Legends of Richard the Lionheart

faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond.

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Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval. Richard the Lionheart was so famous that is statue was placed outside the houses of Parliament in Westminster, a monument to English greatness to shivalry to the flower of medieval heroism. Now get this, that same Richard spent less than six months of his tenure reign actually in England. He probably didn't even speak English, and one of his greatest military adventures, the Crusade that made him a legend, was in all honesty, a bit of a failure. For the past 800 years, we've been telling ourselves stories about Richard the Lionheart. We've put King Arthur's sword Excalibur into his hands, whispered that he was the son of the devil,

invented elaborate fantasies about him eating his enemies flesh, immortalised him in novels and films, and most recently made him a video game character in Assassin's Creed. These stories have persisted, they've been told and retold elaborated and embellished until they've become more famous than the truth, and that's precisely what makes Richard the Lionheart so fascinating. Today, we're going to investigate the why all this legends about him and ask the even more intriguing questions, like why those legends persisted, who kept telling them, and what they reveal about us, rather than about Richard himself.

I'm joined by Heather Blurton, lecturer at the Center for Medieval Studies and the Department of English for the University of York. She's the author of a new book, Richard the Lionheart in life and legend. Together, we'll investigate the most famous legends surrounding Richard and ask what does this legend tell us about how myths are made, how they persist, and how they shape history.

“Because the truth is, Richard the Lionheart isn't really about Richard anymore. He's become something else entirely, a screen onto which each year a project its own fantasies and anxieties.”

He's a symbol and a reminder that history isn't simply a record of what happened. History is the story that we tell ourselves, and the stories we choose to tell matter far more than we realize. Welcome to God Medieval Heather. It's great to have you join us for this episode. Hi, thanks so much for having me. Very much looking forward to maybe having a different angle, a different conversation about Richard the Lionheart than the one we might normally have. You mentioned in your book that Richard is kind of born into a family that seems destined for legend. His whole sort of family is surrounded by myths and stories.

“Can you give us a sense of how that manifested itself before Richard takes center stage?”

Well, this is absolutely true. Richard was born into sort of an extraordinary family. His father was a Henry II king of England and his mother was Eleanor of Aquatine.

So between the two of them, they ruled over most of what is now the United Kingdom and France and legends and myths always accrued to them.

And particularly Eleanor, there are some stories about when she went on crusade with her first husband that she was having an affair with. When a for uncle and later legends suggested that she might have even been having an affair with Saladine.

And do we see the honours of ins in these early years as they're establishing themselves on the European stage?

“Do we see them kind of curating that image or is it applied to them or are they quite good at seizing unlikely opportunities and creating good PR acts?”

I think all of it, I think it was really the perfect storm for the engines.

I mean, they were a huge dynasty. They were very powerful, but they ruled throughout the 12th century and you know, Richard line herds rain.

And the second half of the 12th century was also the moment where we see the birth and development of vernacular literature. The birth of romance is a genre, the rise of troubadour poetry, a real explosion in history writing, particularly in England. And so they sort of fell into this moment of I guess what we would now call a kind of a new media landscape where there were all these sorts of evolving literary and artistic forms that we're looking for subjects really. And the engine and family provided a lot of that for them.

So and of course there was also the era of crusading, which also tended to spawn legends and myths and songs and art and cross cultural interactions. So it's hard to say, you know, which is the chicken and which is the egg, but certainly it seems like the perfect storm for the engines.

“Yeah. And what do the ways in which those stories are allowed to take hold and develop over time?”

Tell us about the early plantagenets. Do people see them as something special? Are they later looking to set them up as kind of a real anchor point for a dynasty? Well, certainly, I think within their lifetimes, people seem to have recognized that this was something interesting going on. So we see, uh, particularly rich with the lion heart and owner of Aquatainedry there. Lifetimes, becoming already the subject of a history writing, a poetry writing of art also. And, but at the same time, when ones to say that certainly they were taking advantage of this and curating their own myths in real time in certain ways.

So certainly, both Henry, Eleanor, and Richard All, a patronized authors who were writing about them, about their reigns, who were writing romance, who were creating this sort of quarterly culture in which they themselves were participating. We see Richard The Lion Hearts, certainly using literature as a sort of soft politics, um, exchanging poems with troupe doors, patronizing troupe doors. Certainly, they were participating, you know, in this literary culture. It's hard to say.

In hindsight, to what extent they themselves were aware of, I mean, obviously, you know, no one's ever aware of what their myth is going to become in the future.

“But certainly, I think everyone in the second half of the, the 12th century was aware that something new and interesting was happening.”

Yeah. And to what extent do you think Richard's time before he becomes King sort of prepared him for this? How much is he going into his kingship already the subject of some of these myths? Because the lion heart name is already attached to him before he becomes King, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely. And Richard was never expected to become King. He was actually the third son of Henry and Eleanor.

And there was an eldest child who died in childhood. But then Richard's older brother, who was named Henry after his father, and is known as the young king, Henry took to differentiate him from his father, the older king. Um, the young king was also in his own lifetime, like a real magnet for stories and poetry. He was just kind of generally recognized to be the most shive valorick, wonderful warrior type. And Richard was more expected to inherit his mother's, that she have acclatained in the South of France.

So he spent a lot of the years before he became the heir apparent, really sort of in the South of France. Recruiting a mercenary army, siege in castles, taking captives, turning against his former allies, so on and so forth. And it was during those campaigns in the South of France that Richard really established his reputation as a great warrior, as a great strategist, like his father, but also something of a despotic ruler, someone who was prone to anger.

He's also described as a very handsome, and it was in those years that the nickname "Line Heart" started first appear.

It sounds like the classic bad boy. Yeah, absolutely, as well as leader established being himself as a, as a, as a, with a reputation. For his brother, Henry died young and loved Richard, sort of the heir apparent to his father. And do we see Richard during this period, because of his attachment to aquatime, potentially, and the Trubodor history there? Do we see him kind of picking up these techniques to manage his own reputation? Do we see him in any way driving perceptions of himself or is this sort of genuine?

I don't know, he's an admirable fear of those around him. I think it's hard to say, I'm not sure how to answer that. Certainly he was the topic of a lot of Trubodor poetry. He seems to have particularly inspired,

we think of love, right, and love lyrics, and loving the woman you can never have, or loving a married woman.

“But a lot of Trubodor poetry was actually really political, and poets were writing just as many poets,”

poems about war, and political issues as they were about love. So you see this sort of ecosystem of war poetry kind of developing where poets are sometimes praising a ruler or a aristocrat or a knight who's done something they'd like, but just as often throwing insults around at their peers or at their vassals or at their overlords. So it is very much a poetry of love and war, and sort of the playing the reputation game rather than

the territory game in that way. I'm suppose in Richard, if you've got this handsome, eligible bachelor who's turning out to be an incredible soldier who's really fitting the mold that poets and writers are looking for at the moment. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And you also have, you know, at this time, the birth of the legend of King Arthur,

and the Knights of the Roundtable, and you have the Court of Henry, the second and

Eleanor of Aquatine, patronizing some of that literature. So there's definitely on the one hand, these people of Richard who are fighting and trying to gain territory and also using literature as part of that struggle. And then on the other hand, you have these poets who are creating this imaginary court of King Arthur and his knights, we're doing these acts same thing, maybe in a more elevated way. So it's an interesting sort of intersection.

Yeah. And how much of what is written about Richard, particularly during his lifetime? Do you think we ought to think of as accurate histories we might write it today? And how much of this is writers kind of pulling on these emerging chivalric ideals of romance, literature, and all of that kind of thing to talk about what they think their leaders should be rather than what they actually are, you know, is Richard what they're writing about or are they writing about what they hope Richard will

“be? Well, I think it's a question of both and, you know, and even today when we write histories,”

we're not always as neutral as perhaps we like to think we are. Alright, the history is often

designed to take a stand in a political moment, then as now. But you can read, you know, when we see contemporary historians that is a contemporary to the 12th century historians writing about Richard, they take a variety of approaches. So you have, you know, one of the things is really interesting, contrast, you have this one, placentry monk whose name is Richard of Devices who writes a chronicle. Let's just about Richard's reign, but not even his entire reign,

it begins with his coronation, and it ends with his failure to take Jerusalem. So it's really the story of Richard's early kingship of England, and it's funny, it's gossipy, it's satirical, it engages in rumour mongering, it praises Richard in this very over-the-top way, but so over-the-top that one has to imagine that, you know, it's actually just poking a fun at the man. So it's really lively, sort of fun, gossipy, like tabloid account, every church reign almost. And then in contrast,

you have a French language history by a guy who named Ambrose, we don't know that much about it, but his history is called the history of the Holy War, and it's about Richard's crusade, and he really all similarly praises Richard, but he cast Richard as a hero of epic, as a hero, Shaston de Jazz, the sort of old French epic stories about people like Charlemagne and Roland. So he's giving a very different twist to the story, and these are both histories, they both are sources

that contemporary historians use to find out what was going on in the 12th century, but at the same time they're very particular and very much written by people who have their own, I don't know whether to say story to tell or acts to grind, but somewhere in between, probably. Yeah, there's an agenda going on alongside what they're doing. One of the things that Richard is famous for is, you know, immediately after his coronation selling everything that he possibly can, making a joke about selling

London if he possibly could find a buyer for it and things like that. And that's often viewed as his expressing a lack of interest in or care for England in particular amongst all of his lands. Was it viewed that way at the time or did people see the idea that he's going off on crusade

“as, you know, worth it? You should be selling everything to go on crusade. Yeah, it's interesting”

question. I mean, certainly since the 19th century, the question of Richard's reputation as a king of England has risen and fallen based on the assessment of how much attention he paid to England and whether he was a genuinely good king or whether he was simply using England as a piggy back to fund his extracurricular activities, such as crusading, such as, you know, building castles and France and these sorts of things. And I think that story of Richard's contemporary or modern

Certainly in his own lifetime, when Jerusalem had been had in captured during the course of the

first crusade and created as a crusade or kingdom. And when it actually fell to the forces of

Celadine, toward the end of the 12th century, lots and loads of Europeans, aristocracy took the cross, pledged themselves to go on crusade, pledged themselves to go recapture Jerusalem. And Richard was among the very first to do so, but, you know, the King of France, the Holy Roman Empire, like, absolutely everyone was doing this. So, it was really a cultural movement and not something that people would have thought was odd or unusual for a king to do. I also don't think anyone

would have thought was particularly unusual for a king to use the resources of his kingdom, however he wanted to. And, you know, we have some stories about the sort of taxation that Richard was putting upon England. And there are chroniclers who are somewhat cranky about it, but, you know, you can be, then is now, you can be unhappy with being taxed while at the same time,

“you know, fully supporting your government's foreign wars. So, I don't, I think it's,”

it's a very sort of modern situation in that way. But, the idea that Richard was a bad king, because he, he didn't pay enough attention to England. He probably didn't even speak English, there's one of the things that historians very often say, and he spent almost all his reign out of England. That's not really a medieval view of King'ship. That's more of our modern desire. Well, we want from, you know, to a great national heroes.

Yeah, because, I mean, he ends up being, you know, the first King of England to actually go on

crusade, which you imagine his subject's might have thought was quite a prestigious thing. French kings have been on crusade. The French king is going on this crusade. Holy Roman Emperor's Kings of Germany have been on these crusades. Why hasn't an English King been? And you can almost imagine that they might have felt this was a real moment for England. This is a prestigious thing. Whereas we tend to look at back at it now, thinking,

well, this is just Richard, you know, expressing a complete lack of interest in the lands and the kingdom that he's just acquired and looking to just go on crusade as fast as he can. We, to say, we've got a very different attitude to that. Yeah, that's right. And certainly our

“attitudes toward crusade have also changed a lot, not just toward kingship. So I think, you know,”

as historians have re-evaluated the crusading movement and what that meant to Europe, as the idea of crusading's reputation, this sort of fallen, then it takes the crusaders down, down with them. But, you know, I will say that, even though today, you know, obviously we recognize that the crusades is extremely problematic to say the least. I mean, certainly well through the 1940s, 1950s, you know, schoolchildren were being given stories about crusaders as just,

you know, normal reading material, like to think about the conquest and crusading is heroic. And they're all sorts of, you know, stories about young boys who sneak off to go on crusade with, so it was still until very recently considered a decent space to explore ideas of heroism and individualism and guardian country. And presumably, as you mentioned, the emerging kind of media landscape that Richard is existing in will particularly appreciate the fact that he's a crusader

and that builds him up as an even more suitable subject for romance and literature and

“to enter kind of myth and legend as well. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's really right. And how”

do you think Richard, as a patron of true bedores, connects him to his mother's family because we've, we've just said, you know, Elina is the center of lots of scandal and myth and stories. Is Richard kind of actively promoting the idea that people are writing songs and poetry about him, is he immersed in that or is it something that's going on around him? It's kind of hard to say,

I mean, of course, Elina is great, maternal, great grandfather, esteem as being the very first

true bedore. So I mean, Richard had these family ties. It's not particularly known if he thought of himself in that way as if, you know, I don't know if this is a time period in which being descended from great true bedores was something you'd put on your resume as it were. But certainly people were writing poems about Richard and we see Richard himself, of course, also writing poetry and one of the great myths about Richard, the Lionheart is when he comes back from crusade. He's traveling

back from Jerusalem. King of France has really turned against him. So he's struggling to get from the Mediterranean back to England without getting in the way of the King of France. He gets captured. He's imprisoned for over a year. And there's this great story about the ministral Blondell, who is trying to find his King Richard and he goes from castle to castle singing this song, the King Richard composed together until he finally hears Richard singing back to him.

That's how they discover where Richard is and are able to ransom him and save him. And, of course,

And I think it, although it's not a true story, you know, we can think of it as being

“emblematic of the way in Richard. Richard is imagined to be a sort of patron of the arts and someone”

who himself is an artist as well as a, as well as a warrior. So sort of he's someone who's got everything. It's taking all the boxes. He's taking all the boxes. That's right. And he also, we know he wrote, we have two poems that he himself wrote, one of which, from his captivity. And it's actually a really sort of interesting poem. I don't think anyone would, you know, put it in the top top ranks of the cannons of literature, but you would if Richard was hey, asking you.

Oh, absolutely. What if he was in the room for sure? But he writes about being imprisoned,

and you think at first that the song is about being a prisoner of love, but then it turns out

no, he's actually literally a prisoner. And instead of complaining about, you know, his lover not giving him the time of day, he's complaining about his vassals, not getting his ransom together quickly enough. So it is a sort of clever play on the conceit of being a prisoner of love, of the metaphoric language, or being a prisoner of love that we see him using. And it's actually survives in a lot of copies, which is pretty unusual for a medieval poem. So we know that it was

popular, probably because of its connection to him, rather than because of its intrinsic literary worth. But it's still a really wonderful sort of relic to have of avertured. I suppose the existence of things like that and the idea that he was interested in that side of things as well as being a great warrior, helps ideas like that blonde L story to really take hold and people can imagine that that could have been true. And then it becomes accepted as truth

even though maybe it was talking more about Richard's reputation. And you know, how do we get this great king back, this warrior who is also a hero of romance who's been on crusades and everything else.

And it always becomes a device to tell that story, but then people managed to accept it as perhaps

being truth. But it's interesting that those things are able to be attached to Richard because of his own involvement in those things during his lifetime. Yeah, that's right. I mean, the thing about Richard is it's truly extraordinary. I mean, obviously Richard wasn't the only king, 12th century king to go on crusade. He wasn't the only king to have poems written for

“and about him. He wasn't the only king to patronize literature. And I think it's really astonishing”

that we know his name at all that Richard Leinhard has survived into the 21st century in a way that none of these other figures really have. So there's something about being in the right place at the right time for Richard Leinhard. I think that's really sort of extraordinary that, you know, that that his name is still known. He's still in the movies that we're still playing his character in video games and this sort of thing. Yeah, absolutely. And the book obviously deals an awful lot with

those later perceptions of Richard as well. And I wonder, before we get onto some of those later perceptions, how do you think the writers during his lifetime influence Richard's legacy, are they focusing on things that build Richard up into something kind of almost unobtainable that something that he isn't, do they create this myth during his lifetime or is it something that develops later? I think it's a question of both Anne, like, certainly during his own lifetime, people were fascinated

with the phenomenon that was Richard the first. He was within his own time. He sees sort of writer struggling to grapple with him and his legacy. But I think the other thing that happened, which is not just not having during the Middle Ages, but by the very end of the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, Richard the Leinhard becomes associated with a Robinhood legend.

“And that's what really takes him out of the Middle Ages, into modernity. And most of the time,”

when we interface with Richard the Leinhard today, it's because of the Robinhood legend. So there's something about the connection of those two characters that is really given Richard the sort of staying power that I think he might not have had otherwise. Yeah, interesting. And how courses do we need to be when we think about Richard's story about precisely what history was in the medieval period when people wrote history, they weren't writing nonfiction as we might

write it today. That's right. Well, I mean, I'm a literary scholar. So I don't think we need to be cautious about it at all. I think that in fact is the fun part. Certainly medieval historians, that's certain different protocols. Then we do now. They tended to use past models to describe their current history. So biblical models, classical models, there's more sort of what we might

characterize as the miraculous or the marvelous histories. But that's not always the case. I mean,

there are historians that I described, you know, Richard of Devices, who's definitely writing the tabloid version of history, which we still do today. We still have that today, right? But also, you have different kind of historians who were almost creating what we now embrace as our own protocols of history. So for example, one of the great historians of the 12th century Roger of Howden,

who's a bureaucrat, he was a royal administrator, he travels with the royal entourage, he did the

“king's business. So he has an eyewitness perspective, which makes him, you know, from our point of”

view, quite trustworthy. But he was also someone who just really loved to cite his sources, which is also one of our main, you know, understandings of history. So he'll copy whole charters into his history, he'll copy letters, he copied several letters of Richard Leinhardt. So we still have them, which is sort of fun to have Richard's own voice in that way. So there's a sense in which through this copying of charters, including of letters, that Roger's history gives this sort of

a direct access to the perspective of the people who were involved in the events he's describing. So I don't think it's, you know, certainly medieval historians had a different approach to history than contemporary historians do. But I don't necessarily think it's fair to say that there's somehow less historical than contemporary historians and given that we now live in the era of fake news, they possibly might be more trustworthy from certain points of view.

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There might be shocked at some of the things they've read about history that's written today, I guess. And to what extent do you think you talk a little bit in the book about how writing English history has developed over this period, too? Is there anything that makes English telling of history at this period kind of unique? Is it fitting with European models or is

“it a bit of an outlier? I think both, I know I keep saying both, and I think both, and one way”

of looking at English history writing in the 12th century is from the point of view of the Norman Conquest and that Britain had in the not so distant past, suffered this sort of major historical dislocation where an entire ruling elite was replaced with a whole different ruling elite, and so there's a way in which in the early 12th century one might imagine that history became a pressing discipline because writers and thinkers needed to come to some sort of way to bring

the past together with their new future. But at the same time, the second half of the 12th

century throughout Europe is the beginning of a lot of things that we never recognize as modern,

you have the birth of the university, you have the development of what the historian talk of it's sort of more administrative kingship, so rather than a sort of kind of charismatic kingship or a king we just have to travel around and make himself known, now all of a sudden we have a bureaucracy with an ex-checker and lawyers and the sort of bureaucratic administrative government that we understand today, the kind of government that can extract taxes and inefficient way,

and this also provokes a sort of history writing in terms of increased record keeping sense of chronicling the present, and then of course the fact of the crusades were also compelling a lot of history writing throughout Europe because on the one hand that needs to or the desire to celebrate the great deeds of the crusading nights, but the other hand just didn't increase awareness of the moral, of the Mediterranean world, of the global world, increased

travel in that regard, and also provoked history writing and provoked people to record what they

“are finding interesting about their own time period. So England I think is maybe known for having”

some really great history writers, but the second half of the 12th century was a period where there's a lot of change going on, historians used to refer to it as the 12th century Renaissance, my sense of all of a sudden people started looking back to classical models, sort of dusting themselves off from the dark ages and you know forging, and in the modernity and of course no longer think of it that way, but certainly the second half of the 12th century was a period

of great change in literature and history writing and theology and philosophy was a part of that.

I mean you've said we never talked about it that way, but whenever I'm talking to my lovely

co-host Ellen Eyanika, I love to talk about the dark ages and how terrible it is and everything else because it drives us like that. It's always good fun. And I'm into then if we could work our way

because the book kind of charts these moments. And one of the the early ones seems to be the

“emergence of the romance story, Richard Curdilly, on which you know, picks Richard as it's hero and”

I wondered if you could just talk us through kind of when does that emerge? What does it do for Richard and why Richard? There's this wonderful sort of set of romances that together our known as Richard Curdilly on, where there's had the lion heart romance. It's a in middle English, so it's sort of emerges in the the 14th and very popular in 15th century as is vernacular English, romantic epic of Richard's crusade. And it's a bananas sort of story. It's a

rocking good time. It tells an entirely fictionalized version of Richard's life in which his mother is not Eleanor of Aquatane, but in many versions she's this eastern princess called Cassia Dorian who when compelled to stay in church to witness the mass and the raising of the Eucharist, she can't bear it. And so she grabs two of her children and flies out through the roof of the church. Richard goes on crusade and this famous episode where he goes on crusade and he gets sick and

“he's homesick and he doesn't feel well. And so he wants a dish of pork to to make himself feel”

better, mind himself of home. And of course pork is a sort of loaded idea in this context because it's you know of who that that is not eaten either by Muslims or by Jews. So it becomes this marker of Christianity. It's also probably very difficult to farm pigs in the desert, but in the event his chef is unable to find a pig. So he does the next best thing and serves instead Richard the flesh of his Muslim enemies and Richard eats it and he thinks it's the tastiest thing

he's ever seen and he's so delighted with his chef that he asks to bring yes his chef to bring that the pigs head in. So he can see you know the head of this delicious animal he's just tasted. And of course the chef is frantic doesn't know what to do and decides there's nothing to it, but to bring in the head of this poor man that Richard's just eaten and you get this you know frizz on a tear because you think of course this is going to go awfully for the cook but no, Richard last

he thinks it's hilarious and he says you know this is great because as long as we can just eat our way

through our enemies we're never going to starve in this foreign country and this is how we're going.

And so it's like you know it's a crazy story it's obviously completely fictional but it does articulate a sort of sense of imperialism and colonization and sort of a consumption, can the metaphors of consumption and like taking over a foreign land by just like absolutely you know going through it. And so yeah the Richard currently own romance as far as we can tell was was really quite popular in the Middle Ages that we see it in the 14th and 15th century and that it

goes into print and early print in the 16th century with Winkender Word and then it goes into chap books. So it continues as a popular story in different variations like well into the 18th century and then in fact the novelists or Walter Scott got a copy of a manuscript that had one of the early release versions of the Richard curly on romance in it and so it's through Walter Scott that some of those stories and tropes that come into the novel tradition. So it was enormously popular

and it's enormously fun. I highly recommend it. And we've already mentioned here's kind of attachment to the Robin Hood myth which can only you know help to build his legend as well and I was find that quite interesting because he's so often an absent hero everyone is desperate to have him back. He's not very often with maybe the exception of Sean Connery and Prince of Thieves I don't know but he's not very often actually physically in the stories he's kind of this looming presence

that is out there rather than being a character and yet he is so closely associated with the story of Robin Hood almost like Robin Hood is he's kind of representative in England when he can't be there. What does that attachment to the Robin Hood myth do for Richard over the centuries? Obviously it maintains him high in the public mind I guess.

“Yeah absolutely I think you know now if we see Richard the Lion Heart or chances are we're going to”

see him in a Robin Hood movie and in fact you know there's just now there's a new TV series with Robin Hood TV series with Sean Bean as a Sheriff of Nottingham but it really from the 16th century when Robin Hood first begins to be associated with Richard's reign as you say like Richard

becomes this sort of model of absent kingship that the frame of these stories is almost always

that Richard is away on crusade when the cats away the mice will play and there's trouble in England and this is it's Richard's absence that's letting various people either Prince John or the Sheriff of Nottingham cause trouble to the the regular people the normal people and then Robin Hood emerges sort of as the champion of the people and then at the end of the story the frame closes and Richard returns bringing sort of justice with him so Richard kind of comes into the Robin Hood

ambiguous sense that good governance is something I always just out of reach it's never right where

you need it when you need it but it's also Richard has somehow become as you say the representative of that good governance and the idea that you you just need to fight and hold on till that returns and the fact that that is is kind of wrapped in the person of Richard gives him a whole new dimension to his mythical status almost doesn't it yeah it does and it really you know trips

“Richard's story of I think a lot of it's depth and interest in a way because Richard is simply”

becomes a model of of absent kingship and you see sort of in more contemporary movies the figure being used in a sort of more critical way so particularly in more contemporary movies like

Robin Hood Pinch of Thieves that you mentioned there's a Robin Hood movie from 2010

directed by Ridley Scott that they they're they're really more interested in problematizing the idea of crusade so that the idea of Richard's crusade that becomes problematic and so on the one hand he's a good king whose absence is causing trouble at home but on the other hand the fact of his crusading comes a bit unmarried or fire and comes to be critiques so that the figure of Richard is able to sort of function in two ways both as an image of good kingship but also as a mode

through which we can critique crusade crusading culture and then also implicitly you know from the 1990s critiques or contemporary wars in the Middle East as damaging you know fundamentally

damaging to the home front

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And you mentioned that so Walter Scott comes into possession of a copy of the Richard Curdady on Roman stories. How do we see that influencing him and the books that he will write that kind of revitalize Richard for the 19th century does Richard then become a reflection of

“19th century interesting concerns about imperialism and things like that?”

Yeah, I think I mean absolutely so Walter Scott got a hold of this manuscript it's called the "Occane Left Manuscript" and it's one of the earliest collections of Middle English romances and so he borrowed from lots of them but he seems to particularly enjoy the Richard the Lion heart won and he puts little story elements from the video romance throughout his novels but it certainly is Ivan Ho and then the Talisman that are his two-big Richard Richard the Lion Heart

novels and the Talisman is pretty straightforward it's the story of Richard on Crusade it's got kind of a Robinhood plot in that it follows a night in disguise who goes on Crusade and is trying to hide his true identity from Richard but it's Ivan Ho that really sets Richard the Lion

“Heart I think into the English imagination because Ivan Ho, although it's not actually about”

Richard it's got the story of Ivan Ho of course was a Crusading who's off crusading with Richard then he comes home to his family but what Ivan Ho does historically is it sort of does this weird time lapse where it sets during at the end of the 12th century it acts as if it's in the middle of the Norman Conquest so that mean antagonism and Ivan Ho is between the Anglo Saxons and the Norman French and Ivan Ho becomes a figure who's going to sort of negotiate between these two sides

and bring out the best and both of them so we can become English and in this regard Richard the Lion Heart is an interesting figure because he comes back from Crusade he comes back into skies because he's not entirely sure of his welcome Ivan Ho supports him and so in Ivan Ho we see this process of English sharing Richard the Lion Heart where people come to less of a Norman King and more of an English King who's actually bringing these two sides together and then Robinhood also appears in Ivan

Ho as you sort of get this like plucky gang of outsiders like Robinhood and Ivan Ho and Richard in disguise that are going to you know save days at war but it's the sense of Richard and Robinhood

and an Norman French present that really comes through also in the Robinhood tradition so you get

“often in Robinhood movies this sort of antagonism between Saxons and Normans and the most famous”

is probably Errol Flynn's the Adventures of Robinhood from 1938 where Robinhood is represented of the downtrodden Anglo Saxons with a true English and make Marion Robinhood's love interest who comes into the tradition rather late but she becomes like a Norman princess and other going to get together and there you know loves to where their marriage is then this metaphor for the coming together these two cultures of England but you see this sort of antagonism between

two cultures built into the Robinhood tradition all the way and so that's another way in which Richard is a line hard sort of performs this sort of King's shit functions like unifying function

but you know it's true that in some of the Robinhood movies Richard doesn't come back at the end

and often when he doesn't come back at the end justice also doesn't come back at the end so he gets to be sort of to be continued sort of certain narratives yeah so it's really interesting that 19th century desire to Anglicized him to stop him being this Frenchman who didn't speak any English and to actually almost claim him as part of the I mean by the 19th century you know they're trying to paint this idea that Britain was relentlessly marching towards the empire

that they were living in and people like Richard are good examples of imperialism and military power but also cultural importance as well so the idea that they want to claim him as English I think is really interesting at that point. I agree and I think he makes a nice companion to King Arthur who also comes enormously popular again during the 19th century precisely as this avatar of Englishness and English kingship but of course Arthur dies at the end right or maybe he does

he's going to come back he's like an ambassador Arthur is a sort of tragic story in a way of fall and how the wrong sort of relationships will end in your demise whereas Richard tells the sort of

“the opposite story even though in order to make Richard into this great hero you have to perform”

like a seminal act of forgetting which is that he didn't win the crusade he gave up and came home but that's most often glossed over in the tradition. Yes we won't talk about that and I know it's

not quite his literary culture but I'm always completely bemused by if you have a walk around London

and walk past the houses of Parliament that you see a statue of Richard you know when he's horse with his sword in the air and for me this is a man who would absolutely not recognise I mean Parliament didn't exist when he was King anyway so he wouldn't recognise Parliament but he wouldn't recognise the idea that something would be there and institution would be there would shackle the powers of a King and yet he becomes so closely associated with it that we've

put a statue of him outside it's a weird kind of juxtaposition that I think is almost an ideal a perfect representation of the way that people think about Richard because he's such a dichotomy such an impossible circle to square off isn't he? Yeah I mean it's a it's a brilliant image that statue and I've been out in the store ago something like Queen Victorian Prince Albert saw it in one of the great expositions that's an Italian sculptor and they saw this sculpture

of Richard the Lionheart and they loved it so much that they they started this fun to reason enough money to how to have one for themselves and of course this place outside you know the houses of parliament which themselves were rebuilt in the 19th century to look medieval to have that that folk gothic architecture so you get this real doubling down on medievalism of this choosing this one moment of England's past as being the key moment of England's

past and the sort of the medieval period as this core sense of what Englishness is but I think you're absolutely right that Richard the Lionheart himself would have been

“and I'm sure please right to have his beautiful statue of himself around but I think”

from use by the by the ideologies behind it absolutely I think if it explained to him where it was and why it was there he probably just laugh his head off so I find have a statue of me and he mentioned in the book that Richard's story quite often seems to to re-emerge or become reinvigorated or reinvented around times of of innovation so from the printing press to moving pictures and we're living in a you know a new digital age now what do you think it is

about Richard that makes him a good kind of evergreen vessel for that why does innovation seek out or need someone like Richard this is a question that I know and myself posed and I it's a question I'm fascinated by but it's a question that I generally don't have an answer to and I think you know again you could place King Arthur alongside Richard the Lionheart as one of these figures who often re-emerges in these moments you know I think one thing you could say about

Robinhood legend but he has become something of an empty vessel like people know Richard the Lion

Heart but they don't all know that much else right there's not probably people can really describe what was so special about him so perhaps it's that sense of his importance coupled with the kind of sense of uncertainty about what exactly was important about him that that enables the

“continuation but I don't know but I mean I think certainly it also has something to say about the”

persistence of the idea of the medieval in our culture that we we come back to sort of this moment of the 12th century again and again and it seems to be able to perform really multi-valently you know people who are interested in creating people who are interested in aristocracy people who are

interested in power but also people who are interested in love and romance right and people who are

interested in folk culture and peasant culture people who want to turn away from like the modern and you know go more analogs it seems to be a sort of vision that that can function in a lot of different ways it's a kind of real flexibility and maybe that's why it's sort of keeps coming back yeah I think he's such a fascinating inclusion in all of that because he's he's almost like a folklore figure except that he's real he sits alongside King Arthur and Robinhood except that

he is a real historical figure yeah that's true so he's he's able to be absorbed by all of that use of fiction and myth and legends but wrap it around a real person which I guess makes him I don't

know that he's unique in that but he stands out as as lining up alongside King Arthur and Robinhood

as we've said but also being a real person which I think makes him fairly unique yeah I would agree I would agree I mean there you know when you one one thinks of other great warriors from that period

“and you have to go to like Genghis Khan or someone it was non-western I think Selian and it's just”

a finish on you know do you think it matters or how much does it matter to his literary reputation who Richard actually ever was he seems to have of morphed and been transformed by the idea of what he was or who he was or what he represents then it almost feels like he's in danger of becoming irrelevant to his own story and what we know about Richard is more about what he's used to represent than what he actually did I like the idea of him become irrelevant to his own story I

mean I think that's right I don't think he would know I don't think he would either it stopped laughing at the statue if we told him that I mean it's it's really hard to say right I think that certainly one could say there's an opportunity here that to use this figure as a way to both think about what drives the persistent popularity of the figure but also to try to bring some of that

“historicity back so you know for example we might use Richard the Lionard to think about”

well why are we so fixated on the medieval what is it about that period that we really desire is it a sense of getting away from you know the troubles of modern life or is it a sense of getting back to a pure time the whole sort of crusading culture question which is you know once again becoming sort of onto the world stage with western wars in the Middle East we have this sort of like way to look to the past for I don't want to say lessons because I don't think history

particularly offers very many lessons but for ideas that this is a place where we can sort of play through the sort of things that have happened in the past to think about you know possible analogies to think about how we might do things differently to think about what it is that we're seeing in the past and what it is that perhaps we're not seeing so I know that's not a very good answer for which I apologize but I don't I don't really have a good answer to the question

I don't I don't there is a very good answer it it just strikes me that Richard kind of sits there at this nexus point in history where he's it he exists in a changing world where literature and ideas are changing where notions of nationhood and empire are changing and relations with the the Near East and the Holyland are changing and so he he exists in a changing world so when the world changes around us he's a figure that we can look back at and obviously he's medieval and all the best

in the world of medieval so he he represents something that we can look back on and kind of transplant the way that we're feeling about the world changing around us on stories that rotate around Richard who existed in a changing world and I also think you know maybe I'm being a little unfair to say that he sort of sort of as an empty signifier I'm thinking of his appearance in the Assassins Creed video game which is quite brilliant because he is not a character you can play but you

element of an interest in sort of a certainly in the Assassins Creed series there is a real

interest in getting things right getting the history right getting archaeology right getting the cityscapes right getting those battle instruments you know getting the procedure weaponry

“correct that I think is really interesting and I do think and I'm not a game right don't”

I don't play these things but I'm really fascinated by the way in which they offer these immersive world scapes and story worlds that are very often based on medieval or medievalist medievaly typey landscapes and so I think that you know as a professor and one thing I'm aware of is that my students have this very different access to the medieval world than I've ever had and they have this sort of embodied immersive ability to almost walk through medieval landscapes that

that means that they're interacting with these past stories now you know only really for the past 10

“years and entirely different ways than generations of historians have which I think is truly”

fascinating and I've no doubt that you know the character of Richard will change with this new sort of way of perceiving the past and we've interacting with him yeah I mean we'll have to try and convince you to come on to the echoes of history podcast and talk about Assassin's Creed a bit more because this has been absolutely fascinating it's been it's been really interesting to think about who Richard was and who he's become and what he's meant to various people and how he's

“kind of morphed and changed and and what he's meant and what he might be today but I've said”

you fascinating to talk about all of this Heather thank you so much for joining us thank you for

having me it's been fun you can listen to an episode all about Richard the first life that

Eleanor hosted a little while ago in our back catalogue he also appears in our lioness heart episode about his sister Joan and Richard crops up in the crusade series that we recently did there are new installments of god medieval every Tuesday and Friday so please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and

family that you've gone medieval you can also sign up to history hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with the new release every week at historyhit dot com forward slash subscribe anyway I'd better let you go I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hits nah, not a flene for such an end, Besuch the road kept in a leapness world in fiber with a run-mails to the owner or the channel type of a nebman who has all the years of

an addictive development of our interactive development of the elite tour with audio guide and a classic

and the next parvillion the whole world from road kept the road kept in the lead as well as a second