RedHanded - ShortHand: The Princes in the Tower

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

Back in 1483, two young princes mysteriously vanished from the Tower of London…And more than 500 years later, we’re still arguing about what happened to them. Were Edward V and his little brother Richard murdered on the orders of their dastardly uncle, Richard III? Or did they secretly survive – becoming pretenders to the throne amid the bloody War of the Roses?From Tudor propaganda to academic skulduggery, we’re digging up one of Britain’s greatest unsolved mysteries.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

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When thirst strikes and your energy begins to fade, one hero rises above the rest. Introducing the superpower smoothie from Zhu Booster. A bright sun-charged burst of mangoes, bananas, and blue spirulina. An out-of-this-world smoothie. Just in time for the new Supergirl movie. Discover your power and channel your inner superhero. Fly into your local Zhu Booster and experience it for yourself today. And see Supergirl, only in theaters June 26.

Hello. Welcome to an episode of Shorthand that I really sincerely hope doesn't have a Pido in it, but I'm not entirely sure because I am not a Ricardian. I hold my hands up. Richard III is not my area of expertise. Nor mine. Definitely some dead or at least missing kids. Don't have anyone touched them.

I would say they're dead now, almost certainly. Oh yes. For sure. cut down in their youth? Possibly. Let's find out. Are they still in the tower? I didn't even know that was possibility.

Find out. That's where... Which tower did you think they're in? Eh? It's called the prince is in the tower. Yeah, but I thought they vanished from there. I think they're still in there. Oh, okay.

Let's talk about it. In the summer of 1483, two young royal brothers went into the Tower of London and were never officially seen again. Legend has it that they were callously murdered by their uncle the dastardly Richard III, who sawed at his own family tree to secure his spot on the throne. But some historians believe a very different story,

that the princes survived, and even went on to challenge the Tudor rule that followed their uncle's brief and inglorious reign. Was King Richard III really the moustache twirling villain, history and Shakespeare painted him to be? And with the discovery of suspicious boy-shaped bones, years later, could modern science give us the answers historians have been seeking for centuries? On the blood-soaked battlefield of the War of the Roses, the truth is never as clear-cut as it might seem.

This is the mysterious and medieval shorthand. The tale of the princes in the tower is one of the biggest he said-she-said mysteries in English history. So we're going to start with what we know for sure. We've all heard about the War of the Roses, a decade-long beef between the noble houses of York and Lancaster. Loads of people died, it went on for fucking ages. If you've seen Game of Thrones, you basically get the picture. Well, our story starts, nearish to the end of this tumultuous period.

In 1461, the first ever Yorker's king, Edward IV, rose to the throne after deposing Henry VI. and the House of York was absolutely buzzing to finally have a go at the reins. And Edward V. Fourth was taking no chances when it came to securing his royal legacy. He married and had ten kids with a woman called Elizabeth Woodville. Now, most of the Yorkist elites weren't exactly big fans of Elizabeth, since she was a Lancastrian widow whose family were seen as shameless social climbers who'd switch sides just to get ahead.

And it wouldn't actually be the last time they did this, but we'll get to that later. Elizabeth gave Edward IV two surviving male heirs, the princes, Edward and Richard. In medieval times, there are only about five names that you can give anybody. And also, you're considered an adult once you turn 14. And I actually did watch the series The White Queen. because I everyone knows love the Tudors

but the white queen is like a TV series it's on Channel 4 now if you're in the UK starring Rebecca Ferguson from June as Elizabeth Woodville and it's very good

okay it's not totally accurate but it is very fun in a bodice ripping kind of way I've just got to the point now and I'm like were you there no you weren't

so you don't know do you history is written by paedophiles and also Philippa Gregory who writes It's all of the bodice ripping. She basically takes, and look, I'm not taking away with her about,

but Philippa Gregory is not a historian. Philippa Gregory is a woman who is a very good novelist, and she basically takes, like, the loose plot of like an Anne Boleyn or an Elizabeth Woodville character, and then she writes very saucy novels based on it, and then they get turned into TV stories. And then everyone thinks it really happened. And then everyone thinks that's what actually happened.

And look, I watch the White Queen, it's very compelling, but there's lots of mistakes in it. But Philippa Gregory, I assume, isn't pretending she is a historian. She is like, I'm a novelist. But she's also like, yum, yum, yum, channel four money. And channel four are like, yum, yum, yum, yum, viewers. I mean, that's why they have to put dragons in the Game of Thrones. So people are like, oh, not actually something that happened.

Also, you were considered an adult once who were 14 in the olden times, medieval times, because of the Catholic Church. That's when you become an adult. That's when you're confirmed when you're 14. Okay. 13, 14. So rather inconveniently for everyone involved, Edward the 4th unexpectedly popped his clogs after a short illness in April 1483, when his heir, Edward was only 12. Facing his kingly duties a few years earlier than planned, the future Edward V was going to need wise advisors around him to steady the ship. It's not like they turned 14 and then they have no advisors, by the way.

No, it's not really that different to what would have happened two years later. In the notoriously dog-eat-dog world of medieval politics, finding people who were selflessly interested in looking out for a small boy with not a political motivation of their own. A small boy who's going to be King of England. Sure, sure, sure. In his will, the late king named his younger brother, Richard, then the Duke of Gloucester,

as Lord Protectorate to help his son rule when the time came. something his mum's side of the family, the Woodville's, weren't ecstatic about. Little Edward had been raised in a drafty Staffordshire Castle under the tutelage of his maternal uncle, Anthony Woodville, who would become pretty much his only father figure. Now Edward was being sized up for the top job. Anthony Woodville was keen to stay by his side. Together with the Royal Council, the Woodville scrambled to find a way to prevent Richard from being the only one in charge of Edward. possibly because they didn't approve of the idea of one person having so much power,

and also probably because they wanted a slice of that pie for themselves. After ruling that Richard should not be Edward's only advisor, the council pencilled in a hasty coronation date the 4th of May to secure his proper ascension. But when he heard the rumours of people trying to muscle in on his protection of little Eddie from his castle in York, Richard was not having it. On the 24th of April, Edward began travelling down to London with his uncle Anthony, only for Richard to intercept them in Buckinghamshire, with an army of 6,000 men.

The soon-to-be king spent an anxious night staying at a pub's lodgings, while the grown-ups negotiated terms. Well, we say negotiated. The very next day Richard had Anthony Woodville, locked up and later ordered his ex-executive. As with many things in this story, a lot of it comes down to a matter of opinion. Either Richard genuinely had Edward's best interests at heart and was suspicious of the scheming woodwills trying to pull the strings from behind the curtain, or he himself had more sinister

motives for wanting Edward under his thumb. Or perhaps both. Either way, Richard took over his protectorate duties and escorted a likely traumatized Edward the rest of the way to the capital and straight to the Tower of London. Maybe you are thinking the infamous bloody tower home of countless imprisonments and execution. Surely Edward's alarm bells would be ringing by now. Well actually, no, not really, because back then the tower was like a little mini town with shops, 15 pubs, a royal armoury, a menagerie and a grand royal palace. And also the prison.

Most castles have dungeons. Yeah. You've got to. Where are you going to put them? It was actually customary for future royals to spend their pre-coronation period in the tower. But while an oblivious young Edward might not have felt anything amiss, tension was heating up between his warring rivals. His mum Elizabeth grew so fearful of her brother-in-law

that she took the rest of her kids, including nine-year-old Richard, into a sanctuary at Westminster Abbey. Assuring Elizabeth that he was definitely going to get Edward crowned, the older Richard eventually managed to coax her into letting him take Little Richard. As I said, there's only four names. To join his brother in the tower. And that would turn out to be her biggest mistake. That summer, a 1483, Richard kept pushing back Edward's coronation date.

During this time, a visiting Italian scholar named Dominic Mantini reported on how witnesses saw Edward playing with his little brother in the Tower grounds, hoping to squeeze out one last drop of childhood. before putting on that heavy crown. But his uncle Richard apparently had other plans. On the 22nd of June, a man named Reverend Shaw spoke as St. Paul's Cross, a famous open-air preaching spot,

and quickly dropped a juicy bit of gossip to the crowd. The late King Edward IV had allegedly been legally contracted to another wife when he married Elizabeth Woodville. In other words, His bigamous relationship was therefore null and void. And their ten kids?

Yep, bastards the lot of them. Including the two princes in the tower. This changed everything. When thirst strikes and your energy begins to fade, one hero rises above the rest. Introducing the superpower smoothie from Zhu Booster. A bright sun-charged burst of mangoes, bananas and blue spirulina. An out-of-this-world smoothie, just in time for the new Supergirl movie.

Discover your power and channel your inner superhero. Fly into your local Zhu booster and experience it for yourself today. And see Supergirl, only in theaters June 26. And we will give you three whole guesses as to where that particular rumor came from. Surprise, surprise, with his nephews conveniently booted out of the queue. Growed up, Richard was next to him. line for the Yorkist throne. And he was certainly wasting no time in taking it.

On the 6th of July 1483, the former Duke of Gloucester was officially crowned King Richard the 3rd with a lavish coronation at Westminster Abbey. Oh, you would be pissed if you were Elizabeth Woodville, wouldn't you? You'd be like, you've done your job to the fucking max. Like your job at the time as a queen or as like a royal lady, get married, have kids. Pop them out. Many kids as you can. She has ten fucking kids.

And then they're like, nah. They're all bastards. Oh my God, you'd be raging. And as for the newly illegitimate princes, they stayed in the tower, at least at first. Mancini wrote that they were withdrawn into the inner apartments of the tower proper and day by day began to be seen more rarely

behind the bars and windows until, at length, they ceased to appear altogether. By the autumn of 1483, both brothers had vanished. And to this day, nobody can state with any certainty what happened to them. Still, two major theories prevail amongst historians. The first, and, I have to say, most widely believed theory, is that the boys were killed in the tower, with their murders most likely ordered by King Richard III himself.

And it does make sense. You always have to look in a murder mystery who has the most to gain, right? And if Richard was ambitious enough to jump ahead in the line of succession, why would he risk leaving two little brats alive to challenge that position? That's just very inconvenient. Most accounts of Richard paint him as an ambitious, bloodthirsty and unscrupulous leader, who basically killed anyone who stood in his way. Though in this respect, he honestly wasn't all that different from other people.

kings at the time, because in medieval England, ambition and violence went hand in bloody hand. But even if he did swing the axe at his own nephews in pursuit of power, that wasn't actually enough for Richard to secure total control. His ill-gotten reign was brief and bloody ending just two years later with his death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, My Kingdom for a Horse, that one. Henry Tudor took the throne as King Henry the 7th, and united the houses of York and Lancaster by marrying Edward VIII and Elizabeth Woodville's daughter, Elizabeth of York, and that is why the Tudor Rose is red and white. And ironically enough, since he couldn't marry a bastard, Henry the 7th had to undo the proclamation his predecessor Richard had made, and declare all of those Woodville kids legitimate after all. Oh few.

So while he'd finally brought an end to the Bloody War of the Roses, he actually risked leaving the door wide open to a future challenge from his new bride's brothers. If they were still alive, that is. Whilst Henry allegedly searched Richard III's properties and the Tower of London looking for the princes, just to make extra sure they weren't still hanging around and had just been missed somewhere, it stands to reason that even if they were still around after Richard III died, they wouldn't have managed to stay that way for very long, think. No. And you must have some knowledge that they are no longer around to do what he did

and declare them all legitimate again. Quite. But logic and assumption aside, let's look at the anecdotal evidence for this theory. The biggest source comes from Thomas Moore, a court figure who famously served as Henry the 8th's Lord Chancellor a few decades later. Or at least until Henry had his pious old head chopped off in 1535, when he refused to examine to exist. accept him as the new supreme head of the Church of England. While Moore was just a child himself when the princes in the tower vanished, his book on Richard III seemed to imply inside a knowledge to what went down. Writing in the 1510s Moore described how a Yorkist knight named Sir James Tyrell

was executed in 1502 for another crime, but confessed before his death to the role he'd played in the younger prince's death. As one of Richard III's most loyal knights, Teryl claimed that Richard himself had ordered him to personally make sure his nephews did not live to see adulthood. Tyrell hired assassins, Miles Forrest and John Dighton to do his dirty work, and these men crept into the boy's bedchamber in the tower and smothered them in their beds. The account is incredibly detailed and chilling, describing how the hitmen suddenly lapped them up among the bedclothes,

sober wrapped them and entangled them, keeping them down by force, the feather bed and pillows hard onto their mouths, until their breath failing they gave up to God their innocent souls into the joy of heaven. Now, we have to say, obviously, Richard was in charge of Edward's security as his Lord Protectorate, so it's incredibly unlikely that anyone else could have got into the boy's inner chambers without Richard knowing about it. Or, as the case may well have been, without him ordering it himself.

So if the boys were killed in the tower, it was almost certain that Richard was behind it. Moore's account gave lurid details to what had been widely whispered about for decades. And in the following years, it basically became gospel. William Shakespeare used Moore as his main source to write Richard III in the 1590s, depicting the Yorkist king as a tyrannical villain,

who definitely absolutely totally. killed his nephews. Cause him a bottled spider. But historians have questioned Moore's reliability as a non-contemporary source who had his own loyalties to the Tudor courts

that followed Richard's brief reign. But in 2024, Professor Tim Thornton from the University of Huddersfield uncovered genuine evidence to back up his claims. Thomas Moore was found to be in close contact with the sons of the alleged assassins

and legacy documents indicate that a gold chain belonging to the doomed Prince Edward was passed down through the family of Sir James Tyrell, and as Moore's sources came to life, started to look a lot more credible. But long before that, another discovery also seemed to support Moore's version of events. In 1674, nearly 200 years after the prince has vanished, workmen excavating the tower found a box containing two sets of children. children's bones at the foot of an old suitcase. So you're right, Hannah.

Are they still in there? And this box was found in the exact spot where Thomas Moore claimed that the boys were buried. Now Moore did also say their remains were later moved to a, quote, better place. But still, the coincidence was enough to make people pretty bloody excited. Interesting that nobody checked that exact spot in 200 years, though, isn't it? Just have a look. Why don't have a look? There's quite a lot going on there, to be fair. And we also have to say

the king at the time, Charles II, obviously thought the bones were the real deal. He had them interred, with full pomp and ceremony in Westminster Abbey. The bones remained untouched for over another 200 years until in 1933 King George V gave his permission to have them tested using cutting-edge new technology. The scientists found the ages of the victims to roughly fit a 12-9-year-old

and pointed out evidence indicating suffocation. How the fuck they got that from some fucking 600 year old bones? I... Come on. I cannot. I cannot. How could you know that? That's too much.

I mean, if I'm going to give them any benefit of the doubt at all, it's like, okay, there's force applied to the face. Is there some sort of breakage that they can indicate there was like some sort of, you know, suffocation type death? Oh, fuck me. That's a stretch. The 1933 report has been widely criticised for falling victim to confirmation bias. The researchers just assumed the bones belonged to the princes.

They didn't really examine them that much at all. The report even called the skeletons Edward and Richard from the second page onwards and quoted Shakespeare as the reason to believe that they were who they claimed to be. Why did you go Shakespeare? Quote more at least. He's not even contemporaneous, but, At least he is closer to when it actually happened than fucking Shakespeare. Everyone had died in World War I. They were working with not very many people.

There wasn't even testing available back then to verify gender of said bones. What? And obviously it's 1933. They couldn't do DNA testing or carbon dating, so it's all just fucking nonsense. Anyway, the report left. More questions than answers. We still can't conclusively say that the bones at Westminster Abbey are in fact the missing princess although I have questions about a lot of bones in

Westminster Abbey actually being who they're supposed to be and I was going to say like what testing to tell the sex of the bodies but I guess like if they were 13 and nine you could say like they're prepubescent probably so maybe they haven't differentiated enough at that point yeah all right fine I'll allow it so let's come on now to our second major theory that the boys didn't die in the tower at all they survived. Or at least that's what amateur researcher Philippa Gregory. No.

Philippa Langley will tell you. Does the name ring a bell? Well, Langley was famously the woman who got a hunch that Richard the 3rd's remains were lurking under a car park in

Leicester. And it turned out to be true and they were indeed found there in 2012. Who is this woman? Who is this woman? I'll tell you. They even made a film with Sally Hawking's playing her role. It's called The Lost King and actually it ran into quite a lot of legal trouble of its own and they were successfully sued by libel by academics at the University of Leicester who objected to their portrayal in the film. Fucking out, can't take a joke, Jesus. How back can it have been? I haven't watched it

but I assume maybe it's along the lines of like, nobody believes Philippa Langley and they're like, you crazy old witch and they're like, we believed her. We would fucking I reckon it's like they've made them look like. They just were like, you know, telling her to fuck off a long. I don't know. If you've watched it, that's no. Because I'm never going to watch that. As a proud Ricardian, historians dedicated to redeeming old Dick's spotted legacy

and proving he wasn't such a bad guy after all, Langley launched a huge research mission called The Missing Princess Project. The project's sole aim was to prove that the commonly held story of big, bad Uncle Richard, killing his nephews in the tower, was really just Tudor propaganda, designed to smear the last Yorkist king, a perfect example of history being written by the victors. And rather than killing the boys, Richard was nice enough to let them go. The major sources supporting this theory are tied to two famous pretenders, to the Crown, in 1474 and 1494, respectively, Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck.

While conventional wisdom says that they were just impostors posing, as the lost princes, Langley reckons that they were in fact the real McCoy, back for another go at getting their disinherited bums on the English throne. In 1487, just a few short years after the princes vanished, a coronation was held at a church in Dublin, Ireland, for a lad who was going around calling himself Edward V. Now, 16 and ready to rule, he'd made friends in high places across Europe, including the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian and his wife, Margaret.

of Burgundy. And this was a biggie because Margaret was the sister of Edward and Richard of York, making her his aunt. Auntie and uncle were clearly on board with Edward's bid to reclaim his lost kingdom. Langley's team found an accounting receipt where Maximilian ordered 400 long pikes for an invasion, naming a son of King Edward who was expelled from his dominion. Langley makes a lot of the that Margaret of Burgundy appeared to publicly recognise and acknowledge this person as her nephew. But let's just think about that for a second. Margaret famously detested King Henry the 7th, the man who took her late brother's crown. Historian Dr Elizabeth Norton describes her as the last remaining Yorkist in an independent

and prominent position who would absolutely work towards usurping him. So the fact that she gave money and military support to a guy who said he was her nephew doesn't necessarily mean she believed him. She just kind of wanted everyone to think that's who he was. So she could be like, that's the real reason I'm doing it. Justice and equality. I do think, though, as I said, I am not a Ricardian. Had he lived to reign longer than two years,

he would have had time to write his own story rather than having it written for him. and possibly would be remembered more fondly. But he didn't, so we don't. No. So whoever this guy was who was saying he was Edward V, this so-called king stormed into battle against Henry the 7th forces at the Battle of Stoke in June 1487. It would become known as the last ever battle of the War of the Roses.

And once again, the Yorkists lost miserably. As a disorganized hodgepodge of paid European mercenaries, they were utterly trounced by the Tudor defenders and left like arrow-pricked hedgehogs in the dirt. The story from there goes that the guy claiming to be Edward was unmasked as a 10-year-old commoner called Lamber Simnel. After his capture, Henry V. Sent him to work in the Royal Kitchens as punishment.

Don't send him into the palace. That seems like a real rookie era. Yeah. But according to Langley, this was just a bit of fiction. According to the Missing Princess project, Henry the 7th tried to neutralise what had actually been a very legitimate threat by brushing it off as a tween age poser. The real Edward V most likely died at the Battle of Stoke, and the Tudor King covered up just how close a call it had been to protect his shaky rule.

And I guess it sends this message right of like, I don't even need to execute you. You are such a pretender to the throne. I can put you in my own kitchens, like the peasant you are. And history would repeat itself in 1494, when Richard came back on the scene. Now 20, he went around royal European houses trying to raise cash to build an army, once again calling on Aunt Margaret and her husband Maximilian in France. Maximilian's court supposedly judged Richard to be legit after verifying several marks on his body,

his eye, mouth and thigh, and apparently only the youngest prince had those in the whole world. In 1495, this Richard and his army of paid soldiers launched an invasion on England by boat. But when it failed, he fled to Scotland and took refuge with King James IV. Shelled there for a bit, got married, and just kicked about, until Henry the seventh spies captured him and marched him down to London in 1497. Henry had him sign a pre-prepared confession that revealed his true identity was just some guy, in Warbeck, the son of a boatman from Flanders. In exchange for the confession, the so-called traitor got off quite lightly. He wasn't locked up, he was allowed to live with his wife

and had his own tailor and horse. Apparently, Henry didn't want to piss off his European neighbours who were convinced that if he killed this guy, he would be killing his own brother-in-law. We're not sure whether Elizabeth recognised her long-lost little brother, but in the eyes of those at court. This was a certified imposter who had luckily escaped with his life. Until he got caught trying to escape London, a few months later, presumably

on the horse they gave him. And this time, Henry wasn't feeling quite so charitable. And the man known as Perkin Warbeck was ironically held at the Tower of London, brutally tortured, and executed by hanging in 1499. And from there,

the mystery of the princes in the tower became ancient history, researchers battled around more half-baked theories, like a potential plot by Richard's friend-turned-enemy the Duke of Buckinghamshire, but nothing really stuck. Until 2012, when Richard III's bones were dug up

from a Leicester City Council car park and blew this extremely cold case wide open. Because it wasn't just an exciting day for the council staff, who presumably got the afternoon off work, it also gave historians a full genetic profile that could be potential. potentially used to identify the bones attributed to his nephews.

But before you get too excited, for that to happen, scientists would need royal permission. Queen Elizabeth II never approved of having the bones retested, believing it was better to leave the boys whoever they were to rest in peace. Yeah, yeah. But rumour has it that King Charles III doesn't share his late mum's views. So one day, we might finally get the answers about the bones lying. in Westminster Abbey. If it is them, well,

Philippa Langley might have to go live in New Zealand or something. But if it's not, well, that's all bets are well and truly off. I don't care. I think it's them. I think it's them. I believe they were killed in the tower. I just don't think that the bones are theirs.

Oh, okay, okay. I think they were put there. Okay. To prove Thomas Moore's account. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Okay, got it, got it. I see what you say. I believe it was Richard the third that killed them.

Yeah. But I don't think he did anything differently than any other Duke of any other county would have done in his shoes. No. No, he's villainised to an extent that I'm like, they were all doing the same thing. Totally. And anyone would have done the same thing. So I absolutely believe that someone was just like, Kill him.

I'm just going to put this box just right here in exactly this place. Yes. and then it will be mysteriously discovered. You'd be pissed than 200 years no one went unchecked. But anyway, guys, that is your short hand on the princes in the tower. We hope you enjoyed it,

and we will see you later for another shorthand. Goodbye. Bye.