One of history’s great mysteries is what happened to the “Princes in the Tower,” the young sons of Edward IV who went into the Tower of London in 1483 and were never seen again. Some people believe their uncle, who became Richard III, had them killed, while others think the man who deposed Richard, Henry VII, was responsible.

Murder mysteries often turn on Means, Motive and Opportunity: who could do it, who wanted to do it, and who was able to do it, and those are matters I’ve considered when coming to a conclusion — to the degree I have — about the princes.

When exploring motive, one consideration is who benefits from the murder. In this case, both men would have benefited.

When Edward IV died unexpectedly in 1483, his sons were 12 and 9 years old. The older, Edward, became King Edward V on his father’s death, but he was a minor and would need a regent. His paternal uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucestor, became the king’s protector. Shortly after the boys were lodged in the Tower in preparation for Edward’s coronation, Richard took the throne, claiming the boys were illegitimate because his father had contracted a marriage to a woman other than their mother before marrying their mother. In those days, a betrothal was as binding as a marriage, and the pre-contract made the later marriage invalid. Royal bastards do not inherit the throne, so the throne passed to the next in line, Richard.

The evidence for the pre-contract was not airtight, nor was the realm stable enough to withstand another series of competing claims for the throne. So long as the princes lived, they could be used by Richard’s enemies as threats to his throne. If they were dead, they would be no threat.

Richard had another nephew, son of his older brother George, but George had been convicted of treason, and that barred his son from the throne.

Richard also had means — he was king — and opportunity. The boys were in his care.

In August, 1485, Henry Tudor arrived in England to claim the throne. The Cousins’ War — now known as The Wars of the Roses — had been a decades-long struggle between rival houses for the throne of England. Richard III was Yorkist, while Henry was heir of the Lancastrians. Richard and Henry met at Bosworth field, and Richard died there. With his rival dead, Henry was now king.

One of the first things he did was marry the Princes’ oldest sister, Elizabeth of York. He also had the bill making her illegitimate suppressed, restoring her legitimacy. The marriage united the two warring houses, but Elizabeth’s brothers had stronger claims to the throne than Henry did. That gave him a motive for killing them. And, like Richard, as king he had the means.

What I don’t think he had was opportunity.

Henry was in France when the Princes went into the Tower in 1483. In the two years that followed, neither boy was seen by anyone. They’d vanished.

I don’t think they were alive in 1485 for Henry to have killed. So I think Henry is innocent.

But only on those grounds. I think Henry was absolutely ruthless enough to have them killed. In fact, I think he needed to be that ruthless. England needed him to be that ruthless. But, in this case, it wasn’t required.

So, if I don’t think Henry did it, do I think Richard did?

Actually, I don’t.

I don’t think he ordered their deaths, but I do think they died in the Tower while he was king. I also think he had to conceal their deaths, because to admit they’d died while effectively in his care would have further destabilized a situation that was none too stable to begin with. He couldn’t afford that honesty and he was shrewd enough to recognize it.

Will we ever know what happened? I think it unlikely, but if you’d asked me five years ago if we’d ever find Richard’s body, I’d have said no to that too. Things come to light all the time, and something may come to light that solves this mystery once and for all.