Princes in the Tower - new evidence

[RaelImperialAerosolKid]

Did anyone catch this. I love Phillipa Langley - she is a true eccentric and has taken her love of Richard III and seems to have found evidence that the princes survived.
She is named as historian here - whereas previously historians were a bit snobbish about her.
Got to I admire her - she may have pulled it off again.

We need need Benoit! I’d love another Knives Out film with Daniel Craig on the Princes in the Tower. Can you imagine? I’d be glued to the screen.

I don’t know who did it, there are compelling suspects that could have done it. More than one have motive, means, opportunity and so on.

There are musings that get into possible lucky escapes, body doubles being killed instead of actual Princes and new identities. But these start to get too far from the documentation to consider seriously, although they are fun to think on.

Henry VII was in England in late summer/autumn of 1483 which is exactly when they vanished. Again, he snuck over and led a ‘failed invasion’ which could have been a distraction for getting rid of the Princes so that he could safely announce his marriage to their elder sister Christmas of 1483 after a hasty exit back to France.

I'm sorry but that sounds like a bad movie script. He landed at Mill Bay and marched east, before being defeated in battle. His movements are recorded. There's literally no physical way save him having a teleport that he could have magically zoomed from Wales to London and back again without anyone noticing his absence in a very brief window of time. And even if he had a teleport, the idea that one of the King's enemies could just sneak into one of the most heavily guarded fortresses in the country, murder two very significant people, and somehow manage to escape with his life - it's pure Hollywood.

And later you make the argument that Henry might have sent an assassin, which begs the question: why invent elaborate theories about the battle being a blind to cover for Henry's presence in Wales if you don't think Henry personally killed them? If Henry was going to send an assassin, surely he'd ensure he was not in the country at the time to give himself an alibi? Why would he need to go to all the trouble of staging a fake invasion (which resulted in a very real battle and several very real deaths of Henry's major allies) and put his life in physical danger from entering England, just to send an assassin? Surely he could send an assassin just as easily from France, without risking his own neck, take his own army into battle, lose so many of his own people, and making himself look guilty?

The idea of a foreign assassin being able to sneak into the Tower is also just really improbable.

He didn't marry Elizabeth of York until 1486, so anything that happened in 83 is moot. And he didn't need her to be sole heir, since he took the throne by Right of Conquest. So their deaths wouldn't benefit him in that sense. They'd already been declared illigitimate by that time anyway.

How could Richard III produce the Princes between when they vanished and 1485 when Henry VII finally won the throne to save his reputation when they had vanished and Henry VII’s agents were putting about the rumour that Richard III had had them murdered? Recall Richard III was not even in London or Windsor when the Princes disappeared, he was up north.

So is your theory that Henry murdered them in 83 (and for some bizarre reason Richard just didn't tell anyone that his enemy had murdered them, and allowed people to believe that he'd murdered them), or that he killed them in 85 after he became King (and their two-year disappearance before that is just unrelated)? And there's simply no evidence that it was agents of Henry VII that started or spread the rumours, the people who we know wrote accounts at the time or soon after naming Richard as the killer don't have any demonstrably ties to Henry VII.

Richard wasn't up north for the entire two years, and he would have been in regular contact with his people. He could very easily have instructed them to show that the princes were alive.

I cannot agree. His deformity would have been visible even when clothed.

With all due respect it's pretty arrogant to say that you know better than actual experts who have examined the skeleton personally. What are you basing that on? There simply isn't any evidence for anything you've said, and you haven't even tried to explain why you think your opinions are right or back them up with any facts, just a lot of opinions stated as fact.

then why was it so important to Henry VII to immediately ensure she was shut away in a nunnery with no contact with her daughter, Elizabeth of York his new wife (forced marriage) ?

But this is simply all lies.

I mean, it's not just rumours with no evidence, it's not debated or contested - it's factually and demonstrably total bullshit. EW didn't enter the Abbey until over a year after Henry Tudor married her daughter, that's a proven historical fact. She was also made godmother to their firstborn, which doesn't support the idea that he banished her.

Henry became King on 22th August 1485. He married Elizabeth of York on 18th January 1486. Elizabeth Woodville entered Bermondsey Abbey on 12th February 1487. We know the exact dates of all of these events, and anyone can see that the dates contradict your claim that he "immediately" sent her away. She lived with her daughter and son-in-law for nearly 13 months before she entered the Abbey so clearly he didn't "immediately" send her away.

Second, there's simply zero proof that Henry sent her away. Some historians believe Henry made her go to the Abbey, some historians believe it was her decision, there's simply no way to know which theory is correct. There's evidence to support both theories. I'm not saying it was definitely her choice (I think it was probably a bit of both Henry probably did at least strongly urge her to go, but she was coming to the end of her life and she had expressed a wish to devote her final years to religious life), but you can't just cherry pick one theory and act like it's fact, and not even acknowledge that other theories exit.

Third, it's an absolute and provable lie that she had "no contact" with her daughter after entering the Abbey, since she left the Abbey and came to stay for the births of of Elizabeth of York's children - we know that she stayed at the Palace of Westminster in 1489, and stayed at Greenwich in 1491 when EoY gave birth to Henry VIII. So at the very least she was able to leave the Abbey, and she was welcomed into their home to help her daughter with childbirth. There are also records that Elizabeth made numerous visits to her mother in Bermondsey during the five years EW lived in the Abbey. (And Bermondsey Abbey is only three miles away, it's not like she was across the country.) Henry also gave her a generous pension, gave her the status of Dowager Queen, sent her presents, and was going to arrange a marriage for her to King James III of Scotland before his death - hardly the actions of a vengeful King having his mother-in-law locked away to keep her from communicating with her daughter.

Referring to the marriage as "a forced marriage" is also pretty agenda-pushing, since practically all royal marriages then were arranged marriages for political reasons. (Edward and EW's marriage was just about the only love marriage.) Henry Tudor's marriage was no less a "forced marriage" than Richard's marriage to Anne Neville because that was just the norm in those days.

@TurquoiseMermaid
She lived with her daughter and son-in-law for nearly 13 months before she entered the Abbey
You cannot know they lived together. We know the official dates of marriage and entrance, but this is royalty. It’s not like they were crammed in a 3 bed semi fgs. There were multiple houses, palaces, manors any one of which was large enough to confine a troublesome relative in isolation if you couldn’t be bothered to house them in a separate residence. It was not the practice of royalty to combine the households of King or Queen with Dowager Queen during those times even when they did get along and occasionally ate together.

I should have said no supervised contact because all we know is she was present at the birth of Margaret and Henry VIII. There would have been no time alone. She wasn’t there at baptisms. We know Elizabeth visited her upon occasion, but again, not alone, supervised. No letters between them exist or have been found.

Henry had to give her a pension and call her Dowager Queen, he overturned the illegitimacy Titulus Reguis remember? This meant she was back to being a queen instead of a mistress. I don’t think fobbing marrying her off to Scotland would have been a nice thing for her, he was probably thinking about it to save that £400 a year pension as he was reknowned for his frugality.

Yes I supposed forced marriage could be agenda pushing, but that is what those marriages were- Margaret Beaufort and Elizabeth of York. Should I not call a serf a serf either?

you can't just cherry pick one theory and act like it's fact, and not even acknowledge that other theories exit.
Cherry picking is exactly what you have been doing from the very beginning. I posted that the two most plausible contenders were Richard III and Henry VII and you immediately came back with no legitimate historian thinks Henry VII could have done it, it could only have possibly been Richard III.

I have posted the case for Henry VII because you insisted on arguing a theory for Henry’s VII can’t possibly exist because of this and that reason. You’re still doing it.

@TurquoiseMermaid
“I'm sorry but that sounds like a bad movie script. He landed at Mill Bay and marched east, before being defeated in battle. His movements are recorded. There's literally no physical way save him having a teleport that he could have magically zoomed from Wales to London and back again without anyone noticing his absence in a very brief window of time. And even if he had a teleport, the idea that one of the King's enemies could just sneak into one of the most heavily guarded fortresses in the country, murder two very significant people, and somehow manage to escape with his life - it's pure Hollywood.”

Again, you need to let go of thinking that to murder the Princes, Henry VII had to be in the Tower or Windsor doing it with his own two hands. Although as I’ve said this before, I am starting to wonder about your tone…is it necessary to say *demonstrably total bullshit *to me?. Do you mean to be so mocking?

“And later you make the argument that Henry might have sent an assassin, which begs the question: why invent elaborate theories..”

What is elaborate about assassins? They were as common as turnips. Obviously, I’m not talking about some sort of ninja professionals but rather the usual court and family connections that see the cook paid to poison a dish or a guard paid to sneak in for a bit wild stabbing in the dark. Who said they’d be foreign? Henry VII, his family and his supporters were not foreign.

“He didn't marry Elizabeth of York until 1486, so anything that happened in 83 is moot. And he didn't need her to be sole heir, since he took the throne by Right of Conquest. So their deaths wouldn't benefit him in that sense. They'd already been declared illigitimate by that time anyway.”

Right. Ok, he did not marry her until she was legitimately a princess of England again. She wasn’t that until he’d taken the throne and overturned the Titulus Reguis. He took the throne by right of conquest, but he would not have been able to keep the throne if he had not married a legitimate royal princess. Making her heiress of the Yorkists meant the War of the Roses could end with their marriage. If the Princes were alive, they’d be the legitimate kings ahead of him and he’d not keep the throne. He had enough trouble surviving the pretenders that pretended to be the princes! The thing is in 1483 he felt safe enough to declare his intention to marry Elizabeth of York. He would not have done that unless he was sure she was the heiress. The declarations were sacred contractual obligations then you couldn’t just change your mind.

“And there's simply no evidence that it was agents of Henry VII that started or spread the rumours,”
Yes there is. You listed the source. I quoted it, it didn’t name Richard or blame him for their murder. Have you not read it? Or do you not recognise the names in it and their connections to Henry VII?

“Richard wasn't up north for the entire two years”
I didn’t say he was. I said he was up north when the Princes vanished and the rumours started. Specifically, he was in York. You do know, right, that not all the people at court or in London or in the country would be his people? The War of the Roses was a generations long civil war.

“I cannot agree. His deformity would have been visible even when clothed. With all due respect it's pretty arrogant to say that you know better than actual experts who have examined the skeleton personally. What are you basing that on? There simply isn't any evidence for anything you've said, and you haven't even tried to explain why you think your opinions are right or back them up with any facts,..”

I’m not. You sort of exaggerated what they did say to fit your narrative and ignored the evidence in the historical record. Ok, so let’s assume Richard III’s severe scoliosis was invisible, looks completely normal if he’s wearing clothes. So no one would know he had anything wrong with his back at all. I will repeat what I said as evidence, why is it that over a hundred years after his death it is still common knowledge that he had this exact deformity? In 1590 Shakespeare in Richard III a “bunchback toad” the actors portraying him have a deformed back/hump. Also in 1590, True Tragedy of Richard III described him as “crook backed and lame armed.” In 1602 Ben Jonson wrote a Book about Richard III titled “Richard Crookback”. How can it have been invisible if it was so memorable? It cannot be coincidence that public, common knowledge would pick the one deformity that he had in real life and to a severe degree as proven by his skeletal remains. It cannot have been so minor and negligible a physical difference to the people then if it was so memorable that depictions of him showed him as deformed in body and soul over a century after his death. (And kept on depicting him that way for centuries after….)

But all of your comments are just personal opinions and assumptions with no facts or evidence to back them up - and you keep contradicting yourself.

You said in your previous post that Henry had Elizabeth Woodville locked up in an Abbey "immediately" to keep her from ever speaking to her daughter. Now you've been proved wrong, you admit that she didn't enter the Abbey for over a year, was allowed to leave, regularly visited her daughter, and was regularly visited by her daughter -- and are now turning to "well she wouldn't have been alone with her daughter" - but that's sheer supposition with literally zero evidence to support it.

We have absolutely no idea how Elizabeth filled her days during the year before she entered the Abbey, we have zero idea what she did during her visits to her daughter's house. To confidently state that she would have been watched 24/7 and never permitted to speak to her daughter alone is just based on literally nothing. You can't just make shit up without any facts or evidence.

is it necessary to say demonstrably total bullshit to me?. Do you mean to be so mocking?

But the claims you made were factually lies, and very easily proven as lies. I realise that Ricardians are extremely passionate in defending their hero, but it's honestly really disrespectful to just make up lies that are so easily proven. Historical discourse relies on good faith. People are allowed to be passionate, people are allowed to put forward their own theories and opinions, but saying stuff that simply did not happen as fact, that we know - absolutely provably 100% know for a fact - did not happen, is just not arguing in good faith.

Yes I supposed forced marriage could be agenda pushing, but that is what those marriages were- Margaret Beaufort and Elizabeth of York. Should I not call a serf a serf either?

And Richard and Anne Neville. That was just as equally a forced marriage. By most accounts Henry and Elizabeth had a very good and loving marriage and she had agency and power as Queen. Whereas Richard was accused of murdering his wife so he could marry Elizabeth of York himself. (That's actually a theory I don't believe, but it is a theory that exists.)

you immediately came back with no legitimate historian thinks Henry VII could have done it, it could only have possibly been Richard III.

I never said it could only possibly have been Richard. I personally think that on balance, the weight of evidence strongly suggests Richard. But there are other people who could have done it, and clearly other theories exist. I've never acted like it's a matter of accepted fact that Richard killed them, and pretended other theories don't exist. Clearly other theories exist.

Anyway I asked you to name which reputable historians believe Henry killed the children, and you haven't.

“And later you make the argument that Henry might have sent an assassin, which begs the question: why invent elaborate theories..”

But you still haven't explained why Henry needs to stage a "fake" invasion and battle (which put him in physical danger and led to the loss of his allies) to murder the children, if it was via assassin - you used the fact Henry was in England as some kind of evidence that he was the killer, you came up with a theory that he used the invasion as a ruse, yet none of that is logical - if Henry was going to arrange an assassin he'd send one while he was safe in France. So why act like Henry being in England is evidence for his guilt?

And yes assassins existed, but the idea of an enemy assassin being able to sneak into one of the safest fortresses in the country, murder the two best protected and constantly watched children in the country, and sneak out again without anyone noticing, is just really implausible. And neither you or anyone has actually been able to explain or come up with a theory for how that was accomplished.

My issue with Ricardians is that their starting point is usually being fans of Richard on a personal level and idolising Richard, and wanting to find someone to pin the murders on in order to defend their hero. People who think Richard did it aren't "Henrians" - no one is out here fangirling Henry or putting him on a pedestal the way Ricardians do. Clearly Henry was an extremely brutal and violent man. I'm not pretending otherwise. He murdered a lot of people, I just don't think there's any evidence to suggest he murdered these particular two people. I don't have any personal slant or preference to either Richard or Henry, I think they were probably equally brutal and ruthless people.

The bones found in the Tower may not even be the two princes because there are also two mystery lead coffins in Windsor castle as well

Ex Ricardian member converted by Josephine Tey here, and this skating over the business of the Tower and Sir Thomas More's account annoyed me. The Tower by 1483 had been a fortress, palace and home for hundreds of people over the centuries, including children, and it's not impossible that some of those children were the bodies found. The 1930s investigation pretty much started from the premise that these were the princes and found evidence to back that up.

And More's account is second hand hearsay. I have to say, if I was on the fence I wouldn't have been convinced by this programme's claims.

You sort of exaggerated what they did say to fit your narrative and ignored the evidence in the historical record.

Come on, that's not simply true, and pretty hypocritical. Look at what you've said about Richard:

"Richard III was also not trusted or popular as he actually was a hunchback"

"He was vulnerable, being deformed in a way that would have most people thinking he was an imp of Satan."

That's simply not factually correct at all. We know for a fact it's not factually correct, both from the historical record; by comparing contemporary accounts with Tudor accounts; and looking at his actual skeleton. The osteoarchaeologists who studied his skeleton have said that while the side to side curvature was fairly large, the actual physical deformity that would have caused would have been "slight."

First, he wasn't a hunchback. He simply wasn't. That was Tudor propaganda invented decades or centuries later. We absolutely know from his skeleton that he was not a hunchback. He had side to side idiopathic adolescent onset scoliosis. He was not born with it, he would have developed the condition as a teenager.

Second, there is not ONE single reference to Richard being a hunchback that was actually written during his lifetime. Not one. If Richard was a hunchback and so visible "deformed" as to be considered an "imp of Satan" there'd be loads of contemporary accounts mentioning it, especially during the last two years of his life when the child murderer rumours were going around and he was unpopular. The fact not one person who ever actually saw Richard ever mentioned any hunch or hump - and then suddenly a century after he died a bunch of people suddenly pop up going "oh yeah he had a hunchback" - surely that's proof that it's a revisionist propaganda campaign invented long afterwards?

There's an actual contemporary account of Richard that describe him as a man with "unequal shoulders, the right higher and the left lower." So clearly his scoliosis was severe enough to have some visible sign, but only in that one shoulder was slightly higher than the other. There's not a single contemporary account that mentions a hunch or that mentions anything other than a higher right shoulder, and even those mentions are very rare. Most people who wrote physical descriptions of Richard didn't notice anything out of the ordinary so clearly it wasn't all that visible. He clearly didn't have a hunchback or anything resembling a hunchback, and the actual curvature of the spine was mild enough that it would not have been visible when he was clothed - which explains why most people who saw him, didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. The 3D reconstructions and work done by osteoarchaeologists concluded that this slight difference in shoulder height could have been hidden in armour, but would have been visible when he was wearing fewer clothes.

Yes he had scoliosis which caused a slight visible difference when unclothed, but it's pretty obvious most people didn't notice. It stands to reason that people close enough to Richard to see him unclothed would know there was something wrong which the average person (who only saw him at a distance, fully clothed) wouldn't notice. For example, More describes a meeting where Richard rolled up his sleeve to show his bare arm. More might be lying, but it's possible there was something that you'd only know if you were close enough to Richard to have him strip off in front of you.

Third, there's plenty of historical evidence that Richard was popular and well-loved by the general public, the idea of him being "deformed" and regarded as an "imp of Satan" was invented by Shakespeare more than a hundred years later. He was extremely popular in York and the North, less so in the South but that was due to his actions in the North, not any perception of him as being deformed. There's a ton of historical record that he was beloved and respected both by the nobility and by the common man. His reputation didn't start to suffer until after Edward of York died and Richard's subsequent behaviour, and even then - even after the rumours that he was a child killer - no one ever mentioned anything about him being deformed.

Fourth, there's X-ray evidence that paintings in the Royal Collection of Richard were altered and re-painted during the Tudor reign to make him look visibly deformed. The whole idea of him being deformed is Tudor propaganda. He wasn't hunchback or deformed and he wasn't hated because of it. That's revisionist history that didn't exist at the time he was alive.

I will repeat what I said as evidence, why is it that over a hundred years after his death it is still common knowledge that he had this exact deformity?

But it's not. Again, that's simply not factually true. Until his skeleton was discovered everyone thought he'd been a hunchback, but he wasn't - the idea of him being a hunchback was invented as part of a Tudor propaganda campaign long after his death. He had side to side scoliosis causing one shoulder to be slightly higher but most people didn't notice. All three of the works you cite were written more than a hundred years after Richard died, when the Tudor propaganda campaign was in full swing. There are no contemporary accounts that describe him as a hunchback or deformed, actual contemporary accounts just mention that his right shoulder was a bit higher. If he really had been a severely deformed hunchback, surely the contemporary accounts would have mentioned that? Why would the contemporary accounts mention his right shoulder being higher, yet make no mention of any hump? Considering how hated and feared visible disability was then, it's beyond imagination that not one person ever mentioned that the rumoured child-killer had a hump.

It cannot have been so minor and negligible a physical difference to the people then if it was so memorable that depictions of him showed him as deformed in body and soul over a century after his death. (And kept on depicting him that way for centuries after….)

Because that is literally how propaganda works. And because history is written by the winner. You say those depictions must be accurate since they still existed more than a century after his death, implying they lasted a long time. When in fact it's the opposite. They weren't invented until long after his death. The reason they lasted is because the Tudors were extremely powerful and had (for various reasons which are interesting but possibly outside of this thread) a massive impact on history. Look how the myth of Elizabeth I - the powerful warrior Virgin Queen who brought the Spaniards to heel - lasts to this day. Look how famous Henry VIII and his six wives still are. To this day the Tudors have a huge hold on the public consciousness in a way the Plantagenets do not. The second reason the Tudor propaganda became the primary influence on how people perceived Richard long after his death is because one of the people creating that propaganda happened to become the most famous writer of all time. If the play Richard III didn't exist (or if it had never been written down), or if Shakespeare had faded into obscurity, the myth of Richard being a hunchback would not exist.

Here is a peer reviewed journal paper about it: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2814%2960762-5/fulltext#article_upsell

@TurquoiseMermaid

Over the centuries crookback became hunchback, this happens with oral history as any historian would know. Crookback is what they called people with scoliosis, crookback is the first reference to Richard IIIs deformity in popular literature. Richard III had severe scoliosis of 65-85 degrees. Keep in mind what this means, this means his spine diverged from a straight line by 65 to 85 degrees or almost to a right angle. The osteoarchaeologists did not say it would not be noticeable, they said it was severe enough to require surgery to correct even today. They said it might be disguised to a certain extent with special clothing. They said it appears to not have affected his mobility much. You massively exaggerated this.

Im sorry you haven’t read enough about the discrimination due to the lingering medieval religious and superstitious attitudes at the time towards people with deformities and disabilities to understand what I mean about him being viewed with suspicion as an imp of Satan and so on. Perhaps if I explain this superstitious correlation between physical appearance and sinfulness were still present with James I and the how to spot a witch textbook he wrote? Echoes of this still exist today, as in where do you think we have inherited our classical idea or mind picture of what an evil witch looks like?

I know what propaganda is thanks, but usually propaganda is built on a complete lie. In this case the propaganda is built on a truth, Richard III was a crookback as he had severe scoliosis. This fact about him must have been noticed and remembered for the Tudors to then build their propaganda on it. It can’t be chalked up to lucky coincidence as you are happy to do so.

Similarly, when a royal family is in power there is propaganda protecting them. Portrayals of Richard III deliberately flattered him. They would say he was the most handsome of face, second only to the king. Which is sort of like today when you tell a disabled girl she has a pretty face.

Richard III was not well loved by the general public south of York. Which is where most of the general public lived. A well loved king doesn’t end up betrayed by his closest friends on the battlefield who then proceed to brutalise and desecrate his body, drag it behind a horse in the dirt and finally dump it in a ditch.

I agree. I had read that the stairway the child bones in the Tower were found under did not exist in the time of Richard III so that calls further into question the Henry VIII lump sum payments to and then late in life “confession” of Tyrell who claimed to have murdered the Princes under orders from Richard III and then buried them under a “stayre” in the Tower although he goes on to say another conspirator was supposed to then move them elsewhere. The bones found under the stair that didn’t exist in the time of Richard III have never been fully examined. I read the 1930s report saying the bones were in pretty poor condition, jumbled, broken and appeared to have a few cat bones thrown in there. They didn’t even bother to sex the bones or properly age them.

@TurquoiseMermaid
I was mentioning the fact that Henry VII was geographically closer to the Princes at the time they vanished than Richard the III was because you had initially rubbished the whole idea that Henry VII might have ordered their deaths by arguing that due to Occam’s razor, Richard III was there with them and Henry VII was “some bloke in exile in France.”

After pointing out that the rich and powerful don’t need to be the closest to their target to be the one ordering their murder, I was also pointing out that your Occam’s razor ‘the closest one must be guilty’ argument was a bit silly because Henry VII was miles closer to the Princes than Richard III was at the actual time of their disappearance.

Richard III was in York, being 216miles away. Henry VII had two ships anchored at Plymouth, Devon one of which he was on and he is reported to have covertly got as far as Wiltshire on meetings with Sir Walter Hungerford, MP of Wiltshire, at Hungerford castle (on border of Somerset and Wiltshire) before having to go back to his ships ahead of Richard III’s men returning from the north and sail back to Brittany. Hungerford castle is an easy 70miles from London.

So if Occam’s razor is how you decide which suspect is guilty, Henry VII was a lot closer than Richard III to the Princes at the time of their disappearance.

But as I say. The rich and powerful didn’t need to be within stabbing distance to murder back then. Henry VII could have been in a courtesan’s palazzo in Venice and have ordered the murder. Richard III could have been visiting the King of Denmark. Murder for royalty even then was more about motive, means and opportunity, not proximity. Richard III being out of London was an opportunity for either him to order their murder and pretend innocence or for another murderer to order their murder and pin the blame on him.

He didn't have a hunchback whatever word you want to call it. You can't just keep making wild statements that not a single historian or archaeologist or expert agrees with and then when contradicted by the facts and evidence, just say "oh but I meant this." There isn't a single reference to his "hunchback" that was written during his lifetime, it was all propaganda invented after his death.

People who examined his skeleton has said his scoliosis would have been either invisible or barely visible when clothed, which is backed up by the fact that not a single person who ever laid eyes on him mentioned him having any kind of hunch or hump, and the vast majority of people who saw or met him and wrote physical descriptions didn't notice anything remotely out of the ordinary about his appearance.

How do you explain the fact people who actually saw him didn't notice anything unusual about his appearance?

How do you explain the fact he was so popular and beloved during his younger years?

How do you explain the fact that even after he took the throne and rumours started to spread that he was a child killer, none of the people who hated him/defamed him mentioned the "deformity" that you claim made him widely hated in the first place?

I'm sorry you haven’t read enough about the discrimination due to the lingering medieval religious and superstitious attitudes

I'm disabled and a disability activist and I literally have written peer reviewed journal papers about the history of attitudes towards disabled people. Please don't be condescending. Obviously the Tudors tried to weaponise lingering Medieval ableism in their anti-Richard propaganda, by inventing the lie that he had a hunchback as a way to demonise him. The fact Medieval England was very ableist and saw disabled people as Demonic disproves your claim, not the other way around. It's almost impossible that someone as beloved and popular as Richard (when he was younger) could have been severely visibly disabled, and it's absolutely beyond comprehension why, during the smear campaign of the last two years of his life, not a single person mentioned or invoked this sign of being an "Imp of Satan." Surely if you were trying to launch a smear campaign against a visibly severely disabled person in an era where visible disability is considered a mark of Satan, that's the very first thing you'd use? Yet none of Richard's enemies ever mentioned it. None of the smear campaigns or people calling him a child killer ever mentioned it. Why on earth not?

what I mean about him being viewed with suspicion as an imp of Satan and so on.
But he wasn't viewed as an Imp of Satan during his lifetime. There's not a single reference to anything remotely like that written during his lifetime. There's just no evidence to suggest that existed during his lifetime. It's something Shakespeare and other Tudor agents invented long after his death.

usually propaganda is built on a complete lie. In this case the propaganda is built on a truth, Richard III was a crookback as he had severe scoliosis.

No, that's simply not true at all, and honestly I find that quite offensively ignorant. I'm an Orthodox Jew who lectures and writes primarily on how minorities are demonised, and I've written and lectured extensively on the history of antisemitic propaganda and how 20th/21stC propaganda has its roots in medievalism. It's just silly and reductive to say "propaganda is usually based on complete lies." It's actually very rare for propaganda to be based on lies pulled out of thin air. Propaganda is nearly always based on elements of truth that are then twisted and exaggerated. For example, antisemitic propaganda even in the 20th and 21stC is heavily based on tropes around money and the perception of Jews as money hoarding, which dates back to the Middle Ages when Jews were forced into becoming money lenders which resulted in Christians owing money to Jews. Over the centuries the history of violent Jewish expulsion led to a strong cultural tradition (which my family personally practices) of Jews keeping their money in gold so it can be grabbed quickly if you have to flee, which unfortunately accidentally reinforced this trope. You can draw a direct line between the history of Medieval Jewish money lending and Nazi propaganda in WWII. Obviously the trope of "Jews hoard all the money" is horrible and antisemitic and not at all true, but it's not like someone just randomly decided to invent a lie out of thin air one day - that propaganda evolved out of an historical situation where lots of Christians owed money to Jews and were having to pay money to Jews, and were angry about it - to claim otherwise is very dangerous since it ignores and downplays both the history and the mechanisms for how propaganda is created and spread.

Similarly, during slavery the USA actively created racist and anti-black propaganda designed to portray black people as having lower IQs than white people, as brutish, as child-like, as physically very strong, as a way to justify slavery. Now obviously that's racist and untrue - of course black people aren't less intelligent than white people! But you have to examine the roots of these propaganda tropes to be able to fight them, because those propaganda campaigns are still responsible for a lot of racism in the USA today. For example, the trope that black men are physically very strong and athletic (a racist trope that still exists to this day): The reason this propagada trope exists is because trans-Atlantic transportation is brutal, being enslaved is brutal; simply put, slaves that were not physically strong would have died. Only the strong ones would have lived. So while it's clearly not true to say "all black men are strong and athletic", it's not like someone just invented a total lie out of thin air - there's historical reason behind the creation of that trope and why people believed it. Ditto the propaganda of black people as stupid or childlike - this was because slaves were obviously denied any access to education.

In Richard's case, Shakespeare and the others exploited the fact he had a spinal issue causing one shoulder to be slightly higher, and massively exaggerated it. No "coincidence" involved; propaganda nearly always involves looking at someone's perceived weak spots then figuring out how to twist or exaggerate those things. Obviously Richard did have scoliosis, no one is denying that, and he did factually have one shoulder higher than the other that people who were close to him noticed and wrote down. So that was a very easy thing for Tudor propaganda to latch onto and twist. But the fact there's not a single contemporary source mentioning any hunchback, the fact the vast majority of people who saw Richard didn't notice anything unusual - that's strong evidence that Shakespeare et al invented the perception of Richard as a twisted hunchback "Imp" as Tudor propaganda by taking a small piece of historical fact and exaggerating it to the maximum.

*Richard III was not well loved by the general public south of York. A well loved king doesn’t end up betrayed by his closest friends"

But he was well-loved in the North, where he actually lived. Surely if his reputation was based on hatred and revulsion at his body/physical appearance, he'd be more hated in his own area where people actually knew and saw him with their own eyes? And the second part just doesn't make any sense, are you claiming that if someone is popular when young that can never change ever? That if a Medieval King is popular with the public, that magically inures them against enemies or plots? Because there were tons of Kings who were very popular and they all had enemies and plots. Anyway Richard's popularity declined after he drove Elizabeth Woodville into sanctuary, killed her family and seized their lands, kidnapped the rightful heir and had him declared illegitimate, and after rumours swirled that he was a child murderer, rumours that he murdered his wife, rumours that he intended to marry Elizabeth of York, and the perception that he'd do anything to keep the throne that was not rightfully his. What happened at the end of his live after he lost a battle doesn't magically debunk the idea that he was popular when young.

Just watched this last night. Enjoyed it. Really glad there’s a thread on it to discuss. I read about Perkin Warbeck a few years ago, and thought he sounded pretty convincing even then. I’m not a historian though; didn’t even do it at GCSE, so it’s good to hear it being thrashed out by more knowledgeable people. I love history; wish I had a time machine to go back and see what the truth is.

@TurquoiseMermaid

Excellent post. Thank you.

@TurquoiseMermaid , that was really interesting, thanks.

After they found Richard's body they actually got a man with the same degree of scoliosis to train "for battle". His disability is quite clearly not visible in armour (and therefore likely not in full medieval get up). There is a blog post of his experience here (with photos) https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/blog/time-richard-iii-life-afterwards/

I've always wondered whether the rumours about Richard III being a "hunchback" started after Bosworth when he would have been seen slung over the back of a horse in an extremely undignified position.

This is making fascinating reading!

I've long since been a fan of Richard and attended his funeral in Leicester. That weekend I went to an excellent play that was essentially Richard on trial for the murder. We heard from both sides (all factually correct as far as I know) and, at the end, got to vote whether we thought him guilty or not. The majority voted him not guilty, but it was obviously an audience of Richard fans!

I have personally held the belief that it was Buckingham, thinking he was acting in Richard's best interests but Richard unaware and angry afterwards. But this thread has been so interesting to read and I definitely have an open mind as to what could have happened.

We started watching this last night, but it all seemed very sensationalist (DH asked if it was on channel 5 😂).

We got as far as the receipt made for weapons -it seemed to say that Margaret of Burgundy knew that was for her nephew which was evidence that Richard didn’t kill them, but that’s quite a stretch, isn’t it?! It’s been known for years that a young pretender- who might have been one of the princes, had support from the aunt in Burgundy. The piece of paper didn’t prove anything.

I am not completely convinced but balance of probabilities leads me to think the boys died, were killed or were “disappeared” under Richard’s watch or orders. He’d seen his father and brother killed in the wars of the roses, watched his brother repeatedly fight for the crown, he knew the dangers of a child king. The boys would always have been a figurehead for any English or foreign power wishing to destabilise his government. Contemporary reports seem to suggest he was respected and likely to have become a strong king, however he’d already proven his ruthlessness supporting Edward against their brother, possibly implicated in his “execution,” as well as Warwick‘s and Henry VI. He’d possibly helped remove claimants to the throne already, including relatives.

He’d seen his father and brother killed in the wars of the roses, watched his brother repeatedly fight for the crown, he knew the dangers of a child king. The boys would always have been a figurehead for any English or foreign power wishing to destabilise his government.

Also, a defining moment in his young adulthood, when he was about 17, was having to flee for his life when Henry VI was restored - having been kept safely in the Tower since being deposed. I feel that was a lesson to Richard about the dangers of keeping a threat to your throne alive.

It was complete bollocks, wasn’t it. No exploration at all of the entirely realistic possibility that just because the documents were genuine, didn’t mean they were factually correct. That people can be mistaken, or lie, for a whole host of reasons. Margaret of Burgundy wasn’t going to put in writing “for the pretender Warbeck, who I’m telling everyone is my nephew because it suits me, but I know damned well he isn’t”.

We used living relatives (NOT descendants as he doesn't have any) of Richard III to do the DNA comparison. :)
You can have a listen here to how DNA testing could be done on the putative Princes in the Tower
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-ipbgf-1145961