Richard (Sometime Never...)

According to history, Prince Richard, Duke of York was the brother of King of England Edward V. After the death of their father King Edward IV, their uncle Richard of Gloucester declared them to be bastards by voiding the marriage of their parents, thus becoming Richard III in their places. Richard and Edward came to be known during their uncle's reign as the Princes in the Tower and the circumstances of their disappearance was a mystery for many centuries.

Accounts differed as to Princes' true identities, Richard's reasons for delegitimising them, as well as their eventual fates.

A grand lie
According to one account, the third-born child of King Edward IV and his consort Elizabeth Woodville was a daughter named Judith. After the birth of their second child, another daughter named Susan, Edward had become worried about the stability of crown and country with a lack of a male heir. In an effort to avoid a continuation of the Wars of the Roses, he had lied and announced to the world that his second-born daughter was a son in order to "stop the jitters going through the kingdom". With the birth of yet another daughter, Edward kept the lie going to have two boys, "one for the succession and one for a spare". He also had birth certificates for his two "sons" forged.

Edward IV died suddenly on 9 April 1483 and so the "Princes" were recalled back to London for the scheduled coronation of elder sibling "Edward" on 24 June that year. During the journey, however, their uncle Richard of Gloucester discovered his nephews were actually neices and immediately took measures to protect the succession. When the escort reached London, Richard rounded up and executed everyone who knew the truth, including Hastings. He then bribed Elizabeth Woodville, Edward's widow, to keep quiet about the whole affair, who was as petrified about the truth coming out as Richard himself. After that, Richard declared the "boys" bastards by voiding the marriage of their parents, allowing him to legally crown himself king. Richard later said that exposing the lies of the "beloved and dearly departed king [...] would have torn the whole kingdom apart".

For the first six months of Richard's reign, Judith and Susan lived in Tower of London. However, when "all the murder and kidnap plots started buzzing", he sent them to live with their Uncle Clarrie, who was already lying low, at the Kingmaker tavern, where they also worked as serving wenches. Richard forced Peri Brown and Erimem, who had been stranded in 1483 thanks to a malfunctioning TARDIS, to regularly pretend to be the Princes in their stead, with Erimem in the role of Prince Richard. They were freed towards the end of Richard's reign in 1485 when they reunited with the Fifth Doctor, who was waiting for them. (AUDIO: The Kingmaker)

A happy life
According to another account, Edward IV's second and third children had been boys named Edward and Richard, though the Duke of Gloucester did not kill them to seize the throne. They "lack[ed] for nothing", with Richard the Duke of York and Edward the Prince of Wales, and their uncle saw to everything they needed.

On the eve of the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, King Richard had said his goodbyes to the Princes before a large feast. During the night, Trix MacMillan intruded into the Princes' room and told them a version of Cinderella, featuring two princes and two Cinderellas with the invention of a twin sister named Ashlina for the title character. They were later kidnapped by an agent of the Council of Eight to prevent them from having an impact on history but were eventually rescued by Trix and the Eighth Doctor. The Doctor was unable to return them to their home time as Henry Tudor was certain to kill them so they were instead taken to the 21st century, where they were adopted by Ernest Fleetward. (PROSE: Sometime Never...)

Legacy
William Shakespeare's play Richard III showed the eponymous monarch to be responsible for the murder of the Princes, despite people already questioning his motives by Shakespeare's time. This was because, as the Doctor put it, Shakespeare was a "fiction-peddling puppet to the House of Tudor and a lapdog to the court of Queen Elizabeth". Elizabeth was the granddaughter of Henry Tudor, whose position derived from the defeat and deligitimisation of Richard III.

By the 20th century, the Fifth Doctor claimed Richard III was seen as "nothing but tawdry propaganda" and that suspicion for the murder of the Princes in the Tower had indeed fallen on Henry Tudor. The planned sixth book in the Doctor Who Discovers series, Doctor Who Discovers Historical Mysteries, was originally meant to focus on the disappearance of the Princes. (AUDIO: The Kingmaker) The mysterious fate of the twelve- and nine-year-old siblings led many to believe that they had been murdered. Consequently, the place of their imprisonment became known as the Bloody Tower. (AUDIO: The Battle of the Tower)

Other realities
In a parallel universe, the Doctor saved the Princes in the Tower. (AUDIO: A Storm of Angels)

According to the Eighth Doctor, in one universe "somewhere close by" to N-Space, Henry VII murdered the Princes near the beginning of his reign. He also knew of their fates in another but did not elaborate, stating "Well, that's a different story altogether". (PROSE: Sometime Never...) The Tenth Doctor later told Martha Jones that he'd solved the mystery of what happened to the Princes twice, in two different versions of history. (PROSE: The Secret of the Stones)

Behind the scenes

 * Brian Blessed played Richard, crowned King Richard IV in the alternative history of The Black Adder.