Did Richard III Kill the Princes in the Tower?
For over 400 years, Richard III has been seen as Britain’s most infamous king — a power-hungry usurper who killed his young nephews to clear the way to the throne.
In Shakespeare’s “Richard III,” the king tells an assassin, “I wish the bastards dead,” referring to the princes Edward V and Richard. “And I would have it suddenly performed.”
But the king’s murderous image, drawn from history books and cemented in literature and lore, is just not true — or, at least, it has not been proven true, argues Philippa Langley, an author and independent historian.
“Maybe there is evidence,” she said over a cup of tea in Edinburgh earlier this year. “But there seems to be no evidence.”
Langley is, perhaps, Richard III’s most dedicated living defender. A prominent member of the Richard III Society, an organization that has been working since 1924 “to secure a more balanced assessment of the king,” she has made a career of researching — and rehabilitating — a man who ruled for two years, from 1483 to his death in 1485.
In 2012, she spearheaded a project to find his remains, which were under a parking lot in the city of Leicester, as she believed they would be, and give him a dignified burial. Once she had laid Richard III to rest, however, she found she couldn’t quite let him go. After all, he was still seen as a murderer.