Princes in the Tower

The Princes in the Tower was the collective name for the two sons of King Edward IV of England and Elizabeth Woodville who were locked up in the Tower of London prior to the planned coronation of the elder brother as Edward V of England. The question of what happened to the two princes was a mystery.

The Doctor, then in his third or fourth incarnation, was contracted to solve the mystery by the 64th century publishers of a range of books called Doctor Who Discovers. Due to years of contractual neglect, the job of actually writing the book — tentatively called Doctor Who Discovers: Historical Mysteries — fell to the Fifth Doctor. He in turn took Erimem and Peri back to 1483 to investigate the issue. The trio discovered that in fact there never were princes in the tower, but that Edward and Elisabeth had only had daughters — girls that lived as serving wenches under the names Susan and Judith, with the truth being concealed to protect the kingdom from the chaos that would result if there was no legitimate male heir to the throne. (AUDIO: The Kingmaker)

According to another account, the princes Richard and Edward were kidnapped by an agent of the Council of Eight to prevent them from having an impact on history. They were later rescued by the Eighth Doctor and Trix and taken to the 21st century, where they were adopted by Ernest Fleetward. (PROSE: Sometime Never...)

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)

Behind the scenes
It is possible that the above events took place in alternate timelines, as the Eighth Doctor's encounter with the Princes occurred when the Council of Eight had collapsed all of reality into a single timeline that they could control, with the Doctor's actions restoring alternate timelines to the universe at the conclusion of the novel Sometime Never....