Richard III was Innocent!

Or so claims Philippa Langley in her new book The Princes in the Tower: Solving History’s Greatest Cold Case. I confess I haven’t read it yet. It’s on my Christmas list. But I’ve watched the Channel 4 documentary and listened to Matt Lewis’ Going Medieval Podcast (16/11/23), so I get the general idea. Langley has spent the last eight years, working with an extensive team of freelance researchers, taking a forensic approach to exploring one of the biggest questions in English history: What happened to the Princes in the Tower?

The princes in question were the two sons of King Edward IV, who died in April 1483. The elder boy was in fact King Edward V until he and all his siblings were declared illegitimate, and the crown went instead to his uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Richard III. The boys disappeared. As a result of some very effective Tudor propaganda, Richard has been labelled a wicked child murderer for more than 500 years. Despite the big hitters in the Tudor camp, Thomas More and Shakespeare among others, voices were raised in Richard’s defence not long after the Tudor dynasty ended. Sir George Buc argued for a re-evaluation of Richard in the early 17th century. A new edition of his The History of King Richard the Third, edited by Arthur Kincaid, was published in 2023. Many others have followed suit, including Langley herself. But always looking for someone else to blame.

The ideas, now underpinned by Langley’s findings, are not entirely new, as Matt Lewis’ 2017 book, The Survival of the Princes in the Tower argues. The extraordinary documentary evidence unearthed by Langley’s research team ends up asking a different question: what if they survived?

My novel, The Solace of the Common People (2022), tells a fictional alternative history of Richard III, in which he wins the battle of Bosworth and reigns for forty years. I had to address the thorny issue of what happened to the princes. I was familiar with all the different arguments and interpretations, but I had to be strategic. I didn’t want my Richard to kill them, of course, but I also didn’t want them around. Equally I thought it would be fun if they haunted the narrative in plausible and perhaps uncomfortable ways. I did not have the benefit of Langley’s book, and my Richard is a complete fiction, but my story and her findings are not absolutely out of sync.

That said, the parts of the book that I enjoyed writing the most were the chapters that dealt with Richard’s later years. By this time, I had completely grown into my character, and I loved the way he interacted with his (obviously fictional) adult children. I enjoyed how they helped him to navigate some of the key events of the 16th century. I also had fun with thinking about the ways in which this imagined long reign might impact on the future through a 22nd century plotline that runs throughout.

The Solace of the Common People is on Kindle promotion for Christmas (5-12th December) and I’d like to share it with you: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Solace-Common-People-K-Smith/dp/1739152905/ref=sr_1_1?crid=168RGY1FHAQMO&keywords=the+solace+of+the+common+people&qid=1672137064&sprefix=the+solace+of+the+common+people%2Caps%2C77&sr=8-1

The Princes in the Tower: Solving History’s Greatest Cold Case can be found here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Princes-Tower-Historys-Greatest-FEATURED/dp/1803995416/ref=sr_1_1?crid=35H039LF8XQ0S&keywords=the+princes+in+the+tower+philippa+langley&qid=1701510953&sprefix=The+Princes+in+teh+%2Caps%2C73&sr=8-1

Going Medieval: Princes in the Tower: new Evidence Revealed can be found here: https://shows.acast.com/gone-medieval/episodes/princes-in-the-tower-new-evidence-revealed#