For more than 400 years, Richard III has been seen as the most infamous king of Britain —a power-hungry usurper who He killed his young nephews to clear the way to the throne.
In Shakespeare’s “Richard III,” the King tells a murderer: “I want the bastards dead,” referring to the Princes Edward V and Richard. “And she would like it executed immediately.”
But the murderous image of the King, extracted from history books and grounded in literature and popular heritage, is not true—or, at least, it has not been proven to be true, he says. Philippa Langleyindependent author and historian.
A prominent member of the Richard III Society, an organization that has been working since 1924 “to ensure a more balanced assessment of the King,” Langley has made a history of investigating – and rehabilitating – a man who ruled from 1483 until his death in 1485. .
In 2012, she spearheaded a project to find his remains, which were under a car park in Leicester, as she believed they would be, and give him a proper burial.
But after the funeral, he discovered that he couldn’t let go: he was still considered a murderer.
So he took on the case of the princes’ disappearance. Is there enough archival evidence to say beyond a reasonable doubt that Richard III ordered the murders?I wanted to know.
In “Princes in the Tower,” Langley’s most recent book, published in late 2023, uses what she describes as “the same principles and practices as a modern police investigation.”
Some of Langley’s detractors say she is undertrained (she didn’t attend college). Some critics consider her naïve, blinded by the King’s own rosy image of her.
But he has earned the respect of many university academics. For finding the body of Richard III, he received an MBE, a national honour. She was even played by Sally Hawkins in the 2022 film, “The Lost King.”
Richard III’s brother, King Edward IV, died in the spring of 1483. Richard was appointed protector of the kingdom until the king’s eldest son and successor, the 12-year-old Edward V, came of age. But before the boy was crowned, his parents’ marriage was declared illegitimate and his coronation was suspended.
Instead, Richard III was proclaimed king. Shortly after, the boy and his younger brother, Ricardo, aged 9, disappeared from the Tower of London.
That, maintains Langley, 62, makes it a missing persons investigation, not a murder case. “This was all we knew for sure, based on the available evidence,” she writes.
She maintains that the dominant narrative—that Richard III had princes killed to take the throne—is a rumor that was cemented over the course of 500 years. Instead, she suggests, the children were alive when Richard was crowned. Richard III was the last Plantagenet king of England. Henry VII, who deposed him, was the first Tudor king; he had a dynasty to establish and a reputation to build. So, Langley maintains, Henry VII portrayed his predecessor as a villain.
It would also have been helpful to the Tudors if people thought the children were dead, unable to fight for the throne, Langley writes in the book. Rumors about his death began under Henry VII, he notes, pointing to texts from the reign of Richard III that speak of his nephews in the present day.
That’s why he believes the children were not murdered—at least not in the Tower of London in 1483. Instead, he maintains, they were smuggled out of London.
Then, after Richard III was assassinated and the princes regained legitimacy, she maintains that they both attempted to retake the throne. She weaves her story from archival material collected over seven years by more than 300 independent researchers. Evidence includes gun receipts; a witness statement describing the children’s escape; royal seals and more.
Many senior scholars agree that frequently cited accounts of the princes’ assassination are scarce. “People realize how flimsy the evidence is,” said Philip Schwyzer, a specialist in early modern English literature at the University of Exeter.
But for Langley’s argument to prevail, he must explain the skeletons of children that were found in the tower in 1674. The bones were examined in 1933 and are buried in Westminster Abbey as the presumed remains of the princes.
“How many children would have been put in a box and buried under a staircase in the tower?” said Raluca Radulescu, a professor of medieval literature at Bangor University in Wales.
Langley has an answer: The remains have not been subjected to modern scientific analysis or DNA testing. That would require the approval of the Chancellor of Westminster in consultation with the royal household.
“The view of previous rectors has always been that the mortal remains of two young boys, widely regarded since the 17th century as the princes of the tower, should not be disturbed,” said Victoria Ribbans, a spokeswoman for the Abbey. “There are no current plans to change this.”
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