Forums → The Tavern → Overly romanticised medieval legends?
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lol thats a bad title
So I'm doing a history assignment about the third crusade, and I have to find achievements of the two main leaders, Richard I and Saladin. I thought that would be pretty easy, considering Richard I was always made out to be a legendary king of England, he's called the Lion-Heart, because he was said to be brave. But he's pretty much done nothing of any significance. He butchered a bunch of muslims and went to war with France. He sounds like he was a pretty terrible king, barely spending any time in England and imposing heavy taxes. He didn't even speak English.
Anyway, why did I have the impression he was a good king if he hasn't done anything (I did watch the latest Robin Hood recently)? Or has he done something impressive I'm missing?
- 3 Replies
Because his legend has been inflated due to him being considered a great warrior due to his participation in the Crusades. Also, remember that at the time priests wrote the history books, being amongst the few literate people around. And guess what.....they like holy warriors. That explains a huge part of his popularity. That's not to deny he doesn't deserve his sobriquet.
But of course people forget that he spent only a minute fraction of his reign in England itself, treating it more like a province whilst focussing on the Holy Land and his French possessions. They forget how he incessantly went to war and drained his country's resources. They also forget how he got himself into a mess when he was kidnapped, resulting in a huge ransom.
Oh and one more thing. The next king was King John which only serves to make Richard stand out more.
And no you aren't missing anything. His entire life was one military exploit after another, enhancing his martial reputation. Other than that, he has done little to impact England.
Was John a bad king @-@ he was trying to control Richard's mess by making more taxes, which made him unpopular, and he lost some land, but otherwise he did alright and he's made to seem like the bad guy by contemporary accounts?
Was John a bad king @-@ he was trying to control Richard's mess by making more taxes, which made him unpopular, and he lost some land, but otherwise he did alright and he's made to seem like the bad guy by contemporary accounts?
On a personal level I feel that he was a decent man. Much of modern day research supports my opinion, with many historians now considering him a "hard-working administrator, an able man, an able general", albeit, with "distasteful, even dangerous personality traits", including pettiness, spitefulness and cruelty.
Whilst we should trash aside the stereotypical ideal of him being a vicious tyrant of Robin Hood fame, we should not ignore his enormous failures, such as losing practically all of the English lands in France, which was an enormous blow considering the English Royal Family originated from Normandy and Anjou.
However we must also remember the huge mess left behind by Richard, and by the fact that John was virulently anti-Papal and anti-Church power, hence giving him a bad reputation as the biographers of the age tended to come from the Church.
Read more here.
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