The New Murrey and Blue blog

This Sunday, 13 October 2024, on the Blaze TV channel you can watch a repeat of the Medieval Murder Mysteries series of one-hour documentaries. Episode 1 of Season 1 is called “Christopher Marlowe, Death in Deptford”, and the list at the end of this post tells of the other deaths being investigated. Watch out for Episode 5! 😠

It’s called “The Princess in the Tower: Royal Blood”. Eh? Ah, but you’re right, it’s a typo! Take away an “s” and there you have the usual old fodder, for which the blurb is as follows: “….Since he showed up in a Leicestershire car park a short while ago, Richard III has been at his most popular for 500 years – not that he was that popular in the late 15th Century. He is universally blamed for the deaths of the Two Little Princes in the Tower in 1483 – his guilt or innocence is still debated today. We’ll gather all the evidence, plus we’ll explore the new theory that Richard actually had his own wife killed to smooth his path to the throne….”

Oh, groan. Really? Richard was universally blamed? I think not. And note the sly insertion of “Little”. It just adds a soupçon of extra pathos, to go with the yucky painting. And as for the final point about murdering Anne Neville on his way to the throne—she was still very much alive before and after Richard accepted the crown, so he didn’t make a very good job of murdering her while he was “smoothing his path”! It’s all in the wording, right?

No doubt he had a withered arm, was reduced to the habdabs at the mere thought of strawberries, cold-bloodedly killed his brother George, Henry VI, and anyone else who happened to get in his way. I imagine we’ll also be told he’d been planning to seize the throne since before he was born!

I know the blurb tells us the programme is going to gather and explore all evidence, but wanna bet? It’s like the Arch-Tudorite Lucy Worsley play-acting her way through the same “murders”, ignoring facts and declaring prettily at the end that Richard was guilty. She never had any intention of trying to clear his name. Hellfire, she’s Tudor up to her eyeballs!

You can read my opinion of Lucy’s opinion here https://murreyandblue.org/2022/06/12/lucy-worsley-proves-richard-iii-murdered-his-nephews/.

The much-missed Stephen Lark—Super Blue—watched Medieval Murder Mysteries when it was broadcast in 2019. (https://murreyandblue.org/2019/12/15/medieval-sic-murder-mysteries/) He was scathing about the “experts” who pronounced about Richard in Episode 5. I have complete faith in Stephen’s judgement, and fear my sense of foreboding about the series is justified. I’ve abandoned hope. If one episode is a load of old hooey, the others will be equally suspect. Any documentary that ignores facts in order to suit Tudor dogma cannot be taken seriously.  Not even remotely.

And I’m not going to saying anything about the absence of proof that there were any murders in the first place, except to wonder if the offending episode will have been updated to take in Philippa Langley’s excellent research. You can bet it won’t. To do that would ruin the fêng shui. And would certainly make even bigger fools of the “experts” in Episode 5! You can read more about Philippa Langley’s successful research here https://murreyandblue.org/2024/01/16/more-praise-for-philippa-langleys-discoveries-concerning-the-princes-in-the-tower/ and here https://murreyandblue.org/2024/03/27/the-gelderland-document-proof-of-life-of-richard-duke-of-york-alias-perkin-warbeck/.

If we’re going to get an episode every Sunday, starting on the 13 October, I guess the feast of rubbish about Richard III will be broadcast on 10 November. I will be watching another channel. Hopefully I’ll find aliens, Bigfoot, Atlantis, Nessie, El Dorado, Herne the Hunter, hauntings, the occupants of Mount Olympus and anything else you care to mention. Such things are infinitely more factual than Medieval Murder Mysteries, Episode 5.

·  S1 E1-Christopher Marlow: Death in Deptford

·  S1 E2-King Edward II: A Mysterious Death

·  S1 E3-Arthur of Brittany: The Boy Who Should Have Been King

·  S1 E4-Amy Dudley: The Queen, Her Lover, and His Wife

·  S1 E5-The Princess in the Tower: Royal Blood

·  S1 E6-Juan Borgia: A Death in the Dynasty