None of the history I read about the circumstances made Richard III seem guilty of murder-he didn’t have any reason to fear kids from a marriage that had been declared invalid. If he did want Kate and Edward’s sons to go away for whatever reason, he could have simply bundled them up and sent them to a distant relative or royal friend far away-Spain, France, etc, and called it furthering their education or fostering-he was the king, after all-no need for murder. Maybe that is what he did, and no one thought anything of it at the time.
If they were murdered-I’m more inclined to think Henry Tudor engineered it-he had a fragile claim to the throne-through marriage rather than direct inheritance.
Well, you need to read more, then. Because pretty nuch every serious history does.
he didn’t have any reason to fear kids from a marriage that had been declared invalid.
He himself forced Parliament to pass the act declaring his nephews illegitimate precisely because he feared them.
Maybe that is what he did, and no one thought anything of it at the time.
Nonsense. There were widespread rumors during his reign that he murdered his nephews. Why do Ricardians continue to pretend there were not? Very simply because the fact that the children disappeared long before the Battle of Bosworth Field puts a complete lie to the claptrap that the children disappeared during Henry VII's reign. They didn't. They were never seen again after the summer of 1483.
Buckingham's Rebellion put the cause of Prince Edward forward, so clearly the rebels knew that a phony act of Parliament disinheriting Edward could be repealed just as easily. Richard knew it, too. He also knew that Titulus Regius was complete baloney [it relied, for example, on a claim that even if there was no precontract, the Woodville claim was still invalidated because Elizabeth Woodville had employed "witchcraft" to obtain her marriage to Edward the IV.]
Make NO mistake: as long as Edward V and Richard of Shrewsbury lived, they were a rallying point for rebellion and a threat to Richard the Usurper's throne.
We know he didn't send them away because court documents in both France and Spain during Richard's reign refer to the curious nature of their disappearance. The French, who had a boy king of their own in need of protection, used the fate of the Princes in the Tower for propaganda purposes.
All Richard need ever have done to dispel the rumors and rehabilitate his reputation was produce the princes alive.
Why didn't he?