[wagglebee]

Good post.

I remember reading "The Daughter of Time" by Josephine Tey in high school and it was excellent.

We will never know who killed the princes or even if they were killed.

What we do know is that all of the Richard III as villain stories began after his death.

And we also know that Henry Tudor had far more to gain from their deaths than Richard III. Richard had been made king by act of Parliament. Tudor's claim to the throne was through the illegitimate Beaufort line of the Lancasters. The princes were the rightful heirs of Edward IV and that made them a threat to the Tudor claims.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks wagglebee!

[Lurking Libertarian]

The Daughter of Time.

[FredZarguna]

What we do know is that all of the Richard III as villain stories began after his death.

This claim is 100% false, and has been repeatedly demolished by serious histories [which The Daughter of Time is NOT.]

There were rebellions against Richard during his usurpation, so there were enough people who believed him a villain to raise armies against him. Not a small number.

There were also contemporaneous accounts of the widespread rumors of Richard's murder of his nephews, which Ricardians like to ignore. Unfortunately, you can't. Nobody induced Mancini to write his diary, and it existed while Richard was still alive. All Richard The Usurper needed to do to prove his innocence was to produce his nephews alive. The reason he never did so is the obvious one.

[FredZarguna]

You actually contradict your own post within two sentences of each other. You write:

Richard had been made king by act of Parliament

and then go on to write:

The princes were the rightful heirs of Edward IV .

Titulus Regius the "act" enacted by Parliament under threat of arms by Richard the Usurper invalidated the Prince's claim to the throne. Thus, both of your statements cannot be true.