To think Richard III blatantly killed the Princes in Tower?

as far as we know.... many information is missing from that time.

But they weren’t announced dead and buried officially. That IS the sort of thing which makes the records.

sorry, it's George's chapel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princes_in_the_Tower

"In 1789, workmen carrying out repairs in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, rediscovered and accidentally broke into the vault of Edward IV and Queen Elizabeth Woodville, discovering in the process what appeared to be a small adjoining vault. This vault was found to contain the coffins of two unidentified children. However, no inspection or examination was carried out and the tomb was resealed. The tomb was inscribed with the names of two of Edward IV's children: George, 1st Duke of Bedford who had died at the age of 2, and Mary of York who had died at the age of 14; both had predeceased the king.[34][35][36] However, two lead coffins clearly labelled as George Plantagenet and Mary Plantagenet were subsequently discovered elsewhere in the chapel (during the excavation for the royal tomb house for King George III under the Wolsey tomb-house in 1810–13), and were moved into the adjoining vault of Edward IV's, but at the time no effort was made to identify the two lead coffins already in Edward IV's vault.[37]"

Thomas More was schooled in the house of Bishop Morton who knew the key players in the 1480s. Given More's infamous integrity and refusal to bow to Tudor pressure, I generally put a reasonable amount of faith in his account and it matches so much of the later evidence, the bodies, the involvement of Deighton, Forrest and Tyrell etc. Far too much has been made by the RIII supporters of the Tudor /Shakespeare portrayal..this has been hugely undermined by the skeleton showing he was indeed deformed in the back.

But they weren’t announced dead?

Link, please? Googling brings up a number of skeletons and bones found in Windsor, but nothing specifically adolescent.

It's not a risk, if they were announced dead (from disease or simply let to die) then hastily buried 'officially', but then forgotten.

I’ve looked at the John Ashdowne Hill books on Amazon- which would posters recommend as a general view re the EW, the times, princes, also intrigued by Eleanor butler but not got an unlimited budget! TIA

From the below, some historians consider the bones were found outside the white tower, rather than specifically inside by the stairs, though that’s where the plaque is.

www.hrp.org.uk/blog/charles-ii-and-the-discovery-of-the-princes-in-the-tower-in-1674/

I think what would make more sense that anything else is that the bodies were disposed of in a random place never to be found again. Taking them to Windsor and burying them there feels like a pointless risk to take.

I think it's general consensus Princes are unidentified two boys that were discovered during renovation of Windsor Chapel. Staircase children might not be boys and are of wrong age.
Idea that they are low-key buried in Windsor Chapel and forgotten all about might make more sense considering Russian Tsars all have problems with pretenders pretending they were dead Tsars just because there wasn't public burial of Tsars people were pretending to be.

Maybe. I agree that it’s unlikely something would be specifically pulled up, but if there happened to be works in the Tower at that time, they might have been used - and if they weren’t, then another solution would be used.

No we don't, I probably got a bit carried away with flagstones.

My point holds true, though. Burying bodies inside the castle building itself would be pretty high risk, likely people would know which bit of building had been disturbed.

Much safer to take them somewhere else where they'll never be found, unless you want them to be in future.

If you had two small bodies to bury, are you going to get a team of builders in to lift up flag stones, or are you going to quietly sneak them out and bury them elsewhere? Which is less obvious?

Do we know what the state of the White Tower staircase was at that moment in 1483? Were there flagstones? My understanding is that the bones were found when King Charles was having some works done, more than a century later. We know that there was a lot of remodelling and redecorating in the Tower over the years.

If the 2 skeletons weren't the princes, who on earth were they? The chances that 2 boys of the same age from approximately the same time period were found buried together in the tower are pretty low.

Nope, the site goes back way earlier than the late middle ages and the other bones they've found have been earlier, these bones were quite deep and likely to be even older.

If you had two small bodies to bury, are you going to get a team of builders in to lift up flag stones, or are you going to quietly sneak them out and bury them elsewhere? Which is less obvious?

Whatever happened there is no way those bodies are the princes. They're roman or Saxon or who knows what.

The fact is that Richard didn’t need to kill them. He had already successfully taken the older one (Edward V)’s crown and made himself king. Yes the boys could pose a threat when they grew up IF they were successful in raising an army against Richard

Lady Jane Grey? Mary Queen of Scots? Perkin Warbeck?

You don't need to be free and in a position to raise an army to be a threat to a king. Other people do it on your behalf, perhaps even without your knowledge, perhaps even against your will.

It sucks, but it was pretty much essential to kill strong challengers. In the blood bath of the Wars of the Roses even more so.

No-exactly this. Most of them were probably burned after reading, however innocuous, for safety’s sake, as one days innocent letter was the next days arrest warrant.

I’ve always thought that the younger one was swapped and so survived-possibly one of the later ‘pretenders’ , or just living in obscurity. I think Henry did for the older one. But that’s just because I fell in love with Josephine Tey’s fictional Richard when I was about 10 and it’s proven to be unshakeable!

Love this!

As for drawn in by Tudor propaganda- I read The Daughter of Time and Paul Murray Kendall’s bio of Richard III in my teens, and have never read More and only recently seen Shakespeare’s RIII. So if anything, I was subject to Ricardian propaganda 😀

Thirdly, do people really think EVERY single document from 600plus years ago has survived? We're working off scraps and fragments. E o W could have written multiple letters saying 'burn this on reading but Richard killed my kids,' just because documents don't exist now doesn't mean they never did!

Exactly this! Henry’s letters to Anne Boleyn survive; hers to him do not (probably deliberately destroyed after her execution). Letters from Margaret Beaufort to Henry Tudor when he was in France haven’t been found but that doesn’t mean she didn’t write for 14 years or whatever, just that he was moving around and not able to keep letters or wasn’t very sentimental or dropped them in a puddle…

Less so? He had Hastings and Buckingham executed, for two, and there’s no sign he disapproved of the execution of his brother Clarence. Plus the execution of EW’s brother and son.

I would say he was as ruthless as the tudors after him and EIV
before him. Because you had to be if you were monarch then.

I agree. I can’t see Richard any more ruthless than others and if we look at the Tudors less so.

So have people been drawn in by Tudor propaganda ???

@DrPrunesqualer Funnily enough I was wondering the same thing about Shakespeare’s portrayal. Plus Thomas More described him v. negatively.

Shakespeare’s depiction is so villainous! It’s brilliant Tudor propaganda, but I wonder whether that’s made people sceptical that he was really such a bad ‘un?

He probably was, but in a typically ruthless Medieval monarch way as a PP pointed out.

Perhaps because of Shakespeares portrayal
Perhaps because no one likes the idea of anyone rewriting history ( if that is the case that is )
Perhaps because people need facts before they point the finger and there are none
Perhaps because people see Richard as unjustly accused.

These days we like a fair trial. ( The bodies would at least be a start. Perhaps they weren’t killed at all …. we really know nothing )