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Richard I (Penguin Monarchs): The Crusader King
Richard I's reign is both controversial and seemingly contradictory. One of England's most famous medieval monarchs and a potent symbol of national identity, he barely spent six months on English soil during a ten-year reign and spoke French as his first language. Contemporaries dubbed him the 'Lionheart', reflecting a carefully cultivated reputation for bravery, prowess and knightly virtue, but this supposed paragon of chivalry butchered close to 3,000 prisoners in cold blood on a single day. And, though revered as Christian Europe's greatest crusader, his grand campaign to the Holy Land failed to recover the city of Jerusalem from Islam.
Seeking to reconcile this conflicting evidence, Thomas Asbridge's incisive reappraisal of Richard I's career questions whether the Lionheart really did neglect his kingdom, considers why he devoted himself to the cause of holy war and asks how the memory of his life came to be interwoven with myth. Richard emerges as a formidable warrior-king, possessed of martial genius and a cultured intellect, yet burdened by the legacy of his dysfunctional dynasty and obsessed with the pursuit of honour and renown.
Seeking to reconcile this conflicting evidence, Thomas Asbridge's incisive reappraisal of Richard I's career questions whether the Lionheart really did neglect his kingdom, considers why he devoted himself to the cause of holy war and asks how the memory of his life came to be interwoven with myth. Richard emerges as a formidable warrior-king, possessed of martial genius and a cultured intellect, yet burdened by the legacy of his dysfunctional dynasty and obsessed with the pursuit of honour and renown.
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First published February 22, 2018
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About the author
Thomas Asbridge
12 books400 followersThomas Asbridge is an internationally renowned expert on the history of the Middle Ages and author of the critically acclaimed books The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land and The First Crusade: A New History. His latest publication is The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power Behind Five English Thrones.
Thomas studied for a BA in Ancient and Medieval History at Cardiff University, and then gained his PhD in Medieval History at Royal Holloway, University of London. His is now Reader in Medieval History at Queen Mary, University of London and Founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam & the West.
Thomas studied for a BA in Ancient and Medieval History at Cardiff University, and then gained his PhD in Medieval History at Royal Holloway, University of London. His is now Reader in Medieval History at Queen Mary, University of London and Founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam & the West.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
September 21, 2021
At its best, this uneven book both presents and puts some on pressure on the legend of Richard I, one of the great heroic figures of the High Middle Ages. Asbridge seeks to separate the myth from the man, but also to properly acknowledge how mythmaking is a feature of the Coeur de Lion’s own age rather than just a temptation to which subsequent ages have succumbed, as the mid twelfth century in which Richard was brought up was itself “one in which prowess was esteemed and honour craved.” Asbridge accounts not just for the heroics of the rex bellicosus, then, but also the Aquitaine of the twelfth century that formed his worldview and made him as much a cultured reader of chivalry as he was a later subject and symbol of it. Near the end, on Richard’s “deeper hunger for fame and renown” and “acute awareness of his own reputation,” Asbridge writes rather arrestingly that the Lionheart deliberately cultivated his own image as “something akin to a living legend: both Arthur the all-conquering king and Lancelot the unrivalled champion, made flesh in one man.”
All the essential stuff is here: the turbulence of Richard’s relatively short reign (1189-1199), its domination by wars in France and by Richard’s engagements with Saladin in the Levant in the Third Crusade, the years of his imprisonment, his status as a kind of medieval absentee-landlord of the realm, etc. This last point is a good example of Asbridge’s book at its strongest, acknowledging the myth and then opening out onto a wider perspective. It’s not for nothing that the famous 1066 and All That nicknames this wandering king “Richard Gare de Lyon”; Asbridge here writes that “One startling fact looms over Richard I’s career: though among the most renowned of all England’s monarchs, the Lionheart spent barely six months on English soil.” But Asbridge also rightly notes how necessary it was to always be moving through the cross-channel realm of which England was part at this time. By the height of the Angevin empire, this was a range of territories running down to the Pyrenees, and one encroached upon and fought for constantly by the nearby Capetians. Even if the Lionheart hadn’t taken the cross and concentrated so much on the Holy Land during his reign, he would still have had to spend it much like his father did, pretty well constantly on the move. This is not a revolutionary reading of Richard’s absence from England, of course, but it’s a good example of both reproducing and gently resisting the stuff of historical myth in a short book like this, and when it works, it works well.
But much of this book doesn’t work nearly so well. It drags frustratingly wherever it gets bogged down in the details of what I assume are Asbridge’s historical specialties: the Crusades themselves and the practical minutiae of medieval warfare. At these points one can feel very much in the weeds of fussily over-detailed accounts, and as Asbridge seems to suddenly lose track altogether of the necessary scale for these short books, the reader can’t help but lose it too.
Ultimately this account of Richard I is strongest at the beginning and end. One nice thing about these Penguin Monarchs books is that you get a sense of the contrast between narratives in the structure of the individual volumes, which can’t help but introduce a certain amount of overlap. Each seems generally organized the same way, as you’d expect: first a bit of context for the present subject, then the subject itself, and then some account of the legacy. Naturally this means that each book’s survey of context is the previous book’s account of its main subject, and one does see contrasting characterizations of things emerge in these overlaps. For example, here Asbridge’s account of Richard I points out something about his father Henry II that the previous volume doesn’t dwell on so much: that “Henry II was an inveterate hoarder of power, never content to release the reins of government” and that this meant the Old King often “sought to control the members of his family by keeping them hungry for praise and advancement, while simultaneously sowing seeds of doubt, mutual suspicion and distrust among their number.” This puts much more responsibility for the Great Revolt on Henry’s own shoulders than the volume devoted to him does, and it’s reframings like these that dramatize the historiographical conversation in engaging ways even within the severe limitations imposed by the form here.
(One other thing: A bit of Richard’s lasting influence that’s pretty widely noted and that of course Asbridge mentions is that the royal coat of arms preserves “the device Richard adopted towards the end of his reign: three gold lions arrayed against a red background.” But here’s one I hadn’t heard before: “Richard also seems to have coveted the sense of majesty associated with his office: he was the first King of England to date royal documents with his regnal, rather than calendar, year; and also the first to employ the majestic plural – the so-called ‘royal we.’” There’s something oddly satisfying about the first-person plural getting its start with probably the most singular figure who’s ever worn the English crown.)
All the essential stuff is here: the turbulence of Richard’s relatively short reign (1189-1199), its domination by wars in France and by Richard’s engagements with Saladin in the Levant in the Third Crusade, the years of his imprisonment, his status as a kind of medieval absentee-landlord of the realm, etc. This last point is a good example of Asbridge’s book at its strongest, acknowledging the myth and then opening out onto a wider perspective. It’s not for nothing that the famous 1066 and All That nicknames this wandering king “Richard Gare de Lyon”; Asbridge here writes that “One startling fact looms over Richard I’s career: though among the most renowned of all England’s monarchs, the Lionheart spent barely six months on English soil.” But Asbridge also rightly notes how necessary it was to always be moving through the cross-channel realm of which England was part at this time. By the height of the Angevin empire, this was a range of territories running down to the Pyrenees, and one encroached upon and fought for constantly by the nearby Capetians. Even if the Lionheart hadn’t taken the cross and concentrated so much on the Holy Land during his reign, he would still have had to spend it much like his father did, pretty well constantly on the move. This is not a revolutionary reading of Richard’s absence from England, of course, but it’s a good example of both reproducing and gently resisting the stuff of historical myth in a short book like this, and when it works, it works well.
But much of this book doesn’t work nearly so well. It drags frustratingly wherever it gets bogged down in the details of what I assume are Asbridge’s historical specialties: the Crusades themselves and the practical minutiae of medieval warfare. At these points one can feel very much in the weeds of fussily over-detailed accounts, and as Asbridge seems to suddenly lose track altogether of the necessary scale for these short books, the reader can’t help but lose it too.
Ultimately this account of Richard I is strongest at the beginning and end. One nice thing about these Penguin Monarchs books is that you get a sense of the contrast between narratives in the structure of the individual volumes, which can’t help but introduce a certain amount of overlap. Each seems generally organized the same way, as you’d expect: first a bit of context for the present subject, then the subject itself, and then some account of the legacy. Naturally this means that each book’s survey of context is the previous book’s account of its main subject, and one does see contrasting characterizations of things emerge in these overlaps. For example, here Asbridge’s account of Richard I points out something about his father Henry II that the previous volume doesn’t dwell on so much: that “Henry II was an inveterate hoarder of power, never content to release the reins of government” and that this meant the Old King often “sought to control the members of his family by keeping them hungry for praise and advancement, while simultaneously sowing seeds of doubt, mutual suspicion and distrust among their number.” This puts much more responsibility for the Great Revolt on Henry’s own shoulders than the volume devoted to him does, and it’s reframings like these that dramatize the historiographical conversation in engaging ways even within the severe limitations imposed by the form here.
(One other thing: A bit of Richard’s lasting influence that’s pretty widely noted and that of course Asbridge mentions is that the royal coat of arms preserves “the device Richard adopted towards the end of his reign: three gold lions arrayed against a red background.” But here’s one I hadn’t heard before: “Richard also seems to have coveted the sense of majesty associated with his office: he was the first King of England to date royal documents with his regnal, rather than calendar, year; and also the first to employ the majestic plural – the so-called ‘royal we.’” There’s something oddly satisfying about the first-person plural getting its start with probably the most singular figure who’s ever worn the English crown.)
April 29, 2018
Excellent. Possibly the best of the Penguin Monarchs I’ve read so far. Asbridge, a great medieval historian, has produced an elegantly written and concise 100-page life of Richard the Lionheart that not only narrates the king’s life but also manages to introduce historiographic considerations and sensibly contextualizes or corrects some of the more common misunderstandings of Richard (e.g. Richard as homosexual, Richard as war criminal, Richard as selfish absentee king, etc.). This sounds drier than it is; it was a pleasure to read, even exciting at times, and should be a model for this kind of short biography. Vies with Tom Holland’s Athelstan for best of the series.
June 5, 2018
A balanced short biography of a famous medieval king. Asbridge does not ignore Richard the Lionheart's flaws as a king including his quest for personal glory at the expense of other objectives but he convincingly challenges the idea that Richard was disinterested in his role as King of England. Richard ruled a vast Anglo-French empire but England was the jewel in his crown and he introduced new aspects of English kingship including "the royal we" and the custom of dating reigns by regnal year. Asbridge argues that Richard would have a very different reputation if he had been able to return to England immediately after the Third Crusade instead of being taken captive and held for ransom. I would have liked the book to have included a little more about the king's personal life. His queen, Berengeria of Navarre is only mentioned in passing even though she accompanied him on the 3rd crusade and there is little sense of his social circle or his interests beyond literature and waging war. In all other respects, Richard I: The Crusader King, is an excellent contribution to the Penguin Monarchs series.
October 18, 2024
Lacks nuance, but excellent for those (like me) who don't know much about Richard I. Brief and to the point.
The course and consequences of the crusade dominated Richard’s ten-year reign. From the moment he ascended the throne in 1189, his mind was bent upon the prosecution of this military campaign and all the resources of his realm were directed to this end. Yet, for all of the king’s energy and determination, his masterful generalship and many feats of arms, the conflict ended in stalemate, with Jerusalem unconquered, in 1192.
His seemingly insatiable appetite for front-line battle cost him his life, but the nature of his demise reflected a deeper truth about his career. Richard conceived of himself not just as a king, but also as a knight: as a warrior-general who could not only lead men in battle, but also wield sword, lance and crossbow with his own hands to deadly effect. In this, he was the product (and perhaps the epitome) of his age, for Richard was born into a culture newly obsessed with the notion of chivalry – one in which prowess was esteemed and honour craved; where a man’s value might be gauged by his reputation and measured by the admiration of his peers.
The intense rivalry between these two houses – the Angevins and the Capetians – would dominate much of Richard’s career, particularly once Louis was succeeded by his considerably more able and ambitious son, Philip II, in 1180.
The fact that Richard was bred as a man of arts and learning might immediately give lie to any suggestion that he was simply a feral brute, but he also received a firm education in the realities of war and power politics through these early years. Proud and independent-minded, the people of Aquitaine were notoriously difficult to govern and far from content to bear the yoke of Angevin rule. Through the 1170s and 1180s, Richard had to quell a series of incipient local rebellions, often through force of arms. This brought him invaluable experience of military command from a very young age
The problem with this handsome scheme was that Henry II was an inveterate hoarder of power, never content to release the reins of government. With this in mind, Henry – or the Old King, as he came to be known – sought to control the members of his family by keeping them hungry for praise and advancement, while simultaneously sowing seeds of doubt, mutual suspicion and distrust among their number.
though among the most renowned of all England’s monarchs, the Lionheart spent barely six months on English soil.
would certainly not be true to say that Richard cared little for England or his royal title. In fact, they were essential components of his rank and eminence – prizes for which he had fought and intrigued with bitter determination towards the end of Henry II’s life. Richard also seems to have coveted the sense of majesty associated with his office: he was the first King of England to date royal documents with his regnal, rather than calendar, year; and also the first to employ the majestic plural – the so-called ‘royal we’.
But why did this newly crowned monarch – who had fought with his every fibre for the right to rule over the Angevin realm, and was already embroiled in a rancorous rivalry with the neighbouring Capetians – devote himself to such a distant conflict and a campaign that would be waged on the other side of the known world, some two thousand miles away, in Palestine?
His mother, Queen Eleanor, had travelled to the Levant with the Second Crusade in the late 1140s, he was the great-grandson of Fulk of Anjou, King of Jerusalem (1131–42), the cousin of the current queen, Sibylla, and former feudal overlord to her husband, the Poitevin King Guy. With this kind of background, it would have been virtually impossible for Richard to ignore events in the Holy Land.
But the Lionheart’s track record in this regard suggests a depth of religiosity that might be characterized as conventional – he was no aspiring saint and far from being monkish in his habits or appetites.
None the less, one striking episode suggests that, in common with many of his contemporaries, Richard did harbour a gnawing fear of damnation. While actually en route to the Near East in the autumn of 1190, he stopped off in Sicily and there, in the chapel of an Angevin supporter named Reginald de Moac, made an animated display of contrition.
To speak of chivalry as a formal code of practice in the 1180s would be misleading. It was still evolving as an idea and, as yet, lacked strict or universal parameters. Even so, there was already a widely held sense that the behaviour of the knightly warrior class ought to be controlled – conditioned by a range of mutually accepted expectations – and that the greatest knights deserved to be lauded within aristocratic society as the ‘best of men’, or what contemporaries would have called preudhommes.
Clergymen may have promoted this holy war as a pathway to spiritual redemption, but within lay society it was also popularized as a glorious endeavour that could earn participants unparalleled fame – an expedition, akin to the greatest tournament on Earth, in which warriors could prove their worth against Saladin and his Muslim horde.
As enthusiasm for the war swept across Western Europe, men who did not join the crusade were
exposed to accusations of cowardice and publicly humiliated by receiving gifts of ‘wool and distaff’ (the tools for spinning), to intimate that they were fit only for women’s work – the medieval equivalent of the white feather.
Yet, at one level, Philip was merely prioritizing his role as a monarch above that of a crusader – putting the needs of his kingdom first. Arguably, Richard could have followed this lead.
Note: this is a critical point!
A fundamental feature of Richard’s life that shaped much of his behaviour is that he thought of himself not only as a nobleman, duke or king, but also as a knight. This meant that he aspired to achieve greatness both as a monarch, ruling over a powerful realm, and as a chivalric warrior earning renown in battle.
In fact, it was only after the end of the crusade and King Richard’s capture in Austria that the system of checks and balances began to crumble, leaving England and the wider Angevin territories exposed.
... married the Iberian princess Berengaria of Navarre. This was a politically expedient match, orchestrated in the main by Queen Eleanor, that secured the duchy of Aquitaine’s southern border during Richard’s absence.
his failure to adequately address the issue of succession must be recognized as a significant blemish on his record. Of course, he could not have foreseen the exact circumstances of his sudden demise in 1199, but even so, his attitude towards the urgent matter of furnishing his realm with a legitimate heir seems unusually relaxed.
Rather than simply focusing upon the Holy Land, the Lionheart seems to have envisioned his campaign to the Near East as one component of a broader strategy to deal with dynastic affairs and assert Angevin influence in the Mediterranean.
The victories at Acre, Arsuf and Jaffa stand as testament to the impact of Richard’s martial role in the war for the Holy Land. His incisive grasp of strategy and formidable qualities as a battlefield commander combined to earn the Third Crusade a number of notable military successes, while also helping to ensure that the expedition avoided potential setbacks. It seems clear that the Lionheart relished his role as a warrior-king and delighted in the chaotic thrill of hand-to-hand combat.
Less attention has been paid to Richard’s skills as a diplomat during his time in the Levant. This is perhaps in part because the surviving Western Christian accounts of the crusade provide little or no evidence of him actively pursuing this role. However, a rich vein of close Muslim testimony preserved in Arabic sources makes it clear that the Lionheart was actually a remarkably adept – and occasionally even devious – negotiator.
balance, it seems unlikely that the Acre massacre was prompted by an uncontrolled fit of anger, not least because the carnage was far from indiscriminate, with all of the high-ranking Muslim captives spared in expectation of their eventual ransom. The killing was, in all likelihood, carefully premeditated – a sudden and terrible eruption of expedient violence, calculated to send Saladin a stark message of intent and to permit the crusade to progress.
In the immediate aftermath of the massacre, Saladin put a small number of Frankish prisoners to death, but the channels of diplomatic contact between the Latin and Muslim camps were reopened within just sixteen days.
The sultan now resolved to play a waiting game, clear in the knowledge that one day soon King Richard and his crusaders would have to return to the West.
Had the journey home passed smoothly, the Lionheart would have found his realm all but untouched by his absence. Up to this point, the plans laid and systems of governance instituted to secure the kingdom while he crusaded in the Levant had proved remarkably successful. As it was, Richard did not return for close to eighteen months – and in that time, terrible, near-fatal damage was done to the Angevin realm.
Despite his captive status, Richard also worked ably behind the scenes to reconcile Henry VI with a group of rebellious German princes, recognizing that once the emperor enjoyed greater security at home, he would be less inclined to uphold his pact with the French. All of this abetted the dogged efforts by Queen Eleanor and the likes of William Longchamp to negotiate terms of release.
The crusade may have ended in stalemate, but it was in the fires of this holy war – as Richard I and Saladin fought one another to a standstill – that the Angevin king truly tempered his martial genius. He returned to the West having acquired a new depth of experience and insight, and proved only too capable of putting the lessons learned in the Levant to good use as he strove first to subdue England, and then to reclaim the likes of Normandy from Philip of France. It is this period, between 1194 and 1198, that rightly should be recognized as the pinnacle of Richard I’s military career.
He also knew the value of reliable lieutenants, such as the knight William Marshal, or the mercenary commander Mercadier: trusted men who could follow orders, but also improvise when necessary. And to top it all, Richard’s undoubted charisma was leavened by a hard edge of decisive ruthlessness – arguably a prerequisite for success amid the bloody business of medieval warfare.
Some contemporaries grated at the crown’s exactions and the Lionheart’s renewed absence, but in truth – unless he was willing to simply surrender Normandy and the rest of the Angevin heartlands – Richard had no choice other than to fight.
By the end of 1194, King Richard had scored a clutch of notable successes, halting the Capetian advance and salvaging the heartlands of the Angevin realm. None the less, much of Upper Normandy and the Norman Vexin remained in Philip Augustus’s hands. The French monarch had been stung, but not conclusively defeated. It would take more than three years of further campaigning to recover the territory conceded by Count John.
The Lionheart’s willingness to place himself in the frontline of conflict was arguably the critical factor behind many of his military successes, but in the end Richard’s penchant for close-quarter combat and siege warfare cost him his life.
Source: own
The course and consequences of the crusade dominated Richard’s ten-year reign. From the moment he ascended the throne in 1189, his mind was bent upon the prosecution of this military campaign and all the resources of his realm were directed to this end. Yet, for all of the king’s energy and determination, his masterful generalship and many feats of arms, the conflict ended in stalemate, with Jerusalem unconquered, in 1192.
His seemingly insatiable appetite for front-line battle cost him his life, but the nature of his demise reflected a deeper truth about his career. Richard conceived of himself not just as a king, but also as a knight: as a warrior-general who could not only lead men in battle, but also wield sword, lance and crossbow with his own hands to deadly effect. In this, he was the product (and perhaps the epitome) of his age, for Richard was born into a culture newly obsessed with the notion of chivalry – one in which prowess was esteemed and honour craved; where a man’s value might be gauged by his reputation and measured by the admiration of his peers.
The intense rivalry between these two houses – the Angevins and the Capetians – would dominate much of Richard’s career, particularly once Louis was succeeded by his considerably more able and ambitious son, Philip II, in 1180.
The fact that Richard was bred as a man of arts and learning might immediately give lie to any suggestion that he was simply a feral brute, but he also received a firm education in the realities of war and power politics through these early years. Proud and independent-minded, the people of Aquitaine were notoriously difficult to govern and far from content to bear the yoke of Angevin rule. Through the 1170s and 1180s, Richard had to quell a series of incipient local rebellions, often through force of arms. This brought him invaluable experience of military command from a very young age
The problem with this handsome scheme was that Henry II was an inveterate hoarder of power, never content to release the reins of government. With this in mind, Henry – or the Old King, as he came to be known – sought to control the members of his family by keeping them hungry for praise and advancement, while simultaneously sowing seeds of doubt, mutual suspicion and distrust among their number.
though among the most renowned of all England’s monarchs, the Lionheart spent barely six months on English soil.
would certainly not be true to say that Richard cared little for England or his royal title. In fact, they were essential components of his rank and eminence – prizes for which he had fought and intrigued with bitter determination towards the end of Henry II’s life. Richard also seems to have coveted the sense of majesty associated with his office: he was the first King of England to date royal documents with his regnal, rather than calendar, year; and also the first to employ the majestic plural – the so-called ‘royal we’.
But why did this newly crowned monarch – who had fought with his every fibre for the right to rule over the Angevin realm, and was already embroiled in a rancorous rivalry with the neighbouring Capetians – devote himself to such a distant conflict and a campaign that would be waged on the other side of the known world, some two thousand miles away, in Palestine?
His mother, Queen Eleanor, had travelled to the Levant with the Second Crusade in the late 1140s, he was the great-grandson of Fulk of Anjou, King of Jerusalem (1131–42), the cousin of the current queen, Sibylla, and former feudal overlord to her husband, the Poitevin King Guy. With this kind of background, it would have been virtually impossible for Richard to ignore events in the Holy Land.
But the Lionheart’s track record in this regard suggests a depth of religiosity that might be characterized as conventional – he was no aspiring saint and far from being monkish in his habits or appetites.
None the less, one striking episode suggests that, in common with many of his contemporaries, Richard did harbour a gnawing fear of damnation. While actually en route to the Near East in the autumn of 1190, he stopped off in Sicily and there, in the chapel of an Angevin supporter named Reginald de Moac, made an animated display of contrition.
To speak of chivalry as a formal code of practice in the 1180s would be misleading. It was still evolving as an idea and, as yet, lacked strict or universal parameters. Even so, there was already a widely held sense that the behaviour of the knightly warrior class ought to be controlled – conditioned by a range of mutually accepted expectations – and that the greatest knights deserved to be lauded within aristocratic society as the ‘best of men’, or what contemporaries would have called preudhommes.
Clergymen may have promoted this holy war as a pathway to spiritual redemption, but within lay society it was also popularized as a glorious endeavour that could earn participants unparalleled fame – an expedition, akin to the greatest tournament on Earth, in which warriors could prove their worth against Saladin and his Muslim horde.
As enthusiasm for the war swept across Western Europe, men who did not join the crusade were
exposed to accusations of cowardice and publicly humiliated by receiving gifts of ‘wool and distaff’ (the tools for spinning), to intimate that they were fit only for women’s work – the medieval equivalent of the white feather.
Yet, at one level, Philip was merely prioritizing his role as a monarch above that of a crusader – putting the needs of his kingdom first. Arguably, Richard could have followed this lead.
Note: this is a critical point!
A fundamental feature of Richard’s life that shaped much of his behaviour is that he thought of himself not only as a nobleman, duke or king, but also as a knight. This meant that he aspired to achieve greatness both as a monarch, ruling over a powerful realm, and as a chivalric warrior earning renown in battle.
In fact, it was only after the end of the crusade and King Richard’s capture in Austria that the system of checks and balances began to crumble, leaving England and the wider Angevin territories exposed.
... married the Iberian princess Berengaria of Navarre. This was a politically expedient match, orchestrated in the main by Queen Eleanor, that secured the duchy of Aquitaine’s southern border during Richard’s absence.
his failure to adequately address the issue of succession must be recognized as a significant blemish on his record. Of course, he could not have foreseen the exact circumstances of his sudden demise in 1199, but even so, his attitude towards the urgent matter of furnishing his realm with a legitimate heir seems unusually relaxed.
Rather than simply focusing upon the Holy Land, the Lionheart seems to have envisioned his campaign to the Near East as one component of a broader strategy to deal with dynastic affairs and assert Angevin influence in the Mediterranean.
The victories at Acre, Arsuf and Jaffa stand as testament to the impact of Richard’s martial role in the war for the Holy Land. His incisive grasp of strategy and formidable qualities as a battlefield commander combined to earn the Third Crusade a number of notable military successes, while also helping to ensure that the expedition avoided potential setbacks. It seems clear that the Lionheart relished his role as a warrior-king and delighted in the chaotic thrill of hand-to-hand combat.
Less attention has been paid to Richard’s skills as a diplomat during his time in the Levant. This is perhaps in part because the surviving Western Christian accounts of the crusade provide little or no evidence of him actively pursuing this role. However, a rich vein of close Muslim testimony preserved in Arabic sources makes it clear that the Lionheart was actually a remarkably adept – and occasionally even devious – negotiator.
balance, it seems unlikely that the Acre massacre was prompted by an uncontrolled fit of anger, not least because the carnage was far from indiscriminate, with all of the high-ranking Muslim captives spared in expectation of their eventual ransom. The killing was, in all likelihood, carefully premeditated – a sudden and terrible eruption of expedient violence, calculated to send Saladin a stark message of intent and to permit the crusade to progress.
In the immediate aftermath of the massacre, Saladin put a small number of Frankish prisoners to death, but the channels of diplomatic contact between the Latin and Muslim camps were reopened within just sixteen days.
The sultan now resolved to play a waiting game, clear in the knowledge that one day soon King Richard and his crusaders would have to return to the West.
Had the journey home passed smoothly, the Lionheart would have found his realm all but untouched by his absence. Up to this point, the plans laid and systems of governance instituted to secure the kingdom while he crusaded in the Levant had proved remarkably successful. As it was, Richard did not return for close to eighteen months – and in that time, terrible, near-fatal damage was done to the Angevin realm.
Despite his captive status, Richard also worked ably behind the scenes to reconcile Henry VI with a group of rebellious German princes, recognizing that once the emperor enjoyed greater security at home, he would be less inclined to uphold his pact with the French. All of this abetted the dogged efforts by Queen Eleanor and the likes of William Longchamp to negotiate terms of release.
The crusade may have ended in stalemate, but it was in the fires of this holy war – as Richard I and Saladin fought one another to a standstill – that the Angevin king truly tempered his martial genius. He returned to the West having acquired a new depth of experience and insight, and proved only too capable of putting the lessons learned in the Levant to good use as he strove first to subdue England, and then to reclaim the likes of Normandy from Philip of France. It is this period, between 1194 and 1198, that rightly should be recognized as the pinnacle of Richard I’s military career.
He also knew the value of reliable lieutenants, such as the knight William Marshal, or the mercenary commander Mercadier: trusted men who could follow orders, but also improvise when necessary. And to top it all, Richard’s undoubted charisma was leavened by a hard edge of decisive ruthlessness – arguably a prerequisite for success amid the bloody business of medieval warfare.
Some contemporaries grated at the crown’s exactions and the Lionheart’s renewed absence, but in truth – unless he was willing to simply surrender Normandy and the rest of the Angevin heartlands – Richard had no choice other than to fight.
By the end of 1194, King Richard had scored a clutch of notable successes, halting the Capetian advance and salvaging the heartlands of the Angevin realm. None the less, much of Upper Normandy and the Norman Vexin remained in Philip Augustus’s hands. The French monarch had been stung, but not conclusively defeated. It would take more than three years of further campaigning to recover the territory conceded by Count John.
The Lionheart’s willingness to place himself in the frontline of conflict was arguably the critical factor behind many of his military successes, but in the end Richard’s penchant for close-quarter combat and siege warfare cost him his life.
Source: own
June 19, 2025
A really engaging and measured analysis of the reign of a King who divides opinion.
Asbridge does a great job of articulating why many consider Richard one of England's greatest kings (as the great crusader, who shines in comparison to his successor John as a very competent statesman), and why some deem him a failure (only spending a few months in England, seeming to have a lack of interest in the country and in producing an heir, leading to a period of awful instability and loss of land).
In truth, I think the success of Richard's kingship depends on what we want to see in a king. A medieval contemporary, steeped in the ideals of chivalry and convinced on the importance of crusade, may tend to see Richard as a great leader. However, anyone with a particular interest in Tudor history, where succession and heirs were absolutely key to the perceived success of a monarch (hence the 6 wives, and the constant issue of Elizabeth's virginity and resistance to marry), would likely see Richard as incompetent and shortsighted.
I tend to be a member of the second camp, but appreciated Asbridge's ability to provide a balanced account, which allows the reader to come to that conclusion themselves.
Asbridge does a great job of articulating why many consider Richard one of England's greatest kings (as the great crusader, who shines in comparison to his successor John as a very competent statesman), and why some deem him a failure (only spending a few months in England, seeming to have a lack of interest in the country and in producing an heir, leading to a period of awful instability and loss of land).
In truth, I think the success of Richard's kingship depends on what we want to see in a king. A medieval contemporary, steeped in the ideals of chivalry and convinced on the importance of crusade, may tend to see Richard as a great leader. However, anyone with a particular interest in Tudor history, where succession and heirs were absolutely key to the perceived success of a monarch (hence the 6 wives, and the constant issue of Elizabeth's virginity and resistance to marry), would likely see Richard as incompetent and shortsighted.
I tend to be a member of the second camp, but appreciated Asbridge's ability to provide a balanced account, which allows the reader to come to that conclusion themselves.
November 21, 2025
There were quite a few points where I wish the author would have dived a little deeper, even if I understand the point of this series is to keep the books relatively brief.
The last 20% of the book focuses on Richard's legacy, and was by far my favorite part. It shed some interesting light on what sort of traits and stories were valued by the central/late Medieval person. I've been reading Le Morte d'Arthur and noticed some interesting parallels there (beyond the direct connections Asbridge mentions), like the apparent love of bold knights who spend time as prisoners, which is an almost ubiquitous plot point every single knight seems to have to go through in that book. It seems, for his contemporaries, Richard's imprisonment added to his allure, rather than detracted from it.
The last 20% of the book focuses on Richard's legacy, and was by far my favorite part. It shed some interesting light on what sort of traits and stories were valued by the central/late Medieval person. I've been reading Le Morte d'Arthur and noticed some interesting parallels there (beyond the direct connections Asbridge mentions), like the apparent love of bold knights who spend time as prisoners, which is an almost ubiquitous plot point every single knight seems to have to go through in that book. It seems, for his contemporaries, Richard's imprisonment added to his allure, rather than detracted from it.
March 6, 2020
A decent overview, but it feels hemmed in by how necessarily short it is (being a pocket biography in a series; scarcely more than 100 pages, and they're not long pages). Hits all the marks relating the major events of Richard's life, but doesn't go into much detail about his life pre-coronation, or about his personal relationships with his family, friends or rivals; and you get the feeling Asbridge has a lot more to say about the historiography and popular memory of Richard's reign than he has the space to.
June 8, 2023
Run of the mill stuff here, concise and quick read, however does lack some of the personality that can be found in other volumes of this particular series of works. Was it truly his sense of obligation or his own self-interest that kept him so far from the throne?
How differently things may have gone had Richard simply "stayed at home" early chivalric sentiments be damned.
How differently things may have gone had Richard simply "stayed at home" early chivalric sentiments be damned.
September 16, 2024
This is a brief but great review of the life and career King Richard I of England. It takes account of primary sources and both early and later scholarship, commenting on all the sources. John Gillingham's magisterial Richard I is cited, but Asbridge doesn't slavishly adhere to that writer's assessments of the king, but offers new insights to the study of Richard. Well worth the quick read.
February 8, 2021
Good focus on the warrior king aspect of Richard I but there were incidences where the author stated some rumours as though they were facts.
November 8, 2022
Concise, well-written and informative.
August 16, 2025
Succinct and solid biography of one of England's most famous kings. Asbridge does a good job separating the man from the myth.
October 26, 2025
A very enjoyable read and typical of the Penguin Monarch series.
January 14, 2024
Loved it.
September 25, 2019
I really enjoyed reading this book. What I thought about King Richard the Lion heart before I read it was that he was the good guy who was away at the Crusades at the time of Robin Hood. Everyone was waiting for him to get back and set things right. Then when i first started reading the book, I thought, oh, no, he was the bad guy. He only spent 6 months of his 10 year reign in England and he killed 3.000 muslims in one go. Then as I read on and entered more into the times I became more nuanced in my judgements. He did what he thought was right given the thinking of the period. What ever I think about the Crusades today has little bearing on how people thought about it at the time. I realised that his empire was huge, and he spent so little time in England because 1. he was away in the middle east and 2. when he got back he had to secure his borders in western France which was just as much a part of his kingdom as England. I became curious about his mother, Elenor of Aquitaine and i am now going to read more about her, her imprisonment by her husband and her role in keeping John in check. I would like to move on a read more about Bad King John - 'he was not a good man', but the Penguin Monarch is not coming out until July next year!
March 14, 2023
A rather unsatisfactory book about a King who couldn’t speak English, wasn’t born in Britain, and who spent very little time here. Despite all that he earned the nickname Lionheart because of his bravery, but maybe he should have been known as the Butcher after his mass murder of prisoners during the Crusades. The author is an acknowledged expert on history of the Crusades, and 80% of the book concerns this period…it still manages repetition in the 100 odd pages. Not recommended.
March 24, 2023
A good clear and brief history of Richard
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