FAQ

In real life the boys disappeared without a trace and it is presumed they were killed, though we will never know for certain without finding the bodies and verifying DNA. Richard III is the most likely culprit as he had a strong motive to eliminate the boys and he was the one who was keeping them prisoner.

The show makes this less of a mystery. Anne tells Brackenbury, the commander of the Tower that the Princes may be a threat. Margaret enlists Buckingham, who has access to the Tower to kill the Princes in order to clear the way for her own son. The scene where the Princes disappear doesn't show who actually comes into their room. In keeping with the show's revisionist take on Richard III, it never shows the King as desiring or plotting the boys' deaths and shows him very upset when they disappear. While it's possible he did not kill them in real life, it's extremely unlikely that Margaret Beaufort did and history gives us no evidence of the show's implication of her.

After they boys' disappearance, and presumed death, Elizabeth and her daughter cast a spell, cursing the one responsible for the boys' deaths so that their first born son will die. Later on Anne and Richard's son dies, suggesting that Anne might be the one responsible, a possibility which she worries about herself. However, when she asks Brackenbury if he killed the Princes for her he denies it.

This plotline is based on the story of a real life man named Perkin Warbeck who appeared during the reign of Henry VII, Margaret Tudor's son. Warbeck claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, the younger son of King Edward IV and Queen Elizabeth. He was eventually captured and gave a possibly forced confession recanting his views. But at the time his claim was believed by some, including his aunt Margaret of York (the sister of Edward IV and Richard III who doesn't appear in the tv show).

The show takes the position that Warbeck's claims were truthful and that he really was Prince Richard. When Elizabeth is asked to deliver her younger son to the King to be put in the Tower she says they need to find a boy who looks like Richard. When the boy is finally delivered to the Tower his face is covered so as not to be seen by the guards. Elizabeth and her daughters refer several times to having sent a "changeling" to the Tower. In folklore changelings impostors swapped for ones real child. When she hears about the Princes in the Tower disappearing, Elizabeth slips and says that Richard has survived. After Henry VII's victory at Bosworth Field, Elizabeth tells her servants to send word to "Mr. Warbeck" to return her son to her and refers to him as "My Perkin". The show thus uses the theory that Elizabeth substituted another boy for Richard and had him smuggled out of the country to live incognito with the Warbeck family