The Princes in the Tower

Two princes entered the Tower of London in 1483. Within months they had disappeared from public view, leaving behind one of the most enduring mysteries in English history and a shadow that would follow Richard III to the end of his reign.

Edward IV's unexpected death placed his twelve-year-old son on the throne as Edward V. Before the boy could be crowned, his uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, took control of the government, challenged the legitimacy of Edward IV's marriage and accepted the crown as Richard III. The young king and his brother Richard remained inside the Tower, where sightings became less frequent until both boys vanished from public life. The surviving evidence does not reveal with certainty when they died, how they died or who was directly responsible.

Richard's accession did not immediately produce governmental collapse. He was an experienced administrator, his parliament legislated, towns received him and royal government continued to function. Yet the disappearance of the princes created a political burden that neither legal argument nor administrative competence could remove. Within months Buckingham rebelled, Yorkist exiles began to gather around Henry Tudor and the struggle for England's future entered a new phase.

The Princes in the Tower: Richard III and the Shadow over the Crown follows Richard III from his coronation through the rebellion of 1483, the emergence of Henry Tudor, the death of Richard's heir and queen, the growth of the Tudor coalition and the invasion of 1485. It examines the evidence surrounding the princes without pretending that a mystery created by incomplete and partisan sources can be solved with certainty.

The story ends on the road to Bosworth. Richard still possesses the crown and the machinery of government, while Henry Tudor has landed but has yet to prove that promises of support will become soldiers in the field. Book Nine takes the series into the battle that will decide the fate of the last Plantagenet king to die in combat.