King Edward V of England and his brother Richard of Shrewsbury (also known as Richard, Duke of York) were the young sons of King Edward IV and his consort Elizabeth Woodville. Upon the death of their father, their uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who had been appointed Lord Protector, had the boys — then aged 12 and 9 — declared illegitimate and seized the throne for himself as King Richard III. The boys were lodged in The Tower of London and disappeared sometime in 1483. By the time of Richard's defeat at Bosworth Field (1485) and the ascension of his rival Henry Tudor as King Henry VII, most people presumed the princes to be dead.
Traditionally, in both fiction and history, Richard III is considered the most likely suspect in their disappearance, with the assumption that he ordered their murder to secure his place on the throne. Tudor propaganda, culminating in the classic Historical Villain Upgrade in William Shakespeare's Richard III, codified this in the popular imagination. However, Richard had been well-liked in his home region of the North of England, and the image of him as a cartoon villain never completely stuck. As early as the 1600s,note his defenders, known as Ricardians, have been disputing that Richard was the culprit. They argue that as the most powerful man in the country, Richard had the means to make the murders look like an accident or natural causes or find a scapegoat, none of which he did. Without proof of the princes' deaths, Richard would have faced imposters the same way Henry VII later did, and he would have known that would be inevitable.
Since no bodies have been conclusively found, though there were skeletons thought to be them uncovered during the reign of Charles II and hastily buried in Westminster Abbey, people have been debating the boys' fate for centuries.
Naturally, Historical Fiction writers have taken delight in the idea of two innocent princes disappearing, and the fate of the princes is a much-explored Stock Unsolved Mystery.
The main suspects and theories are thus:
- Richard III did it. As Lord Protector of England following Edward IV's death, he was in control of the country and therefore had motive, means, and opportunity to order someone to kill the princes.
- Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, a man with his own claim to the throne whom Richard executed for treason, did it as part of a scheme to take the crown. Stafford was initially one of the main allies of Richard III, until leading "Buckingham's rebellion" against his former ally in October 1483. He was executed without trial.
- Henry VII did it, after discovering them alive upon Richard's defeat at Bosworth. With them alive, Henry would not be secure on the throne.
- Henry VII's mother, Margaret Beaufort did it, sometime before Bosworth, in order to help ensure her son's ascension to the throne.
- One or both of the boys escaped, and one or more of the Pretenders that dogged Henry VII's reign may have been genuine, which would circle back to suspect number three. Perkin Warbeck, who gained much support in his lifetime (including Richard's sister, Margaret of York) and was eventually executed by Henry VII, claimed to be Richard of Shrewsbury and is reckoned by some historians to have been a the real deal. King James I, the first post-Tudor monarch, reportedly believed this story.
- Aliens, Vampires, Time Travel, etc. Not a serious suggestion for the real-life mystery, but an intriguing possibility to explore in fiction.
In 2016, The Richard III Society, inspired by their remarkable success in finding Richard's remains, launched The Missing Princes Project, in an attempt to discover the fate of the princes and working to prove theory number five, specifically that the boys were sent away by Richard. On November 18th, 2023, Phillippa Langley released a book and ITV aired a documentary The Princes in the Tower: The New Evidence claiming, based on uncovered documents, that Richard III sent both boys into exile, and that two most famous pretenders to challenge Henry Tudor, Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, were in fact the real princes. More specifically, the project concludes that Edward V was the focus of the rebellion culminating at the Battle of Stokenote and he either died in the battle or escaped to Ireland. Meanwhile, they assert that the man Henry Tudor called Perkin Warbeck was Richard of York, and while it was likely he was executed in 1499, the man who was hanged had a beaten face so it is not certain.
These conclusions are based on uncovered archival evidence, including accounting records from Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Low Countries that seem to show the princes alive after Bosworth Field and a chronicle of the younger prince's life dictated to a scribe by Prince Richard himself while he was in exile. Tudor skeptics agree that the account of Richard of York's survival is authentic to the period, but assert it was simply part of the fraudulent campaign to put Perkin Warbeck on the throne, and they claim the accounting documents are simply being misread. Ricardans counter that Margaret of York had living nephews that she could have championed, so it makes no sense that she would advance imposter princes, and they stand by the accuracy of their interpretation of the other documents. Ricardians also acknowledge that many of these documents, including the testimony of Richard of York/Perkin Warbeck are not brand-new discoveries but have not been examined for, in some cases, centuries. Ricardians insist that documents previously interpreted through the lens of Tudor propaganda and dismissed should be re-evaluated.
Another possible candidate for a surviving Edward is a man who called himself John Evans, who arrived in the small Devon village of Coldridge in 1484 and was immediately made Lord of the Manor, although no evidence has been found for where or who he was before this date. This is supported by the inexplicable presence of stained glass windows depicting Edward in a chapel that Evans had built in 1511, long after the princes' disappearance when most of the world would have forgotten them.
Proponents of the survival theory also argue that the absence of documents that indicate the boys were dead, such as prayers for their souls or masses said in their name, must also be taken into account. The boys' mother, Elizabeth Woodville, paid for masses for her deceased children but never for the two missing princes. She also never publically accused Richard of killing her boys or said they were murdered, even after Richard's defeat.
On top of all this, The Missing Princes project has not concluded and the search for more documents and evidence continues.
While the newly highlighted evidence will likely be debated for some time, historian Matthew Lewis, author of the book The Survival of the Princes in the Tower believes that the tide has turned and eventually the survival of the princes will be accepted by the mainstream. He further points out that their survival exonerates other suspects such as the Duke of Buckingham and Margaret Beaufort for the murders, since no murders happened. The acceptance of this new information is not out of the question, since there are multiple occurrences of historians accepting new information about Richard III that contradicts the Tudor narrative, although it usually takes some time for them to do so.
Moreover, this new narrative opens up fresh avenues for historical fiction writers to explore, including the details of how the boys escaped, what ultimately happened to each of the princes once grown to adulthood, and the fate of any children they might have had. Richard of York/Perkin Warbeck did marry and had a son, another Richard, who disappeared from the public record.
Thanks to the Missing Princes Project's assertions, there is a new push to subject the bones interred in Westminster Abbey to modern forensic testing or at the very least have the signage changed to indicate there is significant doubt that the bones belong to the princes. Yet, historian Annette Crosby has pointed out that even based on the existing evidence from the discovery of the bones and their later examination in 1934, it is already been established that that the remains are likely not the bones of the princes. Pushes for DNA smoking guns are a part of the modern CSI effect. Yet, the investigation will undoubtedly continue, with more light being shed on this 500-year-old cold case.
Related tropes include Evil Uncle, Evil Chancellor, Hidden Backup Prince, Lost Orphaned Royalty, Really Royalty Reveal, Sent Into Hiding, Would Hurt a Child, Wouldn't Hurt a Child and The Wrongful Heir to the Throne.
If a writer sets a Ghost Story in The Tower of London, the princes often make an appearance.
For the major events and figures of the real history, see our Useful Notes pages for the Wars of the Roses, The House of Plantagenet, and The House of Tudor.
See Did Anastasia Survive? for another Stock Unsolved Mysteries with a (formerly) unresolved fate, and Who Shot JFK? for another murder mystery whose explanation is, at least in popular culture, considered unresolved.
Examples:
- Black Butler: Ciel and Sebastian find the ghosts of the princes in Ludlow Castle, where Edward has been collecting the skulls of his family in the belief that completing the collection will let them pass on. However, it turns out that Edward and Richard's own remains had been destroyed long ago, which Richard kept from his brother. That revelation proves sufficient to allow them to pass on to the afterlife.
- Requiem of the Rose King: Richard imprisons the boys, but they are royal brats who were plotting against him.
- In the Big Finish Doctor Who audio drama "The Kingmaker", the Doctor decides to look into the mystery. He discovers that there never were any princes in the tower; there were princesses in the tower, who were locked there by Richard to prevent the scandal of the people learning that his brother had lied about having a male heir. The two princesses had up until then been posing as boys in public, but with them beginning to enter puberty, it was getting increasingly difficult to hide their gender, hence why they needed to be sequestered away from public view. They "disappeared" by leaving the tower and working at a tavern owned by their Uncle Clarrie (the former Duke of Clarence, whose own death was faked). It gets weirder...
- Halloween Unspectacular: The story "The Picture" from the sixth edition reveals that Pacifica's ancestor Sir Percival Northwest was the one who murdered the princes (as part of the occult practices that kept him youthful) and framed Richard for it to cover his tracks.
- As amateur historian Phillippa Langley searches for the body of Richard III in The Lost King she thinks about the fate of the Princes in the Tower. As a Ricardian, she believes the princes were alive when Henry Tudor took the throne, but she asks Richard's ghost about it and he is offended by the question.
- Princes in the Tower is a 2005 television movie that has Perkin Warbeck visiting the court of Henry VII and convincing many he is Richard of Shrewsbury, only to be shown by Margaret Beaufort that the two princes are both still alive and being held in the basement of the tower, with their tongues having been cut out.
- Tower of London: This Universal Horror film from 1939 casts Richard as the villain who orders his nephews murdered, and he isn't nearly as sympathetic as Shakespeare's version.
- The Princes in the Tower is one of the books in the Alice, Girl from the Future series, where Edward and Richard are rescued by Alice and brought to the 21st century.
- Arcia Chronicles: The second duology is a retelling of the Wars of the Roses in a fantasy setting and with a distinctly pro-Richard III POV (his fantasy counterpart goes by Alexander Tagere in this setting). As such, the two Princes' illegitimacy is considered proven, they are placed in the Tower counterpart to protect them, and they are actually still alive at the time of the setting's Bosworth (which Richard/Alexander survives). It is therefore Pierre Lumen (Henry VII's expy) who orders the Princes' assassination, in order to remove any Tagere (fantasy Yorks) heirs from the picture, even illegitimate ones. What he has now way of knowing, however, is that these murders become the Final Sin, which sets into motion The End of the World as We Know It, covered in the third duology.
- In Kim Newman's Anno Dracula short story "Vampire Romance", Richard himself, who happens to be a vampire, emphatically denies having sent assassins to kill the Princes: he did the job personally.
- A short story by C. J. Cherryh has a young woman who's been sentenced to the Tower of London meet several of the ghosts haunting it — including the two little princes. Edward V tells her that Richard was believed to have murdered them, but adds, "But he didn't, you know."
- In Philippa Gregory's Wars of the Roses novels, The Cousins' War Series, the Princes' mother sends the younger prince away disguised as a pauper. He later comes back as Perkin Warbeck. Edward V and an imposter boy are murdered nevertheless, but not by Richard. His wife, Anne Neville, is guilt-ridden as she fears she accidentally ordered their murder, but it is Margaret Beaufort who actually arranges the murder, and she is tormented by guilt.
- Josephine Tey's 1951 novel The Daughter of Time features her series detective Inspector Alan Grant bedridden from an injury and researching the princes as an Extremely Cold Case. He comes to the conclusion that Richard was not the culprit.
- John M. Ford's The Dragon Waiting is an Alternate History fantasy, with werewolves and vampires, that offers a supernatural explanation for the princes' disappearance.
- In the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel "Sometime Never...", the princes were kidnapped by the Arc Villains the Council of Eight, to prevent them from affecting history, then rescued by the Doctor and adopted by a 21st-century archeologist.
- Mystery writer Elizabeth George wrote a short story, "I, Richard" about a woman discovering that Richard sent the princes away for their own safety.
- Richard, the Princes in the Tower, and his reputation are the focus of The Hellequin Chronicles prequel novella Infamous Reign, which features Nate Garrett a.k.a. Hellequin being sent to deal with the matter of the missing Princes (Nate had backed Richard's accession and his superiors therefore felt that it was his mess to clean up). Richard is depicted as a decent man who had the spine to stand up to an angry Nate despite being plainly terrified of him, and wasn't to blame for the Princes going missing. As it turns out, the Princes were descended from King Arthur through their mother, and Nate's Arch-Enemy Mordred, who had a fixation on preventing Arthur's descendants from ever taking the throne, kidnapped them. Nate rescued them and smuggled them into exile, but shortly after, the Battle of Bosworth happened, Henry Tudor took the throne, and Richard's reputation was thoroughly smeared — something that even Henry concedes he didn't deserve (but which he also considers politically useful).
- In J. P. Reedman's I, Richard Plantagenet Series the Duke of Buckingham arranges the princes' murder behind Richard III's back. However, Edward V is such a Royal Brat and Big Brother Bully that he has taken all the fine clothes from his younger brother Richard of Shrewsbury and given them to a servant boy who he treats as a brother. It's that boy who is taken and murdered along with Edward V. When the truth is discovered, Richard III springs into action, sending the younger prince, who has taken the name Perkin, to Bruges.
- In The Last Daughter Of York by Nicola Cornick, the protagonist discovers that Richard's chamberlain Francis Lovell had been tasked with protecting the younger of the two princes and he was magically sent forward in time to World War II. The older prince, Edward V, died of natural causes at The Tower.
- In The Missing, a Time Travel Escape series by Margaret Peterson Haddix, the two princes are rescued from their death and brought to the modern day, but they have to go back to the past using Tricked Out Time to avoid changing history too much. It is shown that Richard III ordered their murder but regrets it terribly afterward. This is complicated when it turns out the princes survived the murder attempt even in the original timeline, and died later when they fought on Richard's side during the Battle of Bosworth.
- A Night in Terror Tower: Princess Susannah and Prince Edward are modeled after the Princes in the Tower. The two were the heirs to the throne but were imprisoned by their Evil Uncle and sentenced to death. However, they vanished before the Lord High Executioner could carry out the sentence. It's revealed that Morgred used time travel to send them to the present day with new memories.
- In the science fiction series Richard III in the 21st Century, Richard is brought to the year 2004 and is surprised that the disappearance of the princes is a mystery since he made no secret of the fact they were alive and he stashed them away, sending Edward V to Ireland and young Richard to Portugal.
- In the Romance Novel by Rebecca Brandewyne titled Rose of Rapture the hero, who secretly supports Henry Tudor, realizes that Richard did not kill the princes and the only one who could have was Tudor's mother, Margaret Beaufort, with an assist from The Duke of Buckingham. He's understandably reticent to tell Henry this, but that very reluctance clues Henry in to the truth. The book is a rare case where both Richard III and Henry Tudor are disgusted by the princes' murder. While the hero thinks that whoever wears the crown would eventually have to kill the princes, both Richard and Henry believe that the death of children would taint the crown and both are pious enough not to cross that line.
- In Sandra Worth's Rose of York Series of novels, Richard's wife Anne suggests he send the boys to Barnard Castle where they can play out of sight. The younger goes, but Edward V is sick and can't. In the meantime, the Duke of Buckingham begins his rebellion and has Edward V and a servant boy he mistakes for Prince Richard killed.
- Richard and Edward's sister, Margaret of York is the protagonist of Anne Easter Smith's A Rose of York and she supports Perkin Warbeck.
- A Song of Ice and Fire: Bran and Rickon Stark, lost princes betrayed by a former ally and protector, were inspired by the princes. Theon Greyjoy claims to have had them executed, but he actually smuggles them out of the castle, allowing them both to escape. House Stark in general has a lot in common with the House of York.
- The novel The Sunne in Splendour points the finger at Buckingham for the princes' murder, with a furious Richard III knowing he'll be blamed for it.
- The 2017 popular history book The Survival of the Princes in the Tower
by Matthew Lewis argues that the princes were likely spirited away by Richard and explores the idea that Perkin Warbeck was the genuine article.
- In L. Sprague de Camp's short story "The Gnarly Man," a scientist interviewing the titular character, an immortal Neanderthal, asks if he knows what happened to the Princes. He answers that he doesn't; he spent most of that era as a blacksmith and of course he wouldn't have been involved in any way.
- In Eleanor Fairburn's The Wars Of The Roses Quartet, Richard III plans to send both boys to the North where he can keep an eye on them, but Edward V is ill and can't travel. A young boy, who is one of many illegitimate sons of Edward IV, joins Edward V as a companion, and they quickly bond. However, both of those boys soon die of a mysterious illness that Richard suspects is poison by the Duke of Buckingham. Richard realizes that this puts Richard of York in grave danger, so he sends the boy to his sister in Burgundy. However, the boy is not Perkin Warbuck, as that young boy is yet another illegitimate son of Edward IV.
- In Rosemary Hawley Jarman's novel We Speak No Treason, Richard has sent the boys to a castle in the North for their own safety.
- Mary Shelley wrote a novel, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck that portrays Perkin as the real Richard of York. In her introduction, Shelley asserts her story is based on real documents that existed in the Tower.
- The premise of the original season of The Black Adder is that everything about this story is Tudor propaganda, and that in fact, the princes were never locked up, and Richard, Duke of York, grew up to become BRIAN BLESSED, who had two sons of his own (the younger of which, Prince Edmund, Duke of Edinburgh, becomes the titular Black Adder) and reigned for several years as Richard IV, following Richard III's death at Bosworth Hill. Henry VII, who managed to survive Bosworth Field, reformed the calendar and pretended none of it had ever happened - after Percy accidentally poisoned the entire royal family in the season finale, leaving Henry the only possible heir left. (It's left unexplained how Richard III could have become king when his only basis for being his brother's heir was having his nephews declared illegitimate.)
- Game of Thrones: Like their book counterparts, Bran and Rickon Stark are inspired by the princes. They are betrayed by their protector Theon and disappear. Much like lore about the princes that says one was swapped out for a servant boy; Theon similarly murders two orphan boys and burns them unrecognizable to quell resistance to his occupation of Winterfell after failing to catch the Stark brothers after they escape. Rickon is ultimately betrayed by Smalljon Umber and then murdered by Ramsey Bolton in "Battle of the Bastards", but in the show's ending, Bran is elected King of Westeros.
- The PBS archaeology documentary series Secrets Of The Dead did an episode focused on the documentary evidence uncovered by the Missing Princes Project, with a British criminal attorney investigating the evidence. He ultimately sides in favor of their theory that the princes escaped to become the pretenders Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck.
- In The Spanish Princess Margaret Beaufort is responsible for the boys' murder, though one is an imposter. On her deathbed, the elderly Margaret is tormented by their ghosts.
- In The White Queen and its sequel The White Princess, Richard is innocent of the boys' murder and on top of that, one of them has been spirited away by their mother, the titular White Queen and returns as Perkin Warbeck.
- William Shakespeare's Richard III is the Trope Maker, following the Ur-Example of pro-Tudor propaganda—understandably so, given that his primary artistic sponsor was Henry VII's granddaughter Elizabeth I. In Act III, Richard arranges for his nephews to be imprisoned in the Tower of London under the guise of protective custody in advance of Edward's coronation, then spreads rumors of their illegitimacy and gets the Duke of Buckingham to convince the court to declare him king. In Act IV, he orders Buckingham to kill the princes to tie up loose ends, but Buckingham balks so he has Sir James Tyrell do it.
- Hark! A Vagrant discusses this here, in which Richard III is preparing to kill the princes with 'dagger cake', only for a modern-day historian to point out there was no proof Richard actually did it, and that both the Duke of Buckingham and Henry Tudor had good motives too. Then they notice Richard of York already ate the dagger cake.
Richard III: Tell you what, I'll go halvsies with Buckingham.
- CGP Grey: In "Brief History of the Royal Family," Grey describes the incident with some sarcasm, implying Richard III's guilt:
"Edward IV, on his deathbed, left his crown to his son. But being twelve he needed protection, so Richard, his bestest uncle in the world, promised to take super good care of him. Edward V then promptly disappeared under suspicious circumstances that left Richard to become Richard III."
