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No one has known what happened to the princes in the Tower, but a consensus has long held that Richard III probably had them bumped off. However, the woman who found the king’s remains in a car park now believes she has cleared him of murder.

Philippa Langley, who discovered the last Plantagenet king’s remains in Leicester 11 years ago, believes that the princes, Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, were not murdered and later became the so-called pretenders to the throne, Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck.

She believes that four key documents have provided proof that the boys were alive in the years after Richard III’s reign. They have all been shown to be contemporaneous to the period, and are also explored in more detail in her new book, The Princes in the Tower.

The shows are separated by 40 years of technological advances — a progression from the over-the-air broadcast era in which Mr. Lear made it big, to the cable age of MTV and CNN and HBO, to, finally, the modern era of streaming services like Netflix. Each new technology allowed a leap forward in choice, flexibility and quality; the “Golden Age of TV” offers so much choice that some critics wonder if it’s become overwhelming.

It’s not just TV, either. Across the entertainment business, from music to movies to video games, technology has flooded us with a profusion of cultural choice.

offers a chance to reflect on what we have lost in embracing tech-abetted abundance. Last year’s presidential election and its aftermath were dominated by discussions of echo chambers and polarization; as I’ve argued before, we’re all splitting into our own self-constructed bubbles of reality.

The show, after all, is airing in an environment—its audiences’ own version of the Known World—that is itself being steadily shaped by lies. The leader who misleads with impunity, weaponizing lies as an easy means to uneasy ends. The system that allows him to do it, because the illusions often suit the purposes of the powerful. The wheel that, refusing to break, spins on through the dullness of inertia. The looming threat, totalizing and existential, dismissed as a fantasy; the war against it that will be fought with too few resources and insufficient conviction; the world that will be knocked off its axis by untruths molded into myths.

The pushback to this development was intense online. So was the government's pushback to the pushback. In addition to banning use of the letter "N" online, words such as "immortality" and "ascend the throne" were also deemed inappropriate to use on the internet.

Victor Mair, a professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, said the government likely feared that "N" was referring to the number of terms of office, as in a mathematical equation n > 2.

But the nixing of "N" was a temporary one. By Monday use of the letter online was once again permitted, according to China Digital Times.

ruled Portugal from 1385 until 1580

The Aviz dynasty

the throne was inherited by his great uncle, Cardinal Henrique

Spain’s central problem in the 17th century had been to maintain what remained of its European possessions and to retain control of its American empire

In the 17th century the greatest threat had come from a land power, France, jealous of Habsburg power in Europe; in the 18th it was to come from a sea power, England, while the Austrian Habsburgs became the main continental enemy of Spain

In 1700 (by the will of the childless Charles II) the duc d’Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV of France, became Philip V of Spain

He continued to believe in his right to the throne and opposed the Nazi Anschluss of Austria in 1938. He was sentenced to death by the Nazi regime and fled to neutral Portugal and then to the United States in 1940

It was not until May 1961 that von Habsburg renounced his claim to the Austrian throne. He moved to Germany and became involved in German and European politics

a victory for the forces of King William III (William of Orange) of England over the former king James II

James, a Roman Catholic, had been forced to abdicate in 1688 and, with the help of the French and the Irish, was attempting to win back his throne. William’s victory over James blunted attempts to restore Catholicism in Britain

a victory for the Protestant cause on July 12

he made several halfhearted efforts to gain his crown

At his birth it was widely and erroneously believed that he was an impostor

When the Protestant ruler William of Orange, stadtholder of Holland, deposed James II in 1688, the infant prince was taken to France, where his father set up a court in exile

When the Spanish ambassador to England reported to his master in December 1558 about Queen Elizabeth and her newly established government, he lamented that ‘the kingdom is entirely in the hands of young folks, heretics and traitors’.

The Queen’s advancing age had at least two important consequences in the 1590s. Firstly, it underscored the continuing uncertainty over the royal succession, since Elizabeth had no children and had always refused to nominate a successor. Secondly, Elizabeth’s increasing dotage encouraged members of a younger generation to feel impatient at their sovereign’s conservatism and to resent the continuing sway of the elderly men and women who monopolised virtually all the key positions around her

Elizabeth’s courtiers and councillors during the 1590s always had to reckon on this likelihood and shaped their actions accordingly, even if they usually kept their preparations low-key for fear of angering the Queen and raising awkward questions about their loyalty to her – acting too precipitately might ruin their career and even expose them to charges of treason

he became heir to the French throne through his marriage to Margaret of Valois

Despite converting to Catholicism after becoming king of France in 1589, Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes to foster religious tolerance. He was killed on May 14, 1610, in Paris, France

the spread of civil war made him reflect on its disastrous effect on France

The queen of France, Marie de’ Medici, had been crowned the previous day at the basilica of Saint Denis and was due to make her formal entry into the capital.

French queens were not crowned as a matter of course and Henry IV, king of France since 1589, saw no reason to go to the expense of a coronation for his second queen whom he had married in 1610

The alarm was shared by France, which had been at war with the Habsburg empire for much of the 16th century. Religion was also involved, as the Catholic Habsburgs were opposed by many German Protestant princes. Henry IV was urged to intervene militarily, but he had hesitated initially.

The long and distinguished annals of the British army contain numerous examples of courage, endurance and devotion to duty

The one hundred and thirty-six day defence of Alicante belongs to the latter category, and it is fitting in this, the two hundred and sixtieth anniversary of the siege, to recall the bravery of the Allied garrison, and above all of the man who was the very soul and inspiration of the defence both before and after his gallant death, namely the Governor, Major-General John Richards

The War of the Spanish Succession was more than five years old before Alicante figured in its history. Three campaigns had already been fought in the Iberian Peninsula when an Allied force appeared in the offing, determined to secure Alicante for the cause of the Habsburg claimant to the throne of Spain, Charles III (later the Emperor Charles VI).

The first of these rulers whom he served was Llywelyn the Great, the most eminent of all the independent Welsh princes, who married Joan, the daughter of King John, and played his part in the winning of the Great Charter

But the link between it and the dynasty was slender; merely that it belonged to the descendants of King Henry VII’s greatgrandfather’s eldest brother. This brother, that is, Goronwy, is known to have served in France, probably in the army of the Black Prince. He died by drowning in Kent in 1382, and his brother, Ednyfed, seems to have died about the same time

Through their mother, the five sons of Tudur ap Goronwy were first cousins of Glyn Dwr, and three of them, also, Goronwy, Rhys and Gwilym, are known to have been, at one time or another, in the retinue of Richard II

under whose reign the prolonged crisis of the Wars of Religion was made worse by dynastic rivalries arising because the male line of the Valois dynasty was going to die out with him

In 1572 she presented him as a candidate for the vacant throne of Poland, to which he was finally elected in May 1573. In May 1574, however, Charles died, and Henry abandoned Poland and was crowned at Reims on Feb. 13, 1575. He was married two days later to Louise de Vaudémont, a princess of the house of Lorraine. The marriage proved childless.

The French Wars of Religion (1562–98) continued during Henry III’s reign

This was the reputation acquired by Francis the First in his own time and reverently preserved by subsequent generations. His mother, Louise of Savoy, laid its foundation even before it was certain that he would inherit the throne of his second cousin, Louis XII. In 1504 she had a medallion engraved in honour of the ten-year-old Duke of Valois

While Francis I has been remembered as the chivalrous leader who sustained a long and unequal struggle against the Hapsburg Emperor, Charles V, he has also been described as the King of the Renaissance

There are, however, other aspects of Francis I that are less consistent with the popular impression. He was the autocrat who built upon the work of Louis XI in creating the despotism of the new monarchy.

France was then sharply divided by religion. Thousands of Protestants, or Huguenots, had been massacred in Paris and other cities in 1572, but they remained strong in the south and west, while Paris was fiercely Catholic. Though a Catholic himself, Henry III lacked the means to take on the Huguenots in an all-out war.

accused the mignons of destroying Henry III’s virility

Monarchs were used to distributing special favours to certain members of their entourage in return for their loyalty and services. The first French king to do so was Philip III, ‘the Bold’ (1270-85). A long line of favourites can be traced through the succeeding reigns until that of Louis XIV, who had none. Henry III seems to have had more than any other French king. They can be divided into two groups: the first, formed in the 1570s, comprised some 20 young men, roughly of the same age as Henry. They belonged to families of the provincial nobility (or noblesse seconde), which had served the crown for generations. The second group was formed in the 1580s. It consisted of only two men, Anne de Joyeuse, baron d’Arques and Jean-Louis de La Valette. They became far more powerful than their predecessors and were known as the archimignons

On June 18th, the Battle of Waterloo brought to an end Napoleon's attempted comeback in the Hundred Days

At this point, two centuries ago, the victorious Allies – Britain, Austria, Russia and Prussia – would determine the fate of France

The Austrian chancellor, Metternich, came from Vienna, Tsar Alexander from St Petersburg and, from Berlin, the 72-year-old Prussian Marshal Blücher

In June 1488, just three years after Henry VII’s unlikely victory in the English Midlands, James IV became king on the battlefield of Sauchieburn south of Stirling, close to the spot where Robert Bruce had won his great victory over the English at Bannockburn in 1314.

James IV was brought up at Stirling Castle by his mother, Margaret of Denmark, alongside his two younger brothers. The queen had produced three healthy sons but she and James III led separate lives after an earlier rebellion in 1482. The king, who had managed to alienate all of his siblings, believed that his wife had sided with his brother, the Duke of Albany, when the duke returned from exile in France and invaded Scotland with the future Richard III of England. James III seems also to have felt that his eldest son was tainted by contact with Albany and perhaps considered barring the boy from the succession

James IV was ruler of a land famously described in a letter written by its own nobility in 1320 to Pope John XXII as ‘the tiny country of Scotia lying on the very edge of the inhabited world’. Scotland was poor, cold and wet. Edinburgh, its capital, held only 12,000 citizens, in contrast to London’s 50,000. Yet, like its new monarch, the country was not inward-looking.  Difficulty of travel by road over rugged terrain meant that it had long relied on sea routes for transport and communication with the wider world. The kings of Scotland were determined not to be overlooked in Europe. They forged trade and political alliances with Scandinavia and were long-standing allies of the French, who viewed Scotland as a brake on the ambitions of England. The two countries that occupied the island of Britain were natural enemies, nowhere more so than in the Borders, where centuries-old feuds and the violence that fuelled them were adjudicated by special courts composed of English and Scots. But James III had attempted a policy of conciliation with England that was unpopular with his aristocracy and Henry VII, a cautious man, did not relish constant war with his northern neighbour. It remained to be seen how James IV would approach Anglo-Scottish relations and how he would develop his ambition to make Scotland a European power.