To think Richard III blatantly killed the Princes in Tower?

He was undeniably loyal until the king died.

Yes… but, to play Devil’s advocate, that could have been purely in his own self interest. EIV gave him a lot of power/recognition and let him marry Anne Neville, against Clarence’s wishes.

EIV died quite unexpectedly and Richard could have expected to have had at least another 10 years as his “right hand man”

I parked on top of him a few times I expect.

Also pp keep saying RIII was so loyal and close to EIV yeah and he had his children declared bastards as soon as he could. He imperilled his wife and daughters and locked up his boys. Do we think that those actions showed love and loyalty to Edward?

He was undeniably loyal until the king died. After that... we don't know what pressures were on him. My gut feel is it was kill or be killed. He could see the way the wind was blowing and each step took him deeper and left him fewer and fewer options. And let's be honest, it nearly paid off. He was odds on favorite to win at Bosworth, at the time he appeared to have the throne in the bag. All he had to do was beat Henry, produce an heir and he'd be in clover with a dynasty.

The idea that he was some kind of theatrical villain is a bit far fetched, but who knows, it's possible.

In the words of Dominic Sandbrook... "he did it, and he was right to do it"

I mean, the chances of paternity not being what they should be in all families is very real, and I read an excellent thing a few years ago - possibly sparked by the talk of why Richard III's DNA match wasn't going to be one of the current royals now I think of it - which said that the modern Royal family is ruling entirely by consent and whether or not they have any hereditary 'right' to the throne is irrelevant. Given that Richard III himself was succeeded by a distant cousin with a claim to the throne through an illegitimate line who took the throne by force, and that the ruler at that time was often the one who had the confidence of the majority of the ruling classes, the idea that anyone would be hung up on bloodlines from then in the 21st century is hilarious.

Yep! Not least because - AFAIK - there’s no public record of the queen’s DNA, or any monarch’s DNA other than RIII, so what exactly would anything be “proved” against?!

That is really an unhinged argument!

and the queen apparantly didn’t want the bones tested because it would blow the royal family out of the water and it would prove the queen shouldn’t have been the queen.

What absolute nonsense. The queen is not directly descended from RIII so his claim to the throne is irrelevant. She is descended from Edward IV/Henry VII-Elizabeth of York/Margaret Tudor/James I and VI.

I listened to a podcast (last was it on bbc sounds or Spotify?) that was very compelling and suggested through quite a bit of research that the princes in the tower weren’t them.. they were very much alive and kicking and were some other historical figures that played a big part in history or something.
and the queen apparantly didn’t want the bones tested because it would blow the royal family out of the water and it would prove the queen shouldn’t have been the queen.

it was bonkers but very very interesting

dont ask me the name of the podcast, I’ve had 365 sleeps since then and my memory is terrible 😂

INJ a similar vein to @ItisIbeserk - https://www.englandcast.com/2025/04/princes-in-the-tower-3/

Interview and transcription about the evidence with a guy who wrote a book on the Tudor pretenders.

It felt a bit unfair to keep saying I couldn't remember details of the challenge to Langley's sources when it's so easy to look them up. This is just the first credible google result, from someone who addresses the sources used in a very readable way. They're clearly not dismissing them without consideration but they are pointing out context to them (and possible misinterpretation):Leaps of logic and forced conclusions: my take on Langley’s missing Princes – Royal History Geeks

(Gareth Streeter is not an academic historian but has written a biography of Prince Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII. I don't know much about him but the review is balanced.)

Janina Ramirez looked quite uncomfortable if I remember rightly. She was awkwardly positioned between TV presenter and historian, but it's not her period and it wasn't really clear why she was there!

I don't think there's been a lack of engagement on these points. There are some counter-arguments about the interpretation of them (as mentioned a few times on here, I think The Rest Is History discussed this in their excellent episode but the details escape me - around I think the purpose of some of them) but it's clearly an open discussion to be continued. I just don't think it's widely considered the slam dunk P Langley and associates painted it as (and she does sometimes use language that feels uncomfortably close to conspiracy which I think does her no good). Just as the new research on the potential possession of the chain of office has been challenged on the 'other side'.

In general in history, looking for material to prop up an existing theory isn't necessarily helpful as you need to be open minded to the context and analysis of your sources. That's something we teach GCSE history students! Much harder to maintain a totally neutral stance in practice of course as we all come with own biases built in, and if people didn't write whole books based on interpretation that others violently disagreed with, we'd have a lot less fun. Given that medieval history is often using very scant evidence, it's very much open to this sort of exchange.

Just to go back to Katherine Swynford of Katherine fame briefly, Alison Weir wrote the most extraordinary non-fiction book a decade or so back in which she tried to use historical sources to prop up the story of the novel, something I don't think Anya Seton herself would have thought sensible. It was very odd indeed.

@VintageDiamondGirl all of those documents relate to a person claiming yo be Richard of York. Doesn't mean he was. The TV programme and book associated with this "new" evidence were typically superficially presented, given supposed "heft" by Rob Rinder. There's a reason professional academic historians have given it a swerve. I like Janina Ramirez but her comments were very qualified and luke warm. If the academic establishment thought there was something convincing there, they'd have been included...but they weren't.

Yes yes this. EW had to do a lot of shapeshifting to keep her pretty head on her shoulders. You can’t read about RIII and the Princes out of context. It was not only a place in time but also a place itself I.e. court which had its own ecosystem and rules of engagement.

YY @EverybodyLTB - plus EW made a powerful enemy in Warwick (the Kingmaker) as he had wanted EIV to marry a foreign princess, having backed him for the throne, and the marriage put a stop to that. Hence Warwick eventually hooking up with George of Clarence and Margaret of Anjou.

Also pp keep saying RIII was so loyal and close to EIV yeah and he had his children declared bastards as soon as he could. He imperilled his wife and daughters and locked up his boys. Do we think that those actions showed love and loyalty to Edward? We know the Woodvilles were hated, it stands to reason that RIII wanted to see the back of the lot of them, but that wasn’t EIV’s intention or choice and Richard went against the setup that Edward had envisaged.

Just a simple note also on why the Woodvilles were so hated. There were tonnes of them, they were reasonably low born (still bloody posh) and they were put in gold standard positions of power that only a few nobleman had previously had to jockey over. They were seen as usurpers and grabby, and the noble dukes and earls of the time were sick to death of the lot of them. It was about 1000 x worse than say if after William and Kate got married, her siblings were given Duke and Duchess titles and given each something like Cornwall and Yorkshire. Then Carole Middleton started educating the kids George, Charlotte and Louis and making laws. The frothing over the Woodvilles was bonkers but also in the context of the nobility and court at the time, kind of understandable. The spaces they took up were finite resources, and put a hell of a lot of noses out of joint.

I believe I linked this above, but linking again,

www.theguardian.com/science/2013/feb/05/princes-in-tower-staying-under

And for those wondering why Elizabeth Woodville remained publicly silent-look up the fate of Maud de Braose who accused the king of killing his nephew.

I disagree with you. While putting rivals and rebels to death wasn’t unusual, murdering children was regarded with disgust. Children of rebels and rivals were not normally put to death-either they were hostages or stripped of their inheritance. Things were different with adults, but it was not normal to kill children. These boys were neither rebels or traitors, neither were their parents. However, the eldest was highly influenced by and close to his mother’s family which put Richard in a quandary. He saw his career and fortune waning-and possibly his own family at risk. I think he decided to kill them-whether or not he was haunted by his conscience, we’ll never know. I think so as he was very close to his elder brother.

I never understand why people want RIII to be better than he was? He was a right cunt. The evidence that we do have, the solid evidence, proves that he was a piece of shit who usurped the throne. To kill off those two boys was not out of character for him, and was not even out of place for the times. Killing them fits into the context of what was going on, and would have been on one hand frowned upon, but the other excused as a necessary evil. Even sidelining the actual few documents we have, it interests me that EW supported HVII and not RIII (and was terrified of and sought sanctuary from the latter). That said, EoY marrying her brothers’ killer (though I don’t agree it was HVII) was also not massively out of the realms of possibility. It would have been a way to stay alive and keep her few remaining family members off of the chopping block.

People go from one extreme to the other sometimes with history. Often people assume no sentimentality existed because of infant mortality rates, violence of the time etc etc but people did love and care, had loyalties, had human and familial bonds. They also, conversely, could be absolutely ruthless and did what needed to be done in order to survive. Both things can be true. EW I’m sure loved her children, and lack of letters/evidence doesn’t mean she didn’t know exactly who had killed them at the time. It doesn’t mean she wouldn’t have had to at some point move the thoughts of revenge or whatever emotion to the side to prevent more bloodshed. So it could have been anyone that she still went on to ally with in the future. Alliance with whoever, after the Princes’ deaths doesn’t necessarily mean that she believed that person/faction innocent. Sometimes people had to take what they could get at court. Look at Margaret Pole. She didn’t turn around and say “fuck the lot of you”, she remained at court and tried to maintain a good position for herself and her children.

The Queen refused and nothing happened.
Either because she was Head of the Church of England or because of potential disturbance of royal bones. Her wishes were respected

Perhaps Charles will allow the dna tests.

It isn’t up to Charles, it’s up to Westminster Abbey/the Church of England. Though Charles would be consulted.

Executing people in those days really wasn’t unusual. ( We know nothing of his thoughts on those actions ).

I agree @DrPrunesqualer which is why I said I thought RIII was similarly ruthless to other monarchs of the time. (Not ascribing any emotion to the word ruthless, just actions)

@ItisIbeserk ‘I can't remember where I read it at the time of her last documentary/evidence reveal but the documents she talked about are not new knowledge to medieval historians.’

It appears that whilst historians may have known about the discovery of some of the documents at the time, they were not studied.

The documents featured in Phillipa Langley & Rob Rinder's documentary 'The Princes in the Tower: The New Evidence' (watch on YouTube, I cannot link, sorry) were:

The Gelderland Document
Discovered in the 1950s in the Gelderland Archives, Netherlands. Sent at the time to Dutch historian Prof. Diederick Enklaar at the University of Utrecht; who gave it scant interest. A witness statement written in the first-person recording Richard Duke of York’s story from the point at which he left sanctuary in Westminster as a 9-year-old boy in 1483.

The Lille Receipt for Weapons
‘In May 2020, Albert Jan de Rooij of the Dutch Research Group discovered in the archive of Lille a receipt belonging to King Maximilian I dated 16 December 1487. It references Margaret of Burgundy (Edward’s aunt). The receipt is signed by three leading members of Maximilian’s court and records the king’s collection of, and payment for, 400 pikes (weapons for elite troops). The weapons had been collected by Maximilian in June of that year. The receipt states that the weapons were: ‘to serve her nephew – son of King Edward, late her brother (may God save his soul), [who was] expelled from his dominion.’’

Dresden Archive
In February 2019, the Dutch Research Group rediscovered a pledge of payment by ‘Richard of England’ to Duke Albert of Saxony date 4th October 1493 in the Dresden Archive, Germany. The receipt pledge is for 30,000 florins signed by ‘Richard of England’ with his monogram and seal. It is also signed by 2 of his supported.

So much written evidence (which was authenticated by expert in the documentary) surely requires further consideration by experts, academics and other historians?