Richard The Lionheart: An English Hero

“For most of us, Richard the Lionheart has been ensconced since childhood in a pantheon which includes King Arthur, Robin Hood and other legendary – if not mythical- figures: and as a “folk hero” […] it is unlikely that he will ever be dislodged.”1 That is, at least, the view of John Gillingham, a British scholar, specialist of Richard I, but not of all historians, who have generally more conflicted opinions on the Lionheart. Richard I is still, to a certain extent, seen as an English hero. It was even truer in the Middle Ages, when kings were often compared to Richard, thus Edward I in 1272 was described as the “new Richard.”2 This shows that it was still Richard who set the standard which new kings were expected to follow. Surprisingly enough, …show more content…
Richard was born on September 8th 1157 at Beaumont Palace in Oxford, England. He was the third of five sons of king Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Richard's father was an energetic and ruthless ruler, who managed to take control of large parts of Wales, the eastern half of Ireland and the western half of France (from Normandy to the Pyrenees, including, among others, the duchies of Gascony and Aquitaine, the counties of Anjou, Poitou, Maine and Touraine) , what would later come to be called the Angevin Empire. Henry II also held various levels of control over the duchies of Brittany and the county of Toulouse. Only modern scholars refer to this assemblage of territories under the Plantagenets' control as an “empire”, there was indeed no title attached to this heap of lands and the strength of the English king's control over each region varied greatly. Henry II and Richard I after him had a fairly strong hold over Normandy and England, but other places were more independent such as Aquitaine. Richard actually lived most of his adult life in the duchy of Aquitaine, formerly his mother's property. That is why Richard spoke “langa d'òc”, the dialect of southern France and also why he never felt particularly attached to England, using the kingdom mostly as a source of revenue to support his armies. Nevertheless, during his lifetime, and even more after his death, he was seen as an outstanding hero and icon, especially by his English and more broadly by his Angevin subjects. He remains remembered by his epithet, the Lionheart, gained during the Third Crusade that he led, partly with Philip II of France, from 1190 to 1192, scoring great victories such as the taking of Acre on 12 July 1190. Since I will not have enough time to study the legend of Richard I from the 12th century to today, and thus including tales such as Robin Hood or Ivanhoe's stories,