The fate of the Princes in the Tower is arguably the BIGGEST ROYAL MYSTERY ever, at least in England and one of the real low points in the Wars of the Roses, but we have never been able to ascertain with any certainty what happened to Edward V and Richard, Duke of York. The children of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, they were last seen at the Tower of London in the summer of 1483, where they had been imprisoned by their paternal uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who soon afterwards declared them illegitimate and took the throne as Richard III. In 1674 the bones of two children were found in a staircase in the White Tower which were widely assumed to be the princes, who were aged 12 and 9 when they disappeared. These were placed in an urn and interred at Westminster Abbey and have not been examined since the 1930s. At that point, science was not sufficiently advanced to establish if the skeletal remains were Edward and Richard. Nowadays though, there is great interest in using modern science to solve historical mysteries and since the discovery of the bones of Richard III in 2012, there have been fresh calls to re-examine the bones in the urn to see if DNA can identify them as the remains of the Princes in the Tower. Is it really that simple, though? Could the bones actually be used to establish the identity of their owners, or are they too badly degraded? Is it even possible to get permission to examine them? Queen Elizabeth II always refused any attempts to have the bones studied. However, her son King Charles III, has reportedly expressed an interest in having an investigation carried out. In this video from History Calling we discuss the likelihood that the bones will be disinterred and examined, look at the limitations of what DNA and carbon dating can offer us and think about what the consequences would be if we were able to prove that the bones were those of the young King and his little brother. For one thing, what would that mean for those who accuse Richard of having had them killed and conversely for those who accuse Henry VII and his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort of having had a hand in it?
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The King in the Carpark (2013). Documentary about the discovery of Richard III’s skeleton in 2012. [ Ссылка ] (UK LINK)
Britain’s Bloody Crown Presented by Dan Jones (2016) [Documentary covering the Wars of the Roses. Historically accurate] [ Ссылка ] (US LINK)
The White Queen (2013). [ Ссылка ] (UK LINK) OR [ Ссылка ] (US LINK)
The White Princess (2018). [ Ссылка ] (UK LINK) OR [ Ссылка ] (US LINK)
READ MORE:
John Ashdown-Hill, The Mythology of the Princes in the Tower (Amberley, 2018). [ Ссылка ] (UK LINK) OR [ Ссылка ] (US LINK)
Tim Thornton, ‘More on a murder: the deaths of the “Princes in the Tower”, and historiographical implications for the regimes of Henry VII and Henry VIII’ in History: the Journal of the Historical Association (2020), pp 4-25.
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