History Main / TheFateOfThePrincesInTheTower

# 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.

Since no bodies have been conclusively found, though there were skeletons thought to be them uncovered during the reign of [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfStuart Charles II]] and hastily buried in Westminster Abbey, people have been debating the boys' fate for centuries.

Edward V of England and his brother Richard of Shrewsbury were the young sons of [[UsefulNotes/EdwardIV King Edward IV]] and his consort Elizabeth Woodville. Upon the death of their father, their uncle UsefulNotes/RichardIII, who had been appointed Lord Protector, had the boys declared illegitimate and seized the throne for himself. 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 Henry VII, most people presumed the princes to be dead.

Edward V of England and his brother Richard of Shrewsbury were the young sons of [[UsefulNotes/EdwardIV King Edward IV]] and his consort Elizabeth Woodville. Upon the death of their father, their uncle UsefulNotes/RichardIII, who had been appointed Lord Protector, had the boys declared illegitimate and seized the throne for himself. The boys were lodged in The Tower of London and disappeared sometime in 1483. By the time of Richard's defeat at Bosworth Field and the ascension of Henry VII, most people presumed the princes to be dead.

* The premise of the original season of ''Series/TheBlackAdder'' is that everything about this story is Tudor propaganda and that in fact, the princes were never locked up, one of them grew up to become Creator/BrianBlessed, had two sons of his own and reigned for several years as Richard IV following Richard III's death at Bosworth Hill, and then Henry 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.

# Henry VII did it, after discovering them alive upon Richard's defeat at Bosworth.
# Henry VII's mother, Margaret Beaufort did it, before Bosworth, knowing Richard would be blamed and that her son would not be secure on the throne while they lived.

* Creator/WilliamShakespeare's ''Theatre/RichardIII'' is the TropeMaker, following the UrExample of pro-Tudor propaganda--understandably so, [[RealLifeWritesThePlot given that his primary artistic sponsor]] was Henry VII's granddaughter UsefulNotes/ElizabethI. 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 [[EveryoneHasStandards Buckingham balks]] so he has Sir James Tyrell do it.

* Shakespeare's ''Theatre/RichardIII'' has Richard sending assassins to murder the princes.

* The 1951 novel ''Literature/TheDaughterOfTime'' features a modern detective combing through the evidence and deciding Richard likely was not the culprit.

* In Creator/PhilippaGregory's Wars of the Roses novels, ''Literature/TheCousinsWarSeries'', 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, however, 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.

Related tropes include EvilUncle, EvilChancellor, HiddenBackUpPrince, LostOrphanedRoyalty, ReallyRoyaltyReveal, and TheWrongfulHeirToTheThrone.

See DidAnastasiaSurvive for another StockUnsolvedMysteries with a (formerly) unresolved fate, and WhoShotJFK for another murder mystery whose explanation is, at least in popular culture, considered unresolved.

* ''Manga/RequiemOfTheRoseKing'': Richard imprisons the boys, but they are [[RoyalBrat Royal Brats]] who were plotting against him.

* In Philippa Gregory's Wars of the Roses novels, ''Literature/TheCousinsWarSeries'', 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, however, 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.

* ''Literature/ANightInTerrorTower'': 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 EvilUncle 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 ''Literature/EighthDoctorAdventures'' novel "Sometime Never...", the princes were kidnapped by the [[ArcVillain ArcVillains]] the Council of Eight, to prevent them from affecting history, then rescued by the Doctor and adopted by a 21st-century archeologist.

See DidAnastasiaSurvive for another case of a HistoricalDomainCharacter with a (formerly) unresolved fate, and WhoShotJFK for another murder mystery whose explanation is, at least in popular culture, considered unresolved.

See DidAnastasiaSurvive for another case of a Historical Domain Character with a (formerly) unresolved fate.

* The premise of the original season of ''Series/TheBlackAdder'' is that everything about this story is Tudor propaganda and that in fact, the princes were never locked up, one of them grew up to become Creator/BrianBlessed, had two sons of his own and reigned for several years as Richard IV following Richard III's death at Bosworth Hill, and then Henry reformed the calendar and pretended none of it had ever happened after Percy accidentally poisons the entire royal family, leaving Henry the only possible heir left.

# Richard did it. He had motive, means and opportunity to order someone to kill the princes.

# Aliens, Vampires, TimeTravel etc. Not a serious suggestion for the real-life mystery, but an intriguing possibility to explore in fiction.

* In Philippa Gregory's Wars of the Roses novels, ''Literature/TheCousinsWarSeries'', 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, however, 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.

* In the ''Literature/EighthDoctorAdventures'' novel "Sometime Never...", the princes were kidnapped by the [[ArcVillain ArcVillains]] the Council of Eight, to prevent them affecting history, then rescued by the Doctor and adopted by a 21st century archeologist.

* ''Literature/ANightInTerrorTower'': 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 EvilUncle 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.

* The premise of the original season of ''Series/TheBlackAdder'' is that everything about this story is Tudor propaganda, and that in fact, the princes were never locked up, one of them grew up to become Creator/BrianBlessed, had two sons of his own and reigned for several years as Richard IV following Richard III's death at Bosworth Hill, and then Henry reformed the calendar and pretended none of it had ever happened after Percy accidentally poisons the entire royal family, leaving Henry the only possible heir left.

* ''Webcomic/HarkAVagrant'' 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.

# 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 and was eventually executed by Henry VII, claimed to be Richard of Shrewsbury and is a favorite candidate for being the real deal[[note]]Reportedly, King James I, the first post-Tudor monarch, believed Warbeck was Richard of Shrewsbury[[/note]].

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 Shakespeare's classic HistoricalVillainUpgrade ''Theatre/RichardIII'', 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]]not coincidently right after the death of the last Tudor monarch[[/note]], his defenders, known as [[FanCommunityNickname 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.

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 Shakespeare's classic HistoricalVillainUpgrade ''Theatre/RichardIII'', 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 1600's [[note]]not coincidently right after the death of the last Tudor monarch[[/note]], his defenders, known as [[FanCommunityNickname 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.

* ''Film/PrincesInTheTower'' is a 2005 television movie that has Perkin Warbeck visiting the court of Henry VII and convincing many he is Richard of Shrewsbury, [[spoiler: 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.]]

* A short story by Creator/CJCherryh 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."

* Richard, the Princes in the Tower, and his reputation are the focus of ''Literature/TheHellequinChronicles'' prequel novella ''Infamous Reign'', which features Nate Garrett a.k.a. [[TheDreaded 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 ArchEnemy 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 Literature/IRichardPlantagenetSeries the Duke of Buckingham arranges the princes' murder behind Richard III's back. However, Edward V is such a RoyalBrat and BigBrotherBully that [[spoiler: 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 ''Literature/TheLastDaughterOfYork'' 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 [[spoiler: magically sent forward in time to World War II. The older prince, Edward V, died of natural causes at The Tower]].

* In the ''AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho'' audio drama "[[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho081TheKingmaker 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, but with them entering 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...

* In the ''AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho'' audio drama "[[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho081TheKingmaker 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. 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...

* In the ''AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho'' audio drama [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho081TheKingmaker The Kingmaker]], 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. 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...

# Aliens, Vampires, TimeTravel etc.(Not a serious suggestion for the real-life mystery, but an intriguing possibility to explore in fiction.)

# 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 and was eventually executed by Henry VII, claimed to be Richard of Shrewsbury and is a favorite candidate for being the real deal.

* In J. P. Reedman's Literature/IRichardPlantagenetSeries the Duke of Buckingham arranges the princes' murder behind Richard III's back. However, Edward V is such a RoyalBrat and BigBrotherBully that [[spoiler: 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 to Bruges and giving him the name Perkin.]]

* In ''Series/TheWhiteQueen'', 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 in the sequel returns as Perkin Warbeck.