Which king richard was gay

It was the 25th of Marchand there, within crossbow range, was the infamous warlord who had killed his father and two brothers. And he was not even wearing his chainmail. Pierre did what any self-respecting which king richard was gay boy from the Limousin would have done. He took the shot, and hit one of the most famous warriors of all time.

When the festering shoulder wound began to turn gangrenous, the year-old soldier pardoned young Pierre, and gave him a bag of money. Then, on the 6th of Aprila full 11 days after having been shot, the celebrated duke of Aquitaine and Normandy, count of Anjou and king of England, died of the wound.

Eight hundred and fifteen years later, Richard the Lionheart remains a shining national hero, with a unique place in popular culture — a name every schoolchild repeats with conviction when asked for a great medieval English king. Richard inspires a misty reverence, and somehow, like Arthur, personifies a certain historic Englishness.

An indomitable equestrian bronze statue of him even prances outside the Palace of Westminster, patrolling with a drawn sword — daring anyone to challenge the good government of this country. His implicit embodiment of justice is so ingrained into our collective conscience that folk-heroes such as Robin Hood demonstrate their moral credentials by unswerving loyalty to him.

And, since the s, Hollywood has been unable to resist the temptation to insert a cameo appearance from an armoured and mounted Richard whenever a semi-divine presence is required. In all this, Richard is perhaps best known for a lethal rivalry, in both life and death, that has become a metaphor for the age.

His struggle was with a man who lies over 2, miles east of Westminster, in Damascus. Although the oriental warrior is buried in a simple wooden sarcophagus, an elegant marble one beside it tells an equally powerful story. It was presented in by Kaiser Wilhelm II as a mark of respect, from one great ruler to another — from the emperor of Germany and king of Prussia to Yusuf ibn Ayyub, better known as Saladin.

Nevertheless, popular sentiment has elevated his year of crusade into an epic and defining point of the high middle ages — a distillation of the seething currents coursing through the age of chivalry. Both men have been variously hailed as the truest incarnations of chivalry, or denounced as bloodthirsty butchers.

He towered head and shoulders above all other British historians of his age. Stubbs judged that Richard was:. Stubbs was, in fact, not alone, or even of his time. Most historians, then and since, have not found much need to revise his unfavourable opinion.

We can start with the notion Richard was no Englishman. Although there is an implied criticism of his moral compass, the main point is that Richard despised England.

Cruel, anti-English and almost certainly gay: meet the real Richard the Lionheart

It sounds blasphemous, but for all our centuries-old affection for him, the simple truth is that Richard could not abide this country. As an adult, he visited England only twice, and on each occasion for as short a period as humanly possible. The first was inwhen he came for four months to be crowned an event he could hardly avoid and also to oversee a fire sale of everything that was not nailed down.

He famously remarked that he would have sold London if he could have found a buyer. Once back in France with his shiny English crown, he took no ongoing interest whatsoever in the running of his new kingdom. He was an absentee landlord, only concerned with the rents England yielded to fund his personal wars of dynastic consolidation and self-aggrandizement.

His second visit was inafter he had finished crusading, and England had helped raise the eye-wateringmarks ransom for his release from imperial captivity. When two months of dutiful plodding around England were up, Richard promptly took the first boat he could find back to the battlefields of France.

England was, he said, cold and always raining, and it plainly held nothing for him — which is hardly surprising, as he was a thoroughbred Frenchman. Yet although queen-consort of England, she was most definitely southern French. For Richard, who was never destined to ascend the English throne, everything north of the White Cliffs was secondary.