ABSTRACT

 This ground-breaking and substantive new history 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.  Modern revisionist work allows the authors to correct many misconceptions about Richard's French possessions, and recent scholarship on his rival, Philip Augustus, permits examination of the formidable threat that the resurgent Capetian monarchy represented.

chapter Chapter One|16 pages

The historians’ balance-sheet

chapter Chapter Two|24 pages

The character of the Angevin ‘empire’

chapter Chapter Four|15 pages

Richard’s apprenticeship: count of Poitou 1172–89

chapter Chapter Nine|18 pages

The duchy of Normandy

chapter Chapter Ten|19 pages

Greater Anjou

chapter Chapter Eleven|25 pages

The duchy of Aquitaine

chapter Chapter Twelve|16 pages

Richard’s warfare following the crusade, 1193–99

chapter Chapter Thirteen|14 pages

Richard in retrospect