ShortHand: The Princes in the Tower

The mystery of the Princes in the Tower—Edward V and his younger brother Richard, who vanished in 1483 after being placed under the guardianship of their uncle, Richard III—remains one of England’s most enduring historical enigmas. While traditional accounts, fueled by Thomas More and Shakespeare, paint Richard III as a ruthless murderer who had his nephews smothered in their beds, modern historians are increasingly skeptical. The discovery of two child-sized bones in 1674, later interred in Westminster Abbey and tested in 1933, was long seen as evidence of the princes’ murder—but those tests were deeply flawed, relying on assumptions and lacking DNA or carbon dating. A competing theory, championed by amateur historian Philippa Langley, argues the boys survived and were the real identities behind two 15th-century pretenders: Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck. Langley suggests Henry VII deliberately covered up the threat posed by these imposters to protect his fragile Tudor rule. Though Richard III’s remains were finally found in 2012 under a Leicester car park, royal permission to test the bones in Westminster Abbey has never been granted—leaving the truth buried once more. The episode concludes with a provocative take: the bones may have been planted to validate More’s story, not because they were real, but because the narrative needed to be confirmed.