Book Review: "Richard I: The Crusader King" by Thomas Asbridge

As you know, I am currently reading one book about each and every king and queen of England that ruled from Edward the Confessor onwards. Presently, I have read a book on Edward the Confessor, Harold Godwinson, one on William the Conqueror, William Rufus (William II), one on Henry I, one on King Stephen, Empress Matilda, Henry II and now, I have just completed reading a book on Richard I (also known as Richard the Lionheart). I have enjoyed most of the books I have read so far, some more than others and yet, I have still learned quite a bit about the way they ruled their countries and what kind of England they had in mind. Honestly, reading this book entitled Richard I: The Crusader King has brought things into perspective about how England was ruled as a part of a larger state rather than a stand alone country.

The book opens with Richard I being miles and miles away from home, protecting the Holy Land and asleep. It opens with the fact that the opposing army were looking to surprise him and capture him as their prisoner. Of course, we know Richard I as the 'Lionheart' - the king who constantly pretended as if he were a warrior king from the folkloric tales of troubadours. This, in the book, is put down to his upbringing. The next part of the book goes through how Richard was never actually raised to be king and so, you can feel some empathy towards him since becoming king may have shocked his system a bit. He was raised to be artistic, appreciate poetry, talk on politics - all in the French troubadour courts. This was not exactly what England had in mind when they needed a king.

When Richard becomes king in the next part of the book, he seems to almost immediately take off on crusade. Again, he is seeking out some kind of adventure and honestly, I don't think he really liked England at all. The book talks about how Richard could probably only say a few words in English as was the custom of the French Kings since the beginning of the Norman Invasion. He spent only some months in England out of his entire reign and when he went on crusade, he fell ill.

Though he and Saladdin never actually met, they were not at each other's necks otherwise. Paintings after the fact often depict them as fighting ceaselessly with each other - but history states that was probably not the case. The next part of the book deals with the fact that when Saladdin died some couple of years after the crusade, by the time the news reached Richard I - he was hauled up in a German prison. Richard I died the way he lived, in an almost folkloric fashion by his life ending in his mother's arms. He was hit with a crossbow and the wound had become infected. When Richard I died, the man who fired the crossbow was arrested and flayed alive.

All in all, I think this book taught me one new thing that I didn't know about Richard I already and that was that he had never been trained to be king. As with anything, you require training in order to do it well and, with the expansion of the empire that Richard I was to rule over, he just wasn't well equipt to do so - I think it is a little unfair that history often paints him as gullible and detached from reality whereas instead, he would have just been slightly confused as to why the stuff he had learnt all his life wasn't working now that he was king.