besleybean wrote:
(And I say this as a Yorkist)
At the end of the day, he's the prime suspect in murdering 2 young boys.
Josephine Tey in her "Daughter of Time" has another opinion on the matter:
‘Know what I find the convincing thing in the case for Henry’s guilt?’
‘What?’
‘The mystery.’
‘Mystery?’
‘The mysteriousness. The hush-hush. The hole-and-corner stuff.’
‘Because it is in character, you mean?’
‘No, no; nothing as subtle as that. Don’t you see: Richard had no need of any mystery; but Henry’s whole case depended on the boys’ end being mysterious. No one has ever been able to think up a reason for such a hole-and-corner method as Richard was supposed to have used. It was a quite mad way to do it. He couldn’t hope to get away with it. Sooner or later he was going to have to account for the boys not being there. As far as he knew he had a long reign in front of him. No one has ever been able to think why he should have chosen so difficult and dangerous a way when he had so many simpler methods at hand. He had only to have the boys suffocated, and let them lie in state while the whole of London walked by and wept over two young things dead before their time of fever. That is the way he would have done it, too. Goodness, the whole point of Richard’s killing the boys was to prevent any rising in their favour, and to get any benefit from the murder the fact of their deaths would have to be made public, and as soon as possible. It would defeat the whole plan if people didn’t know that they were dead. But Henry, now. Henry had to find a way to push them out of sight. Henry had to be mysterious. Henry had to hide the facts of when and how they died. Henry’s whole case depended on no one’s knowing what exactly happened to the boys.’
And this one:
As he was about to shut the senior of the two educators his eye fell on the beginning of Henry VII’s reign, and he read: ‘It was the settled and considered policy of the Tudors to rid themselves of all rivals to the throne, more especially those heirs of York who remained alive on the succession of Henry VII. In this they were successful, although it was left to Henry VIII to get rid of the last of them.’
He stared at this bald announcement. This placid acceptance of wholesale murder. This simple acknowledgement of a process of family elimination.
Richard III had been credited with the elimination of two nephews, and his name was a synonym for evil. But Henry VII, whose ’settled and considered policy’ was to eliminate a whole family was regarded as a shrewd and far-seeing monarch. Not very lovable perhaps, but constructive and painstaking, and very successful withal.
Grant gave up. History was something that he would never understand.
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I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window there. Was there ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the dun-coloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers, Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them?
