[20] During his captivity, English prejudice against foreigners was used in a calculated way by his brother John to help destroy the authority of Richard's chancellor, William Longchamp, who was a Norman.

[39] Henry the Young King and the Count of Flanders planned to land in England to assist the rebellion led by the Earl of Leicester.

[55] In 1187, to strengthen his position, Richard allied himself with 22-year-old Philip II, the son of Eleanor's ex-husband Louis VII by Adela of Champagne.

Gillingham has addressed theories suggesting that this political relationship was also sexually intimate, which he posits probably stemmed from an official record announcing that, as a symbol of unity between the two countries, the kings of England and France had slept overnight in the same bed.

In Poitou the ex-provost of Benon, Peter Bertin, was made seneschal, and finally, the household official Helie de La Celle was picked for the seneschalship in Gascony.

[73] Its main terms were: The two kings stayed in Sicily for a while, but this resulted in increasing tensions between them and their men, with Philip plotting with Tancred against Richard.

[74] The two kings eventually met to clear the air and reached an agreement, including the end of Richard's betrothal to Philip's sister Alys.

[75] In 1190 King Richard, before leaving for the Holy Land for the crusade, met Joachim of Fiore, who spoke to him of a prophecy contained in the Book of Revelation.

The island occupies a key strategic position on the maritime lanes to the Holy Land, whose occupation by the Christians could not continue without support from the sea.

When Richard married Berengaria he was still officially betrothed to Alys, and he pushed for the match in order to obtain the Kingdom of Navarre as a fief, as Aquitaine had been for his father.

At one point, while sick from arnaldia, a disease similar to scurvy, he picked off guards on the walls with a crossbow, while being carried on a stretcher covered "in a great silken quilt".

[90][91] Eventually, Conrad of Montferrat concluded the surrender negotiations with Saladin's forces inside Acre and raised the banners of the kings in the city.

This was interpreted as arrogance by both Richard and Philip, as Leopold was a vassal of the Holy Roman Emperor (although he was the highest-ranking surviving leader of the imperial forces).

However, the weather was appallingly bad, cold with heavy rain and hailstorms; this, combined with the fear that the Crusader army, if it besieged Jerusalem, might be trapped by a relieving force, led to the decision to retreat back to the coast.

[citation needed] An election forced Richard to accept Conrad of Montferrat as King of Jerusalem, and he sold Cyprus to his defeated protégé, Guy.

[98] The crusader army made another advance on Jerusalem, and, in June 1192, it came within sight of the city before being forced to retreat once again, this time because of dissension amongst its leaders.

In particular, Richard and the majority of the army council wanted to force Saladin to relinquish Jerusalem by attacking the basis of his power through an invasion of Egypt.

[106] On 28 March 1193, Richard was brought to Speyer and handed over to Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI, who imprisoned him in Trifels Castle.

"[108] The Emperor demanded that 150,000 marks (100,000 pounds of silver) be delivered to him before he would release the King, the same amount raised by the Saladin tithe only a few years earlier,[109] and two to three times the annual income of the English Crown under Richard.

The search began for a fresh site for a new castle to defend the duchy of Normandy and act as a base from which Richard could launch his campaign to take back Vexin from French control.

[116] When Philip besieged Aumale in Normandy, Richard grew tired of waiting and seized the manor,[116][117] although the act was opposed by the Catholic Church.

[119][120] Royal expenditure on castles declined from the levels spent under Henry II, attributed to a concentration of resources on Richard's war with the king of France.

Allen Brown described Château Gaillard as "one of the finest castles in Europe",[126] and military historian Sir Charles Oman wrote that it was considered "the masterpiece of its time.

Most importantly, he managed to secure the Welf inheritance in Saxony for his nephew, Henry the Lion's son, who was elected Otto IV of Germany in 1198.

[137] Richard's heart was buried at Rouen in Normandy, his entrails in Châlus (where he died), and the rest of his body at the feet of his father at Fontevraud Abbey in Anjou.

[139] Henry Sandford, Bishop of Rochester (1226–1235), announced that he had seen a vision of Richard ascending to Heaven in March 1232 (along with Stephen Langton, the former archbishop of Canterbury), the King having presumably spent 33 years in purgatory as expiation for his sins.

A German contemporary, Walther von der Vogelweide, believed that Richard's generosity was what made his subjects willing to raise a king's ransom on his behalf.

Richard's character was also praised by figures in Saladin's court such as Baha ad-Din and Ibn al-Athir, who judged him the most remarkable ruler of his time.

Victorian England was divided on Richard: many admired him as a crusader and man of God, erecting an heroic statue to him outside the Houses of Parliament.

According to Gillingham, "it is now more widely acknowledged that Richard was head of a dynasty with far wider responsibilities than merely English ones, and that in judging a ruler's political acumen more weight might be attached to contemporary opinion than to views which occurred to no one until many centuries after his death.