Motivated reasoning, thy name is Philippa Langley.

In any discussion of a book about Richard III, one always needs to reveal one's starting opinion. So here's mine: I'm pro-Richard. He was a good duke, the strongest support of his brother Edward IV as king. And if we set apart his first few months of usurping the throne, Richard was a good king, too, promoting justice and education -- among other things, he produced legislation promoting the production and importation of books. He was, potentially, great. But the way he took the throne was a problem. My personal guess is that the death of Edward IV caused him a temporary loss of mental stability, resulting in the usurpation and the murder of the princes.

I'd really like to have an excuse to find a better explanation. I would.

But I also have to take the data seriously. Langley's incessant habit of taking one minor fact, making a major inference, treating that inference as fact, and then making more inferences on that basis and treating those as fact renders this volume pretty close to fiction.

Worse, the way she presents her case is stunningly dull. It's as if she's burying you in irrelevancies so you don't notice the dirty trick she pulled on you.

Case in point: The Precontract. This was the whole basis of Richard's claim to the throne. Shortly after Edward IV died, a bishop named Robert Stillington came forward to claim that Edward IV had promised marriage to Eleanor Talbot Butler, and that this rendered Edward IV's later marriage to Elizabeth Woodville invalid, and hence all of Edward's children by Elizabeth illegitimate. If true, the precontract would justify Richard's taking the throne. The question is, was it true.

What evidence does Langley offer? On pp. 119-131, she lists a number of sources that say that Richard asserted that there was a precontract. But this was not in doubt. Richard's official claim to the throne is the Titulus Regius. This survives. No other evidence is needed. Langley claims to be following police procedures. If you have a tape recording of someone saying, "I did this," you don't need other testimony saying, "I heard so-and-so say this." The direct evidence is sufficient.

So Langley's many secondary sources saying that Richard said there was a precontract are completely irrelevant. What matters is whether Stillington's claim was true or not. Langley doesn't even look at this issue; certainly she does not bring us new information. All she's done is muddy the waters.

She does this endlessly.

So what actual evidence does she have? Archival work in Europe has turned up a couple of letters referring to King Edward V, and to his brother Richard Duke of York. Langley calls these "Proof of Life" for each of the princes, on which basis she claims that Richard III did not kill his nephews.

Of course, her "Edward V" is actually the pretender everyone else calls Lambert Simnel, and her Richard is actually the pretender Perkin Warbeck. Naturally various people referred to them by royal titles, because they were trying to use them to overthrow Henry Tudor. In other words, her "proofs of life" are in fact exactly what we would expect to see. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Langley's evidence is on the low end of ordinary. Would it have justified a couple of scholarly papers to add to the debate and see if other evidence could be found? Absolutely. Does it justify a claim that the Princes were not murdered? Not for a split second. The weight of evidence is still strongly against her. Yet she never even admits a shade of doubt.

It's important to remember that, in 1485, if the Princes had been alive, it would have been to Richard III's great advantage to display them alive. He made no attempt to do so. The logical explanation, much as I hate saying it, is surely that they were dead.

The number of ridiculous statements that Langley comes up with to support her opinions are just stunning. For example, on page 290. she claims that foreign princes wouldn't support pretenders. Um... wasn't Henry VII a pretender? Under no legal argument was he the successor of Edward IV, or of Edward V, or Edward the Anyone; at best, he was Duke of Somerset. But the King of France sicced him on Richard III.

Langley is so lacking in self-awareness that she actually says on page 311 that "We do not have the luxury to make preconceived judgments" -- this from a person whose self-evidet goal is to make Richard III innocent whether he's innocent or not. In a further bit of muddy-headedness on the same page, she says that "where coincidences occur, you must investigate." No, where actual coincidences occur, you must not make anything of them. Where inconsistencies occur, then you must investigate.

One may hope Langley's project can turn up more useful evidence about the Yorkist period. But one must also hope that it is assessed by serious scholars, not by Langley. I am incredibly glad to be done with this piece of absurdity. It made me want to pound my head against the wall.

Like Langley, I would like to think of Richard III as a good but maligned king. But I would rather do it based on facts, not on what I want to be true. ( )

For over 500 years the accepted narrative has been that the two sons of Edward IV were murdered on the orders of their evil usurping uncle Richard III. However is this really the true story. In this book Philippa Langley assembles a team to investigate using the forensic techniques used in cold cases but applying them to historical sources. There is no real proof either way but this book goes some way towards redressing the balance. New source material is examined and the old tales taken apart to give an alternative narrative which will go part way to placating the Riccardian faction. At times the writing style is very formal and academic but the whole story is just great. ( )

In my opinion, this book does not achieve the goals that its author set. Philippa Langley clearly announces her intent to perform a forensic investigation of the fate of the sons of Edward IV, adhering to the principles of a police investigation. As she puts it, ABC: "Accept nothing - Believe nobody - Challenge everything."

The good news is that her effort to recruit researchers to explore the continental archives of the period did retrieve two documents that are really interesting. The four-page document in which the man who called himself Richard, Duke of York, describes his escape from the Tower and life thereafter, is not the strong evidence that Langley claims it is. Even if he was an imposter, he had the need and the opportunity to assemble a story, or others could have done it for him. Still, it is evidence and there are no glaring errors in it, which certainly adds to its credibility.

The bad news is that Langley is eager to apply her ABC principles to the traditional version of the story, which indeed she should feel free to challenge in every rational way, but doesn't apply the same standards of evidence to the material she brings in support of her own version. That she is rather too eager to accept and believe. There is a lot of speculation in this book, and the construction of links based on tenuous conjectures. In places Langley resorts to enumerating several the things that could have happened. To be fair, she will use wording such as "this strongly suggests" or use rhetorical questions as a means to indicate to the reader that she is speculating. This can make for awkward reading. For example:

"Was Howard relied upon to carry the younger boy to safety on one of his vessels, and Brampton, the elder boy on one of his? Current evidence suggests this may have been the case."

To me, this combination of a question mark, "suggests", and "may have been" just doesn't belong in the same sentence as the word "evidence". Not even if you would make it "circumstantial evidence" because the only argument in favour of it seems to be that these gentlemen both owned ships.

My personal thought on the fate of the princes in the tower is that it is quite remarkable that they disappeared. That is, if their uncle Richard III wanted them to die, which is not inconceivable, then it was also plainly in his interest to ensure that they were seen to be dead. A lot of children died young in the 15th century (including Richard III's own son) and it would have been convenient to announce a brief illness, followed by a tragic death and a very public funeral. This would have avoided the problems that Henry VII had with the two young men that claimed to be Edward V and Richard IV, if they were imposters (and obviously even more if they were the real deal). That the boys vanished did not make any political sense.

Thus there is room for the hypothesis which Philippa Langley puts forward, that the two boys somehow escaped, survived and later tried to reclaim the throne. It is noteworthy that Ann Wroe after she published "Perkin, a Story of Deception" also privately came to the conclusion that the young man was probably the real Richard, Duke of York, even though she refrained from writing as much in her book.

But the case remains unproven. Absent DNA testing, there is in fact no way for us to distinguish a really successful imposter from the real person. That's what being a successful imposter means... ( )