Little is known of his whereabouts or his circumstances after the Third Crusade. In fact, his role with King Richard and exact identity are subject to much debate. Today, his name is attributed to twenty-five songs of the twelfth century.
When war broke out between King John and Philip of France, in 1201, Eleanor declared her support for John, her son. She set out from Fontevraud to her capital, Poitiers, to prevent her grandson, Arthur I, Duke of Brittany, John’s enemy, from taking control. Arthur learned of her whereabouts and besieged her in the castle of Mirabeau. As soon as John heard of this, he marched south, overcame the besiegers and captured Arthur. Eleanor then returned to Fontevraud, where she took the veil as a nun. Eleanor died, in 1204, at the age of eighty-two. She was buried in Fontevraud Abbey next to her husband Henry and her son Richard. By the time of her death she had outlived all of her children except for King John of England and Queen Eleanor of Castile.
Guy of Lusignan died in 1194, without surviving issue. He was succeeded by his brother Amalric, who received the royal crown from Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor. Descendants of the Lusignans continued to rule the Kingdom of Cyprus until 1489. He was buried at the Church of the Templars in Nicosia.
Henry died, in 1197, after falling from a window at his palace in Acre in what was almost certainly an accident. Suggestions that he was behind the assassination of Conrad of Montferrat are still current. His widow, Queen Isabella, remarried soon after his death, to her fourth (and last) husband, Amalric of Lusignan, who became King of Cyprus after the death of his brother, Guy of Lusignan. She died, in 1205, at the age of thirty- two.
When Henry added the Kingdom of Sicily to his personal and imperial domain, in December 1194, he became the most powerful monarch in the Mediterranean and Europe. He died of malaria in Messina, on 28 September 1197, although many believed he was poisoned.
The most loyal of all the French lords after the departure of his King, Philip of France, he stayed with the Lionheart until the summer of 1192. He died on 25 August 1192, but there is no record of the cause of his death. King Richard was accused of being behind it by Philip, Bishop of Beauvais, a close friend of Conrad of Montferrat. According to the chronicler Richard of Devizes, the Bishop of Beauvais said that Richard ‘had ordered Marquis Montferrat’s throat cut, that he poisoned the Duke of Burgundy; that he was an extraordinarily savage man and as hard as iron’.
Joan was married in October 1196, at Rouen, as the third wife of Raymond VI of Toulouse. She was the mother of his successor, Raymond VII of Toulouse, and had a daughter, Mary, born in 1198. Raymond treated Joan badly, and she was afraid of him. In 1199, while pregnant with a third child, Joan travelled northwards, hoping for the protection of her brother, Richard the Lionheart, but he had just died. She then fled to her mother, Queen Eleanor, at her court at Rouen, where she was offered refuge and care. She died in childbirth and was buried at Fontevraud Abbey.
When John became King, in 1199, war with France was renewed. By 1206, John had lost Normandy, Anjou, Maine and parts of Poitou. He became increasingly unpopular as taxes rose dramatically to pay for his campaigns and his rule was more and more ruthless. His barons became ever more belligerent until civil war broke out, in May 1215. When the rebels seized London, John was compelled to negotiate and, on 19 June, at Runnymede on the River Thames, he accepted the baronial terms embodied in the Magna Carta, which limited royal power, ensured feudal rights and restated English law. It was the first formal document stating that the monarch was as much under the rule of law as his people, and that the rights of individuals were to be upheld even against the wishes of the sovereign.
Leopold’s share of Richard the Lionheart’s vast ransom, said to be twenty-three tons of silver, is thought to have formed the foundation for the Austrian mint, and was used to build new city walls for Vienna, as well as to found the towns of Wiener Neustadt and Friedberg in Styria. However, the Duke was excommunicated by Pope Celestine III for having taken prisoner a fellow crusader. In 1194, Leopold’s foot was crushed when his horse fell on him at a tournament in Graz and he subsequently died of gangrene. He was buried at Heiligenkreuz Abbey near Vienna.
After the death of King Richard, Mercadier entered the service of John, his successor. On Easter Monday, 10 April 1200, he was assassinated while on a visit to Bordeaux to pay his respects to Eleanor of Aquitaine. His murderer was a man-at-arms employed by Brandin, a rival mercenary captain in the service of King John.
When John became King in 1199, Philip invaded John’s French domains, forcing him to surrender Normandy, Brittany, Anjou, Maine and Touraine. Philip later conquered Poitou. In 1214, at Bouvines, the French defeated the allied forces of King John, the Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV and those of the Count of Flanders. The victory established France as a major European power. Philip continued the construction of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, built the first Louvre, paved the main streets and walled the city. He died on 14 July 1223 and was buried in the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Denis.
Although thought to be King Richard’s illegitimate son, little is known of him. Philip had reached adulthood by the end of the 1190s, when his father married him to his ward, Amelia, the heiress of Cognac in Charente. However, she died without issue. It is thought he died early in the 1200s.
Despite the pardon Pierre Basil received from Richard the Lionheart, a vengeful Mercadier would have none of it. Shortly after the Lionheart’s death, he had the boy dragged into the bailey of Castle Chalus-Chabrol where, in front of a large crowd, he was flayed alive. Mercadier justified his action by saying that although the King might have forgiven him, he had not.
After King Richard’s death, Robert Thornham allied himself to King John. He was appointed Seneschal of Anjou and of Gascony, in 1201. In 1205 he was made High Sheriff of Surrey before returning to France as Seneschal of Poitou. He died on 26 April 1211.
Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub was born in Tikrit, Iraq, a Muslim of Kurdish origins. Despite being Christendom’s most formidable opponent, his achievements, nobility and chivalry won him universal respect among Christians as well as Muslims.
Saladin died of a fever on 4 March 1193 in Damascus, not long after King Richard left the Holy Land. At the time of his death, he possessed one gold piece and a handful of silver. He had given away his immense wealth to the poor. He was buried in a mausoleum in the garden outside the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.
Al-Adil (Saphadin to the crusaders), the younger brother of Saladin, was born in June 1145 in Damascus. Following Saladin’s death, he played the role of kingmaker during the succession dispute between Saladin’s sons and became governor of Damascus. He was later proclaimed Sultan and ruled wisely over both Egypt and Syria for nearly two decades until 1217. He encouraged trade and good relations with the crusader states, but took up arms again on hearing news of the Fifth Crusade, despite being over seventy years old. He fell ill and died while on campaign, in August 1218, and was succeeded by his son Malik al-Kamil.
William Marshal supported King John after Richard’s death and did so to the end of his reign. John created him the First Earl of Pembroke. After John’s death, William became regent for the young King Henry III. Fulfilling a vow he had made while on crusade, he was invested into the order of the Knights Templar on his deathbed. He died on 14 May 1219, at Caversham, and was buried in the Temple Church in London, where his tomb can still be
