French forensic scientist investigates death of Richard the Lionheart

Another coup was to reveal that Diane de Poitiers, the favourite mistress of
France’s 16th century King Henri II was poisoned to death by the gold elixir
she believed would keep her eternally young.

More recently, he identified a mummified head unearthed by an antiques dealer
as belonging to Henri IV, the revered French king who died 400 years ago.

Now he is homing in on tiny dust fragments of King Richard’s heart, housed for
centuries in the Gothic cathedral of Rouen, northern France and saved from
marauding revolutionaries.

He is confident that a battery of chemical tests on just “one or two
milligrams” of the precious remains – only one per cent of the Rouen
relic – will be enough to provide conclusive results, likely to be unveiled
in the next three months.

“It is a forensic challenge. We want to get the maximum information from
the smallest possible sample,” Mr Charlier told the Parisien daily.

He hopes to reveal details on 12th-century embalming, then practised by
barbers or even cooks, and perhaps identify the germ that killed the
warrior-king, thought to have died of septicaemia.

Initial tests uncovered the presence of human cells, as well as “vegetable,
mineral and metal elements”.

Caroline Dorion-Peyronnet, curator of Rouen’s antiquities museum, said she had
refused numerous requests for samples by Britons seeking to establish family
links to the defunct monarch, but agreed to Mr Charlier’s request as there
would be “no DNA tests”.

Long loved in England as a pious, brave and highly cultured leader, Kind
Richard is described by historians as brutal, religiously intolerant and
unable to control his temper.

He led the Third Crusade of the Christian world against Muslims who had
captured Jerusalem in the 12th century but was unable to take the city after
feuding with his allies. He died after a crossbow bolt pierced his shoulder
during a siege of the castle of Chalus-Chabrol in the Limousin region.

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