In the late 15th century, England was a kingdom divided by a civil war known as The War of the Roses. Two powerful families, the houses of York and Lancaster, fought for control of the throne in a vicious and relentless game of thrones that would quite literally go on to inspire A Game of Thrones.
In the middle of this turmoil was Edward IV, a Yorkist king who claimed the throne in 1461. His twelve-year reign brought some stability, but the underlying tensions remained. When Edward died suddenly in 1483, the royal family was once again in conflict.
Edward's eldest son, Edward V, was just twelve years old. Too young to rule. His uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was appointed Lord Protector, tasked with guiding the young king. But Richard, it seems, may have had other plans.
Edward's coronation had initially been scheduled for May 4th 1483, but Richard postponed this to June 25th.
On May 19th, Edward was moved to the Tower of London. The Tower may be best known for its use as a prison and dungeon, but at the time it was in use as a royal residence and it was expected that Edward would stay until the coronation.
A month or so later, on June 16th, Edward's younger brother, who confusingly shares his name with their uncle, also came to stay at the tower. The younger Richard, as brother of a childless king, would have been first in line to the throne at the time.
With Edward and Richard both under one roof, the elder Richard then postponed the coronation once more with only nine days notice. This time, no new date was given. The postponement would be indefinite.
Over the next few days, support for Richard's own claim to the throne gained traction and on June 26th, one day after Edward was supposed to be crowned, an act of parliament formally declared Richard to be no longer Duke of Gloucester, but Richard III, King of England.
And then the two princes, now deemed illegitimate, just... Disappeared. We don't know what happened to them, or even when. We just know that they were seen less and less around the grounds of the tower until one day it became clear that neither boy had been seen for a considerable amount of time--and neither would be seen again.
So... What happened to the Princes in the Tower?
The prime suspect, of course, is always Richard, the theory the obvious one: that he had his nephews killed in order to seize the throne for himself without leaving any legitimate claimants alive.
Some believe Richard may have had the boys smothered or otherwise killed in a swift manner. Others believe he may simply have left them locked away within the tower's walls to slowly starve.
Richard, however, was not the only person with a motive.
Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, was a powerful noble who initially supported Richard's claim to the throne, but later rebelled. He had distant familial connections that may have given him hope that he could one day accede to the throne. Some theories suggest that he may have been involved in the death of the boys, or perhaps that he was the mastermind behind the plan.
Then there's Henry Tudor—future Henry VII—who defeated Richard III and established the Tudor dynasty. It's speculated that he could have ordered their deaths to remove Yorkist rivals after his victory, though this would have taken place years later, so it wouldn't explain where the princes had been for all those intervening years.
Others suggest that the princes might even have survived. That they may have been moved away to live in secret, far from the public eye. Over the centuries, several people have emerged claiming to be one of the lost princes, though never with any kind of compelling evidence.
While we don't have conclusive proof of what happened or who was responsible—and we likely never will—seizing the English throne is a hell of a motive, and the future King Richard III also had both the means and the opportunity.
The hasty timeline points strongly to this incredibly likely solution: that Richard III had the boys murdered to secure his own place on the throne. But while we may be able to take an educated guess at the culprit, and the fact that the children met an unfortunate fate, what we don't know with any certainty is how that came about—and what happened to the remains.
Almost two centuries after the princes disappeared, we got our first clue.
It was the year 1674 and King Charles II was on the throne. Part of the Tower of London was undergoing repairs and workmen were tasked with removing a crumbling staircase near the chapel.
But as they pulled away the steps, they uncovered something unexpected: a wooden box, hidden deep in the rubble beneath the stairs. Inside were the skeletal remains of two children.
The bones were found close to where some chroniclers had long speculated that the princes may have been buried. The assumption therefore was a natural one: these were the missing sons of Edward IV—the lost Princes in the Tower.
The remains were placed in an urn and moved to Westminster Abbey, where they were interred near the tombs of kings and queens. The inscription on the urn marked them as the long-lost princes—though no one could say for sure.
For more than two centuries, they lay undisturbed. Then, in 1933, the bones were exhumed and examined by royal permission. A team of medical experts studied the skeletons, though the results were not particularly revealing.
The bones were indeed those of two children, roughly the right ages—around nine and twelve. There were no signs of disease or injury and no marks to indicate violence, though that would not rule out other forms of foul play such as smothering or poison.
The skeletons had been jumbled, perhaps during burial or from centuries of neglect, mixed with the bones of chickens and other animals and with many of the human bones missing.
The experts studying the bones were doing so under the assumption that the bones belonged to the princes, so there was no effort to verify their identity or even check the sex of the skeletons.
This has led in the decades since to calls for a modern forensic investigation. Experts have proposed using the very techniques that would later identify the remains of the boys' uncle, Richard III.
But the Church of England, and the Royal family, have refused.
Maybe they're right to. The princes were given a Christian burial, and some might say that disturbing them again would be nothing but a desecration. And if we set a precedent for exhuming bodies over and over, where do we draw the line and leave them to rest?
But still, questions remain. If these were the only bones then it might be different—we could be confident the bodies belong to the princes on the balance of probabilities. But these bodies are not the only candidates put forward over the years.
Even prior to the discovery of the bodies under the staircase, two children's bodies had been discovered in the Tower of London, reportedly found in a walled-up old chamber.
Away from the Tower, another discovery took place in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. Workers doing repairs in 1789 rediscovered the vault of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, the parents to the Princes in the Tower. They also found an adjoining vault containing the coffins of two children. These bore the names of two of their children: George, who died at only two-years-old, and Mary, who had died at 14. Both deaths happened before the death of Edward IV, before twelve-year-old Edward V inherited the throne, and before our mystery begins.
However, this straight-forward situation gets a little more complicated when works between 1810 and 1813 unearthed two more coffins—these ones also bearing the names of Mary and George. How could these two children each have been interred twice? The coffins were moved to join their parents in their vault, but no effort was made to investigate the identities.
There have once again been calls to allow an investigation into the contents of these coffins and the identities of their inhabitants, but again this would need royal approval and, at least so far, such approval has not been forthcoming.
More than five centuries have passed since the disappearance of the princes in the tower and even now, the mystery endures.
For many, the villain of the story has always been clear—thanks in large part to William Shakespeare.
In his play Richard III, written during the Tudor era, the king is a twisted tyrant: morally bankrupt, ruthless, even his body is portrayed with physical differences in an outdated attempt to cast the king as inherently villainous and evil.
He murders his nephews to steal the throne without a flicker of guilt. But then, this play was not written to be an accurate account of history, but to entertain in the time of the Tudors, who had every reason to portray Richard as a villain.
In more recent years, there has been a push from some to revisit the past with groups like the Richard III Society arguing that Richard was not the monster the Tudors made him out to be.
The Society would become well-known for its role in the discovery of the body of Richard III, which had been lost for centuries. In 2012, the body was found buried beneath a parking lot in Leicester. A king, unmarked and forgotten, laid in a grave beneath concrete and cars.
Meanwhile, in Westminster Abbey, just steps from the tombs of kings and queens, lies a modest urn containing two small skeletons.
Their uncle—and likely murderer—under a car park. The princes in a place of honour. If, of course, those bones are truly theirs…
