What happened to the two princes in the Tower of London?

The Princes' family hid them for protection

Question: What happened to the two princes in the Tower of London?
Position‹2 of 2: The princes survived
Argument: The Princes' family hid them for protection

Many people would have profited from the death of the two princes. This is exactly why their family would have hidden them until they were old enough to fend for themselves.

The argument

The prince’s could have easily been hidden away by their family. If they had been killed by Richard in order for him to take the throne, he would have publicly displayed and announced their deaths in order to ensure the public that they were truly gone and wouldn’t cause future problems. Instead, Richard didn’t speak about their disappearance at all. In fact, during Henry VII’s reign in 1495, an army landed at Kent, led by a man claiming to be Richard of York, the younger son of Edward IV. This man claimed that he had three distinctive marks that could prove to anyone who knew Richard Duke of York that it was him. Beyond this, The boys’ mother, Elizabeth Woodville, later left the Westminster sanctuary to join Richard III’s court. Elizabeth also convinced her son not to fight for the rebel cause. If Elizabeth believed that her sons were murdered, she would not have been so eager to rejoin the man who possibly murdered them. Based on the lack of evidence that the boys were murdered, it is entirely likely that they were simply hidden away by their family in order to ensure their safety.

Premises

[P1]Had Richard killed the princes to secure the throne, he would have publicly displayed their deaths to reassure the public; instead he never spoke of their disappearance, and a claimant later landed in Kent asserting he was Richard of York. [P2] Their mother Elizabeth Woodville left sanctuary to rejoin Richard III's court and dissuaded her son from the rebel cause—behaviour unlikely if she believed he had murdered her sons. [C] Given the lack of evidence of murder, the princes' family likely hid them for protection, meaning the princes survived.

Counter-arguments

Many people argue that simply because there is no damning evidence that the princes were murdered, that doesn't mean that they survived into Tudor England. Historian Nathan Amin claims that the reason that Richard III kept the deaths of the two princes out of the public was because "If Richard presented the corpses of the princes, just 12 and 9 respectively, to the citizens of London, he would surely have opened himself to accusations of murder at home and abroad. Rumours of their demise were already rife, and the sight of their bodies would have confirmed the suspicions of many".

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise assumes a usurper would display the bodies, when doing so would have confirmed the accusation he most needed to avoid — silence is what either hypothesis predicts, so it discriminates between them not at all; and a claimant appearing twelve years later, whose confession and execution followed, is evidence that pretenders were politically useful rather than that the boys lived. [Rejecting P2] Elizabeth Woodville's conduct admits an ordinary reading the premise does not consider: she left sanctuary having lost her protectors, with daughters to provide for and no means of resisting, so an accommodation reached from that position tells us about her circumstances rather than her beliefs — and absence of proof of murder is not evidence of survival, which is the inference the conclusion rests on.