To think Richard III blatantly killed the Princes in Tower?

[HenryTudor1485]

He’s undergone a bit of a reappraisal recently but I’m not having it. He was a wrong un.

He clearly had his nephews killed. He had motive, means and opportunity. The dates when they “disappeared” all add up.

He done the crime. He never did the time (unless you consider being defeated in battle and being hacked to death “time”).

Henry claimed the throne by right of conquest, but he aided public acceptance of his legitimacy by marrying the princes’ sister. There were rumours Richard III had intended to marry Elizabeth of York too and poisoned his wife to do so.

In David Mitchell’s really quite funny history book, Unruly, he describes this all nicely. HVII had to make a whole load of bullshit up to merge into a big fat incoherent claim to the throne. Conquering! …..but my grandparents! Elizabeth of York! He’d have had (IMO) none of those, except the jazzy non-primogeniture cocktail of blood, if the Princes had lived. My opinion re RIII declaring to marry EoY has always been that it was to put off HVII (or anyone else) having her, as agreements and even rumours of marriage could destroy a noble woman’s prospects. She was sullied by the link to RIII but Henry had no choice but to overcome this issue as he had no other angle to take the throne. EoY had to take what she could bloody get. Turned out to be a love match, they say!

Brilliant post. Henry VII’s penny pinching reputation and sallow portrait make me suspect it was far from a love match. Despite most threats being dead, I suspect he had to be paranoid to survive and keep enough funds to eliminate future threats. He couldn’t relax and become a patron of the arts.

Lordy!! We agree on something

No, me too. I doubt it was love, she knew what he was and I doubt she was a fool, given who she was raised by. She knew what had to be done if literally any one of them was to survive the wars. His portrait makes him look so grim, poor lovely Elizabeth having to crawl into bed with him. I definitely find myself biased in favour of the women of the era and find so much empathy for them all, the men are all disgusting!

Can we dress up. I’m going as Richard

Inbreeding. Have you seen the Hapsburg jaw…

I’m sure we all know the answer to

Q. What did Queen Victoria's family give to the nobility of Europe ?

A. Haemophilia

such was the desire to marry blue blood

At least Henry Tudor was only about 9 years older than EoY. I feel most sorry for their DD Mary, who had to shag the French King when she was in her teens and he was more than 30 years older. Grim!

If Prince Arthur had survived - and had children by Katharine of Aragon - then also no Henry VIII/C of E.

Though I think the English and Scottish thrones would have united eventually. After all, HVII married Margaret Tudor off into Scotland which gave a bloodline for that to happen.

No Kaiser Wilhelm, and his contribution to WW1.

I’d forgotten Arthur. I always think the idea that only 11 first born sons of kings have become monarch themselves since William the Conqueror is insanely low.

I have a few what ifs,
Arthur,
Henry IV not taking the throne, would have been the Mortimer line after Richard II, empress Matilda (though her son did rule eventually),
if E of Y had been male then would Richard III have had support, even if EIV marriage to EV was invalid (I’m not convinced).
Princess Charlotte

The other big what if is Prince Henry, James I’s eldest son who died around 1610. It depends how much it was Charles I’s personality that triggered the major conflicts that resulted in the Civil War and Cromwell’s protectorate; maybe not very much and it would all have happened anyway, but it would have been different. I agree that the death of Prince Arthur was much more consequential.

I always forget about Prince Henry, probably because Charles I was such a personality.

The book Henry VII: Winter King by Thomas Penn is really good. There's a TV version on YouTube presented by the author.

@NewAgeNewMe E of Y was the oldest, so would have been king on EIV’s death if she was male.

So to move things on a little, where do people stand on the debate re inevitability? Eg the Reformation..huge debate still in academia about if England would have ended up Protestant anyway (history of Lollardy, uneasy relations with the Church as a competing authority, large swell in Protestant learning in the universities etc) Vs individual triggers, ie Henry's need for a son / Anne Bolyen.

If anyone has read Ben Elton's Time after Time he does a brilliant take on this wrt WW1.

Yes so would have been an adult so maybe not so easy to overthrow.

Yes, my reaction to the initial post re the consequences of no Henry VIII was to think that was no given.

DH and I both have a history background. I love counterfactuals and he loathes them, as he thinks we all overstate the importance of an individual event or person. I think that isn't always the case. We have to agree to disagree quite often.

For this one I think it's obviously impossible to know whether any future monarch would have played a part in a move to Protestantism but I agree that we were a nation ripe for conversion in many ways. Potentially we might have reached a more Protestant place quicker if we hadn't gone via Henry's pragmatic English Catholic church.

Oh I see.

Yes, I think that if EIV had a son over the age of 18 at the time of his death, it’s a lot less likely that Richard would have become king. But also, Richard would probably have felt less threatened by the woodvilles at that point.

Yes

so many what ifs in history.

Yes - pulmonary hantavirus is thought likely - caught by airborne virus from rodent droppings - one reason why it affected the rich is thought to be that their houses would be swept more often sending the viruses airborne

Whenever I've heard historians discuss counterfactuals, it's very much with a weary eye - the suggestion being that while there are "moments in history" that we use as pivot points, they tend to be artificially constructed. 1066 being a good example. Even if Harold had won, there is no way William would not have returned the next year. When he would have won. Or the year after that. And if you change "just one thing" in your retelling you still have no way of knowing what else could change unless you start adding the twiddles that conspiraloons keep lying around.

And here, the "what if" seems less clear ... what if Edward had been crowned ? What if Henry Tudor had not pursued his claim ? What if there had been no Bosworth ?

As Henry VIII demonstrated , religion in the middle ages was as much about politics as it was about sky fairies (so no change there). Is there a world in which in order to garner alliances, England still became protestant, just to take on the French ? Particularly when you blend in strategic dynastic marriages which mixed Catholic and Protestant (looks north to Mary Stewarts tangled reign).

It's possible the haemophilia was a chance mutation rather than evidence of hanky panky - although Victoria is so far down the line now, we are in another universe.

No matter how you try to slice and dice it, all the probabilities point to Richard being in someway responsible for Edward V not having a long and happy reign. That is where the lowest point of evidence lies. Any other suggestion needs something to move the ball from that resting point up the side of the bowl. And that needs an energy that hasn't yet been identified.

If you take all of this as frothing, and that an English (what about Scotland ?) reformation was inevitable in one shape or form then the next "what if" you can thrown into the mix is what sort of protestantism would have prevailed ? Because a striking feature of the English reformation is how it isn't Lutheran. And that plays a part in the way England (and later Britain) engaged with the rest of Europe. And thence to our legacy of Empire. If you assume that having mucked around with all other variables this one thing remains constant. And there we stray - very gingerly - into contemporary politics. Because there is a strain of populism that requires the belief the British Empire was somehow an inevitability to create a narrative for it's claim to power.