the responsible party is trying to make a statement of some kind or get something from the people featured (and it’s not always material, sometimes it’s publicity, or agreement, or nice words, or a better relationship, or even silence — whatever — praise isn’t just random or made out of goodwill). In other words, of all the great people who can be possibly be associated with Leicester, why pick *these* in particular? Why Armitage? From a publicity perspective, it wouldn’t be just to be nice, or because there isn’t anyone else they could pick. The Univ of Leic is paying for that insert. They have to be able to get something out of it (or think they will). Maybe it’s that they want him to live out his association with Leics more fully, or pay attention to them, or donate some of his fee for “The Hobbit” to their theater department, if they have one. We don’t know. But there was certainly a motive.
The second thing that I thought was odd was the description of Armitage itself. They only have a couple of column inches available, so they can’t reproduce his whole vita. They don’t want to state the name of the village he grew up in for obvious reasons of privacy, and who cares about which elementary school he went to? But that’s kind of it, really, for his connection to Leics, as Coventry isn’t even in Leics, and after that everything he’s done in his life is related to the British (and now the international) cultural industry in places beyond Leics. That isn’t going to bother readers — presumably Mercury readers are happy to learn about “local boy made good,” and given Armitage’s periodic appearance in the Leicester press, the beginning of the piece can be explained in that way. But if what the people who paid for the supplement want to do is to call him “influential,” then why not mention the BSkyB production — seen by fewer viewers in England, perhaps, but a bigger money machine than BBC stuff — and “The Hobbit”? If Armitage is “influential,” his ability to star in big money, profitable productions is probably the major reason based on things that have actually happened in his career, but that point isn’t raised, which undermines the position of the article that he is “influential.” Instead, they focus on Budapest, which they don’t call a circus (reads as high cultural), West End musical theater productions, and Robin Hood and Spooks (BBC, and stuff big chunks of the readership will have seen). To me, the conclusion was that they were trying to make him look British (as opposed to Hollywood / international) and high cultural (as opposed to fantasy teenager videogame entertainment like The Hobbit) while still an audience magnet (look at those BBC primetime roles!) — and this is noticeable because they left out the best evidence for the argument that he is “influential” out in order to do so. (Following that reading, the only thing surprising is the omission of the RSC.)
To me, one plausible reading was that the piece was offering a veiled argument or at least a nihil obstat for either funding a Richard III drama he wanted to do, or casting him in one. He’s homegrown, connected to Leics, sufficiently highbrow to be taken seriously, and the star of major British productions, so willing to work in the UK for UK rates.
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I’m a night owl but 3 am is a little too late even for me! Especially if I have work the day after! 🙂 I’ve been tweeting a lot lately but never used tweetchat before. I’ve started reading Sunne and am enjoying it but oh dear I really find it hard to follow who is related to whom, all those siblings, cousins, uncles, aunts etc etc. *sigh*
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There are quite a few books with genealogical charts in them. You might be able to find some on line. I find that drawing a picture always helps. Part of the difficulty is that the English are not very original with names, so you have lots of people walking around with the same given names.
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Exactly. It’s like they chose from like 5 names…Thomas, Richard, Edward, John, Henry…I can’t help but thinking there was some serious inbreeding going on as all those noble families seem to be related to one another…
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That is part of the problem. A lot of the players in the Wars of the Roses trace their ancestry to Edward III. Through the marriages of his children, they are tied to the French and Spanish lines, as well as to some of the older English families. Consanguinity had to be pretty close to be a bar to marriage, even though technically marriages were dissolved based on more distant relationships.
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Richard III had to be dispensed to marry Anne Neville. Why he only applied for one necessary dispensation rather than both is a matter of (interesting) discussion.
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I agree; it’s indeed fodder for an interesting discussion.
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I agree, the names are annoying.
I don’t know exactly how it’s going to work out, but we’re going to try to provide a place for people for whom the time is inconvenient to read along. You can also put your tweets in that chatroom via the hashtag indepedently of the time.
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The Facebook page is another place where I’ve announced the reading of chapters and invited to share comments for those in other time zone. It’s more user friendly for discipussions as there are no character restrictions.
https://www.facebook.com/InstituteOfArmitage
I doubt RA will play RIII he’s just to old now, we have also no way of knowing if he’s still interested.
It’s unclear what the aim was of the university in publishing RA in their article, can’t wait for the documentary, who knows they might mention him! LOL
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That’s great for people who want to use FB! I linked to that in the original post, too. It’s not really convenient for me because I’m a heavy RL FB user and that’s the FB I have open most of the time.
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That’s true for many I believe, some choose to engage via Facebook or some choose to use it as a source 🙂
I don’t expect much action there
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I’m going to be interested to see what happens — if it’s possible to have a multi-platform discussion, or if it will end up limiting itself to twitter.
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[…] last Wednesday, 19th of September 2012, during J.R.R. Tolkien Week. Servetus presented King Richard on her blog Me+Richard Armitage, as Thorin Oakenshield last week got so much attention that she thought, our king might get […]
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Two Kings & Two Towns & One Book | King Richard Armitage said this on September 24, 2012 at 5:44 pm |
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