[Artemisia] Richard the Lionheart

[morgan wolf]

I believe (and I should say that this time frame and the particular "title" I'm about to bring up were my areas of focus during my pursuit of a history degree) that Richard was so incredibly popular because he was considered "the Greatest Soldier in Christendom", a quasi-title that was, in a way, passed on for several generations, usually to the man who utterly defeated the previous "Greatest Soldier".  Richard was considered fearless in battle, demonstrated a mastery of both strategy and tactics, and in a time when martial prowess basically defined a man, stated and proved again and again that he would rather be at war than at peace.  A large part of his popularity with the English nobility was his absenteeism- he was only in England about 4 times during his entire life (he hated the island).  An equally large part, if not larger, of the reason that John was so unpopular with the nobles was his presence in, and desire to actually rule, England.

Richard was such a feared and respected military figure that the fact that he was gay was completely ignored, except for the matter of the succession.


Morgan, sometime military and medieval history scholar

----- Original Message ----
From: Tamar Black Sea <tamar at coteduciel.org>
To: Kingdom of Artemisia mailing list <artemisia at lists.gallowglass.org>
Sent: Monday, May 7, 2007 10:36:23 AM
Subject: [Artemisia] Richard the Lionheart


Greetings Everyone,

My two daughters are homeschooled and are doing a unit on the Crusades 
and Richard the Lionheart. There is an essay portion with-in each unit 
and one of the questions was a deceptively simple little question about 
Richard the Lionheart's legacy in English history. I thought we could 
whip out an answer in 10 minutes. I was wrong. Days later, we find 
ourselves still discussing the question.

I would love to hear in-put from anyone out there who has an interest in 
this subject. The question was:

"Why do you think Richard the Lionheart has always been so popular when 
he accomplished so little?"

Any thoughts?

YIS,
Tamar
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