As well as their three daughters, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine had five sons. William died young, Henry the Young King died of dysentery in 1183 and Geoffrey died in a tournament at Paris in 1185. Richard, the third son, and John, the youngest, were the only ones to inherit the throne.
Richard spent his youth at his mother's court in France, where he learned to believe in the Arthurian legend, to compose songs and to wage war against his father.
His coronation in 1189 was an opulent, gold-encrusted ceremony. However, the event turned into a bloodbath when Jews bringing gifts were set upon by a crowd pumped up by the Christian zeal of the crusading era.
Having inherited a large empire (which included Anjou, Aquitaine and Normandy, as well as England), Richard spent only six months of his reign on English soil. During his long absences, he was lucky to have a competent head of government in Hubert Walter, who was also archbishop of Canterbury.
The king became a romantic hero for his exploits on the Third Crusade in 1190, where he won back large chunks of the Holy Land from the Muslims under Saladin. However, he was also responsible for the massacre of 2,700 prisoners at the siege of Acre.
On the crusade, he made enemies of Leopold of Austria and Philip of France. They later took their revenge. In December 1192, Richard was captured by Leopold as the English king made his way in disguise through Austrian territory following shipwreck in the Adriatic on his return from the Holy Land. He was imprisoned for 14 months, and the ransom of 34 tons of gold paid to free him nearly bankrupted England. Philip, meanwhile, had joined forces with Richard's younger brother John, who had designs on the English crown, and attacked Richard's castles in France.
Richard met his death from a crossbow bolt while trying to take back the castle of Châlus-Chabrol, which belonged to the rebellious viscount of Limoges.
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 Crusade: The Reputation of Richard I the Lionheart
http://dicksonc.act.edu.au/Showcase
/ClioContents/feudalism/richard1.html
According to this article, while Richard Plantagenet was the ideal soldier and deserved the title of 'Lionheart', he was a disastrous ruler and failed to govern his kingdom efficiently.
Saladin, Richard the Lionheart and the Legacy of the Crusades
www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/his
tory/i-m/lionheart.html
The horrors of the Crusades gradually faded into storytelling, especially in the West. But as Dr Jonathan Phillips shows in this essay, it is only recently that the Arab world has learned the truth behind Western myth.
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The Reign of Richard Lionheart: Ruler of the Angevin empire, 1189-1199 by Ralph V Turner and Richard R Heiser (Longman, 2000)
This book considers Richard's reign from a perspective that is as much French as English. Viewing the king himself as a great military commander, it also shows him as a more competent administrator than previously acknowledged. The authors correct many misconceptions about Richard's French possessions, and examine the formidable threat that the resurgent Capetian monarchy represented to his empire.
Get this book
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 Châlus
In central France, about 20 kilometres south-west of Limoges
Today the town is centred on a sloping square and a circular 18th-century keep. But across the river Tardoire is an older keep, the remains of the Château de Châlus-Chabrol where Richard Lionheart was mortally wounded in 1199. He had gone there to capture a great treasure reputed to be within its walls. When the garrison offered to surrender, Richard refused and swore to hang them all. Then, at dusk a few days later, he was struck in the neck just below his helmet by a crossbow bolt. He continued the attack and then returned to his tent. At this point, either he broke off the arrow and made the wound worse, or a surgeon did and made a hash of the operation. In any event, within 11 days Richard was dead.
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