According to William Marshal’s Histoire, Richard hated Philip de Dreux, the Bishop of Beauvais, more than any other man, blaming Beauvais for his harsh treatment at Trifels, where he was—in his own words—“loaded down with chains so heavy that a horse would have struggled to move.” In light of that graphic description, my fictional Richard may have been luckier than the real Richard, for I did let Markward spare him the leg shackles.
I’m on the record as stating that Richard I is the historical figure whom I found the most surprising, and new readers have occasionally asked me to elaborate upon this statement. I had not expected to learn that he’d been seriously ill so often, that his marriage appeared to get off to a promising start, that he was as careful with the lives of his soldiers as he was reckless with his own life. But I was utterly astonished to discover that he’d formed friendships with some of Saladin’s emirs and Mamluks, even knighting a few of them, and that his political skills were almost as impressive as his military skills. What he accomplished at Heinrich’s Imperial Diet in Speyer is remarkable, a bravura performance that even his enemies were forced to acknowledge.
I was not surprised, though, to find no evidence to support the popular belief that Richard preferred men to women as bed partners, for by the time I began researching Devil’s Brood I already knew that this claim was founded upon an erroneous understanding of medieval custom and culture. For a supposition that was first raised only in 1948 by J. H. Harvey in The Plantagenets, it gained traction due in some measure perhaps to the success of the wonderful film The Lion in Winter, one of my favorites. I made my own small contribution to the new legend by not researching what was essentially a walk-on role for Richard in Here Be Dragons, and in recent years I’ve been punished for that by having to explain often to puzzled readers why the Richard in Here Be Dragons is not the same man in Devil’s Brood and Lionheart.
I first addressed the question of Richard’s sexuality in the Devil’s Brood Author’s Note. J. H. Harvey decided that Richard was gay because he’d misread a passage in Roger de Hoveden’s Annals (fully quoted in Devil’s Brood), which described a visit Richard paid to the French king’s court in 1187, writing that Philippe held Richard in such high esteem that they ate from the same table and from the same dish and at night shared the same chamber. In our age, we would naturally assume they had a sexual relationship. But in the Middle Ages, it was quite common for people to share beds, even with strangers in inns. More to the point, such ostentatious intimacy was a way to demonstrate royal favor, a means of flaunting political alliances and mending political fences. Edward IV, one of the most heterosexual of English kings, shared a bedchamber with the rebel Earl of Somerset to dramatize their reconciliation. And Roger de Hoveden’s matterof-fact tone clearly shows that he understood Richard and Philippe were deliberately sending Henry a message, which Henry understood all too well, for he at once postponed his plans to return to England, fearing that they were plotting against him.