This essay traces the provenance of René Girard’s familiarity with Walter Pater’s idea of “inverted rights” in relation to Shakespeare’s Richard II. It demonstrates the likelihood that Girard likely did not have extensive first-hand knowledge of Pater’s essay “Shakespeare’s English Kings,” but learned about it from Ernst Kantorowicz’s book The King’s Two Bodies. The essay continues by argued that Girard does not give proper credit to Pater’s astute anthropological insight regarding the inherent doubleness of the originary rite of coronation, which carries within itself the shadow of the “inverted rite” of deposition.