Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is a 1991 American romantic action adventure film, based on the English folk tale of Robin Hood which originated in the 15th century. The film is directed by Kevin Reynolds, stars Kevin Costner as Robin Hood, Morgan Freeman as Azeem, Christian Slater as Will Scarlett, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Marian, Alan Rickman as the Sheriff of Nottingham; the screenplay was penned by John Watson. The film received mixed reviews from critics who praised Freeman and Rickman's performances as well as the music but criticized the screenplay, overall execution and Costner's performance. Despite that it was a box office success, grossing over $390 million worldwide, ranking as the second-highest-grossing film of 1991 worldwide. For his role as George, Sheriff of Nottingham, Rickman received the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role; the film's theme song, " I Do It for You", by Bryan Adams, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song and won the Grammy Award for Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television.
Costner's performance as Robin Hood garnered poor reviews and won him the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor. During the Third Crusade, Richard the Lionheart, King of England is away in France, leaving the cruel Sheriff of Nottingham - aided by his cousin Guy of Gisbourne, the witch Mortianna, the corrupt Bishop of Hereford - to rule the land. Robin of Locksley, a nobleman, chose to follow the king in his Crusade. At Locksley Castle, Robin's father, loyal to King Richard, is attacked by the Sheriff's men after refusing to join them. Robin, has been imprisoned in Jerusalem along with his comrade, Peter Dubois, they break free from Ayyubid prison guards and save the life of a Moor named Azeem, but Peter is mortally wounded in the process. After making Robin swear to protect his sister, Peter sacrifices himself so Robin can escape the city. Robin returns to England with Azeem, who has vowed to accompany him until his life-debt to Robin is repaid. After a run-in with Gisbourne, Robin returns home, finding the castle in ruins.
Robin tells Marian of Peter's demise and, after fleeing the Sheriff's forces, encounters a band of outlaws hiding in Sherwood Forest, led by Little John. Among the band is Will Scarlett, who holds a belligerent grudge against Robin. Robin assumes command of the group, training them into a formidable force in opposition of Nottingham, they rob any convoys that distribute the stolen wealth among the poor. Friar Tuck, once a member of a convoy, joins the group after coming to understand Robin's cause. Marian offers Robin any aid she can muster. Robin's successes infuriate the Sheriff, who increases the mistreatment of the people, resulting in greater local support for Robin Hood; the Sheriff kills Gisbourne for his failure to prevent the looting of several convoys and hires Celtic warriors to bolster his forces. The Bishop betrays Marian after she confides in him an attempt to contact King Richard in France and she is taken prisoner. After locating the outlaws' hideout, the Sheriff launches an attack, destroying the refuge and capturing many.
To consolidate his power and claim the throne, the Sheriff proposes to Marian. Several of the rebels are due to be executed by hanging as part of the wedding celebration. Among the captured is Will. Will finds a handful of other survivors. After informing Robin of the executions and the Sheriff's plans to wed Marian, Will continues lashing out at Robin. Questioning Will as to why he holds so much hate, Will reveals that he is Robin's younger half-brother. Robin's anger over what he saw as a betrayal of his mother's memory caused his father to leave her, thereby leaving Will fatherless. Robin is overjoyed to learn. On the day of the wedding and hangings and his men infiltrate Nottingham Castle and free the prisoners. After Azeem inspires the peasants to revolt, the Sheriff retreats with Marian into a chapel to be married. Mortianna attacks him. Tuck finds the Bishop attempting to flee with bundles of gold. Robin and Marian profess their love for each other and are married in the forest, though they are interrupted by the return of King Richard, who blesses the marriage and thanks Robin for his deeds.
Rickman turned down the role of the sheriff twice before he was told he could have carte blanche with his interpretation of the character. Principal exteriors were shot on location in the United Kingdom. A second unit filmed the medieval walls and towers of the Cité de Carcassonne in the town of Carcassonne in Aude, for the portrayal of Nottingham and its castle. Locksley Castle was Wardour Castle in Wiltshire – restored in an early shot using a matte painting. Marian's manor was filmed at Hulne Priory in Northumberland. Scenes set in Sherwood Forest were filmed at various locations in England: Burnham Beeches in Buckinghamshire was used for the outlaws' encampment, Aysgarth Falls in Yorkshire for the fight scene between Robin and Little John, Hardraw Force in North Yorkshire was the location where Marian sees Robin bathing. Sycamore Gap on Hadrian's Wall was used for the sc
Deer
Deer are the hoofed ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups of deer are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the elk, the fallow deer, the chital. Female reindeer, male deer of all species except the Chinese water deer and shed new antlers each year. In this they differ from permanently horned antelope, which are part of a different family within the same order of even-toed ungulates; the musk deer of Asia and chevrotains of tropical African and Asian forests are separate families within the ruminant clade. They are no more related to deer than are other even-toed ungulates. Deer appear in art from Paleolithic cave paintings onwards, they have played a role in mythology and literature throughout history, as well as in heraldry, their economic importance includes the use of their meat as venison, their skins as soft, strong buckskin, their antlers as handles for knives. Deer hunting has been a popular activity since at least the Middle Ages and remains a resource for many families today.
Deer live in a variety of biomes. While associated with forests, many deer are ecotone species that live in transitional areas between forests and thickets and prairie and savanna; the majority of large deer species inhabit temperate mixed deciduous forest, mountain mixed coniferous forest, tropical seasonal/dry forest, savanna habitats around the world. Clearing open areas within forests to some extent may benefit deer populations by exposing the understory and allowing the types of grasses and herbs to grow that deer like to eat. Additionally, access to adjacent croplands may benefit deer. However, adequate forest or brush cover must still be provided for populations to thrive. Deer are distributed, with indigenous representatives in all continents except Antarctica and Australia, though Africa has only one native deer, the Barbary stag, a subspecies of red deer, confined to the Atlas Mountains in the northwest of the continent. However, fallow deer have been introduced to South Africa. Small species of brocket deer and pudús of Central and South America, muntjacs of Asia occupy dense forests and are less seen in open spaces, with the possible exception of the Indian muntjac.
There are several species of deer that are specialized, live exclusively in mountains, swamps, "wet" savannas, or riparian corridors surrounded by deserts. Some deer have a circumpolar distribution in Eurasia. Examples include the caribou that live in Arctic tundra and taiga and moose that inhabit taiga and adjacent areas. Huemul deer of South America's Andes fill the ecological niches of the ibex and wild goat, with the fawns behaving more like goat kids; the highest concentration of large deer species in temperate North America lies in the Canadian Rocky Mountain and Columbia Mountain regions between Alberta and British Columbia where all five North American deer species can be found. This region has several clusters of national parks including Mount Revelstoke National Park, Glacier National Park, Yoho National Park, Kootenay National Park on the British Columbia side, Banff National Park, Jasper National Park, Glacier National Park on the Alberta and Montana sides. Mountain slope habitats vary from moist coniferous/mixed forested habitats to dry subalpine/pine forests with alpine meadows higher up.
The foothills and river valleys between the mountain ranges provide a mosaic of cropland and deciduous parklands. The rare woodland caribou have the most restricted range living at higher altitudes in the subalpine meadows and alpine tundra areas of some of the mountain ranges. Elk and mule deer both migrate between the alpine meadows and lower coniferous forests and tend to be most common in this region. Elk inhabit river valley bottomlands, which they share with White-tailed deer; the White-tailed deer have expanded their range within the foothills and river valley bottoms of the Canadian Rockies owing to conversion of land to cropland and the clearing of coniferous forests allowing more deciduous vegetation to grow up the mountain slopes. They live in the aspen parklands north of Calgary and Edmonton, where they share habitat with the moose; the adjacent Great Plains grassland habitats are left to herds of elk, American bison, pronghorn antelope. The Eurasian Continent boasts the most species of deer in the world, with most species being found in Asia.
Europe, in comparison, has lower diversity in animal species. However, many national parks and protected reserves in Europe do have populations of red deer, roe deer, fallow deer; these species have long been associated with the continent of Europe, but inhabit Asia Minor, the Caucasus Mountains, Northwestern Iran. "European" fallow deer lived over much of Europe during the Ice Ages, but afterwards became restricted to the Anatolian Peninsula, in present-day Turkey. Present-day fallow deer populations in Europe are a result of historic man-made introductions of this species, first to the Mediterranean regions of Europe eventually to the rest of Europe, they were park animals that escaped and reestablished themselves in the wild. Europe's deer species shared their deciduous forest habitat with other herbivores, such as the extinct tarpan, extinct aurochs (fo
Alan Wheatley
Alan Wheatley was an English actor and former radio announcer. He is best known for playing the Sheriff of Nottingham in the 1950s TV series The Adventures of Robin Hood, with Richard Greene playing Robin Hood. In 1951, Wheatley had played Sherlock Holmes in the first TV series about the fictional detective, but no recordings of it are known to exist. Born in Tolworth, the son of William Henry Wheatley, a bank clerk, his wife Rose, Alan Wheatley was an industrial psychologist, he worked as a radio announcer before turning to stage and screen acting in the 1930s, as a player during the black-and-white era of film and television. Wheatley made his film debut in Conquest of the Air. During the Second World War, he worked as both an actor and an announcer. Wheatley starred as Sherlock Holmes in the 1951 BBC TV series, the first such series though not the Holmes character's first appearance on television; the programme aired live for six episodes, no recordings were made. In the Robin Hood series, Wheatley appeared as the Sheriff in the first three seasons.
He had roles in Danger Man and The Avengers. Wheatley played the first character to be killed on-screen by a Dalek in Doctor Who, when he appeared as Thal leader Temmosus in the 1963–64 serial The Daleks, his film credits include: Caesar and Cleopatra, The Rake's Progress, Brighton Rock, Calling Paul Temple, The Pickwick Papers, Spaceways and Laura, A Jolly Bad Fellow and Tomorrow at Ten among others. He appeared in Inn for Trouble, a film spin-off of the TV comedy The Larkins. Wheatley was a prolific stage actor, his theatre credits included Clifford Bax's The House of Borgia, the lead in This Way to the Tomb, the tormented soul, Harry, in The Family Reunion. He appeared in two versions of the thriller play Rope, in 1950 and 1953, starred as Abanazar in the Cole Porter musical pantomime Aladdin' at the London Coliseum in 1960, he played the Abbé in a BBC radio adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo, with Andrew Sachs in 1987, the High Lama in the 1981 BBC Radio 4 "Classic Serial" version of Lost Horizon, with Derek Jacobi as Hugh Conway.
Wheatley died in Westminster, London in 1991. Alan Wheatley on IMDb
Roger Rees
Roger Rees was a Welsh actor and director known for his stage work. He won an Olivier Award and a Tony Award for his performance as the lead in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, he received Obie Awards for his role in The End of the Day and as co-director of Peter and the Starcatcher. Rees was posthumously inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in November 2015, he was known to American television audiences for playing the characters Robin Colcord in Cheers and Lord John Marbury in The West Wing. Rees was born in Aberystwyth, Wales, the son of Doris Louise, a shop clerk, William John Rees, a police officer, he studied art at the Camberwell College of Arts and the Slade School of Fine Art, turning to acting when he was painting backdrops at the Wimbledon Theatre and was asked to fill a part in a play. Rees started his career with the Royal Shakespeare Company, he played Malcolm in the acclaimed Trevor Nunn 1976 stage and 1978 television production of Macbeth. Rees created the title role in the original production of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, David Edgar's stage adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel, winning a Laurence Olivier Award for Actor of the Year in a New Play in 1980 and a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1982.
A recorded version of the play earned him an Emmy nomination in 1983. He starred in the original production of The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard at the Strand Theatre in London in 1982. Rees began to work in television during the 1970s, appearing opposite Laurence Olivier in The Ebony Tower; that same year, Rees portrayed Fred Hollywell in A Christmas Carol starring George C. Scott as Scrooge. From 1988 to 1991 he starred in the late 80s/early 90s British sitcom Singles, with co-star Judy Loe. From 1989 to 1991 and in 1993, he appeared intermittently on the long-running American television series Cheers as the English tycoon Robin Colcord, his television appearances include My So-Called Life as substitute teacher Mr. Racine, British Ambassador Lord John Marbury on The West Wing and James MacPherson on Warehouse 13, his film career began in the 1980s. Rees played the Sheriff of Rottingham in Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Rees' film appearances include Frida, The Prestige and The Pink Panther. Continuing his work in the theatre through the 1990s, both as an actor and a director, Rees was awarded an Obie Award for his 1992 performance in the Off-Broadway play The End of the Day.
In 1995 he was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his role in Indiscretions. He recorded many audiobooks, including Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice. From November 2004 to October 2007, Rees was artistic director of the Williamstown Theatre Festival, only the fourth person to hold the post in its half-century history, he replaced Nathan Lane in the role of Gomez Addams in the Broadway musical adaptation of The Addams Family, on 22 March 2011 and remained until the end of the run on 31 December 2011. In 2012, Rees took his one-man Shakespeare show, What You Will, to London's West End, playing a three-week engagement at the Apollo Theatre. In 2013, Rees directed Crispin Whitell's play, The Primrose Path, at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. In 2014, Rees directed Dog and Pony, a musical written by Rick Elice and Michael Patrick Walker, which had its world premiere at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, his last role was as Anton Schell in the musical version of The Visit, opposite Chita Rivera, which opened on Broadway on 23 April 2015 and closed on 14 June 2015.
Rees left the production in May 2015 due to his illness. Rees was to have directed a new musical written by Elice and Will Van Dyke, Magnificent Climb, in the fall of 2016 at MCC Theater in New York, he was scheduled to perform his one-man Shakespeare show, What You Will in New York in the autumn of 2015, had hoped to return to the Royal Shakespeare Company for a stint in Don Quixote in 2016. He was inducted into the exclusive entertainment fraternity, the Grand Order of Water Rats, as a full member. Rees had lived in the United States for more than 25 years. S. citizen in 1989. He converted to Judaism in the 1980s. Rees married his partner of 33 years, playwright Rick Elice, in 2011. Rees and Elice collaborated professionally, including as co-playwrights of the comedic thriller Double Double. Elice co-wrote the libretto for The Addams Family musical, the cast of which Rees had joined on 22 March 2011. In 2012, Elice and Rees received Tony Award nominations for Elice's stage adaptation and Rees' co-direction of Peter and the Starcatcher.
In October 2017, Elice wrote a memoir of his life with Rees, entitled Finding Roger: An Improbably Theatrical Love Story. After a diagnosis of brain cancer in October 2014, Rees focused his energy on his commitment to playing opposite Chita Rivera on Broadway in The Visit, the final musical written by John Kander and Fred Ebb. While undergoing two brain surgeries, two courses of radiation and ongoing chemotherapy, Rees managed to rehearse and open in The Visit on 23 April 2015. By the middle of May, it had become too difficult for him to speak, he left the show. Rees died at age 71 at his home in New York on 10 July 2015. On Wednesday, 15 July 2015, the marquee lights at all the theatres on Broadway were dimmed in his honour, his ashes were sprinkled into the Atlantic Ocean. Two months there was a memorial service for him at Broadway's New Amsterdam Theatre. Roger Rees at the Internet Broadway Database Roger Rees on IMDb Roger Rees at the Internet Off-Broadway Database Article on appointment to Williamstown Theater Festival Roger Rees at Find a Grave
Nottingham
Nottingham is a city and unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, England, 128 miles north of London, 45 miles northeast of Birmingham and 56 miles southeast of Manchester, in the East Midlands. Nottingham has links to the legend of Robin Hood and to the lace-making and tobacco industries, it was granted its city charter in 1897 as part of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Nottingham is a tourist destination. In 2017, Nottingham had an estimated population of 329,200; the population of the city proper, compared to its regional counterparts, has been attributed to its historical and tightly-drawn city boundaries. The wider conurbation, which includes many of the city's suburbs, has a population of 768,638, it is the second-largest in The Midlands. Its Functional Urban Area the largest in the East Midlands, has a population of 912,482; the population of the Nottingham/Derby metropolitan area is estimated to be 1,610,000. Its metropolitan economy is the seventh largest in the United Kingdom with a GDP of $50.9bn.
The city was the first in the East Midlands to be ranked as a sufficiency-level world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Nottingham has an award-winning public transport system, including the largest publicly owned bus network in England and is served by Nottingham railway station and the modern Nottingham Express Transit tram system, it is a major sporting centre, in October 2015 was named'Home of English Sport'. The National Ice Centre, Holme Pierrepont National Watersports Centre, Trent Bridge international cricket ground are all based in or around the city, the home of two professional league football teams; the city has professional rugby, ice hockey and cricket teams, the Aegon Nottingham Open, an international tennis tournament on the ATP and WTA tours. This accolade came just over a year. On 11 December 2015, Nottingham was named a "City of Literature" by UNESCO, joining Dublin, Edinburgh and Prague as one of only a handful in the world; the title reflects Nottingham's literary heritage, with Lord Byron, D. H. Lawrence and Alan Sillitoe having links to the city, as well as a contemporary literary community, a publishing industry and a poetry scene.
The city has two universities—Nottingham Trent University and the University of Nottingham—both of which are spread over several campuses in the city, with a total university student population of over 61,000. The city predates Anglo-Saxon times and was known in Brythonic as Tigguo Cobauc, meaning Place of Caves. In modern Welsh it is known poetically as Y Ty Ogofog and Irish as Na Tithe Uaimh "The Cavey Dwelling"; when it fell under the rule of a Saxon chieftain named Snot it became known as "Snotingaham". Some authors derive "Nottingham" from Snottenga and ham, but "this has nothing to do with the English form". Nottingham Castle was constructed in 1068 on a sandstone outcrop by the River Leen; the Anglo-Saxon settlement was confined to the area today known as the Lace Market and was surrounded by a substantial defensive ditch and rampart, which fell out of use following the Norman Conquest and was filled by the time of the Domesday Survey. Following the Norman Conquest the Saxon settlement developed into the English Borough of Nottingham and housed a Town Hall and Law Courts.
A settlement developed around the castle on the hill opposite and was the French borough supporting the Normans in the castle. The space between was built on as the town grew and the Old Market Square became the focus of Nottingham several centuries later. Defences, consisted of a ditch and bank in the early 12th century; the ditch was widened, in the mid-13th century, a stone wall built around much of the perimeter of the town. A short length of the wall survives, is visible at the northern end of Maid Marian Way, is protected as a Scheduled Monument. On the return of Richard the Lionheart from the Crusades, the castle was occupied by supporters of Prince John, including the Sheriff of Nottingham, it was besieged by Richard and, after a sharp conflict, was captured. In the legends of Robin Hood, Nottingham Castle is the scene of the final showdown between the Sheriff and the hero outlaw. By the 15th century Nottingham had established itself as a centre of a thriving export trade in religious sculpture made from Nottingham alabaster.
The town became a county corporate in 1449 giving it effective self-government, in the words of the charter, "for eternity". The Castle and Shire Hall were expressly excluded and remained as detached Parishes of Nottinghamshire. One of those impressed by Nottingham in the late 18th century was the German traveller C. P. Moritz, who wrote in 1782, "Of all the towns I have seen outside London, Nottingham is the loveliest and neatest. Everything had a modern look, a large space in the centre was hardly less handsome than a London square. A charming footpath leads over the fields to the highway. … Nottingham … with its high houses, red roofs and church steeples, looks excellent from a distance."During the Industrial Revolution, much of Nottingham's prosperity was founded on the textile industry.
Poaching
Poaching has been defined as the illegal hunting or capturing of wild animals associated with land use rights. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, poaching was performed by impoverished peasants for subsistence purposes and a supplement for meager diets. Poaching was as well set against the hunting privileges of territorial rulers. By contrast, stealing domestic animals classifies as theft, not as poaching. Since the 1980s, the term "poaching" has referred to the illegal harvesting of wild plant species. In agricultural terms, the term'poaching' is applied to the loss of soils or grass by the damaging action of feet of livestock which can affect availability of productive land, water pollution through increased runoff and welfare issues for cattle. Austria and Germany refer to poaching not as intrusion in third party hunting rights. While Germanic law allowed any free man including peasants to hunt on the commons, Roman law restricted hunting to the rulers. In Medieval Europe feudal territory rulers from the king downward tried to enforce exclusive rights of the nobility to hunt and fish on the lands they ruled.
Poaching was deemed a serious crime punishable by imprisonment, but the enforcement was comparably weak until the 16th century. Peasants were still able to continue small game hunting, but the right of the nobility to hunt was restricted in the 16th century and transferred to land ownership; the development of modern hunting rights is connected to the comparably modern idea of exclusive private property of land. In the 17th and 18th centuries the restrictions on hunting and shooting rights on private property were being enforced by gamekeepers and foresters, they denied shared usages of forests, e.g. resin collection and wood pasture and the peasant's right to hunt and fish. However, comparably easy access to rifles allowed peasants and servants to poach by end of the 18th century; the low quality of guns made it necessary to approach to the game as close as 30 m. For example, poachers in the Salzburg region were men around 30 years of age, not yet married and alone on their illegal trade. Hunting was used in the 18th century as a theatrical demonstration of aristocratic rule of the land and had a strong impact on land use patterns as well.
Poaching in so far interfered not only with property rights but clashed symbolically with the power of the nobility. During the years between 1830 and 1848 poaching and poaching related deaths increased in Bavaria; the revolution of 1848 was interpreted as a general allowance for poaching in Bavaria. The reform of hunting law in 1849 reduced legal hunting to rich land owners and the bourgeoisie able to pay the hunting fees and led to disappointment and ongoing praise of poachers among the people; some of the frontier region, where smuggling was important, showed strong resistance. In 1849, the Bavarian military forces were asked to occupy a number of municipalities on the frontier to Austria. Both, in Wallgau and in Lackenhäuser, each household had to feed and accommodate one soldier for a month as part of a military mission to quell the uproar; the people of Lackenhäuser had had several skirmishes about poached deer with Austrian foresters and military, were known as well armed pertly poachers.
Poaching, like smuggling, has a long counter-cultural history. The verb poach is derived from the Middle English word pocchen meaning bagged, enclosed in a bag. Poaching was dispassionately reported for England in "Pleas of the Forest", transgressions of the rigid Anglo-Norman Forest Law. William the Conqueror, a great lover of hunting and enforced a system of forest law; this operated outside the common law, served to protect game animals and their forest habitat from hunting by the common people of England and reserved hunting rights for the new French-speaking Anglo-Norman aristocracy. Henceforth hunting of game in royal forests by commoners or in other words poaching, was invariably punishable by death by hanging. In 1087, a poem called "The Rime of King William" contained in the Peterborough Chronicle, expressed English indignation at the severe new laws. Poaching was romanticised in literature from the time of the ballads of Robin Hood, as an aspect of the "greenwood" of Merry England; the widespread acceptance of this common criminal activity is encapsulated in the observation Non est inquirendum, unde venit venison, made by Guillaume Budé in his Traitte de la vénerie.
However, the English nobility and land owners were in the long term successful in enforcing the modern concept of property, expressed e.g. in the enclosures of common land and in the Highland Clearances, which were both forced displacement of people from traditional land tenancies and erstwhile common land. The 19th century saw the rise of acts of legislation, such as the Night Poaching Act 1828 and Game Act 1831 in the United Kingdom, various laws elsewhere. In North America, the blatant defiance of the laws by poachers escalated to armed conflicts with law authorities, including the Oyster Wars of the Chesapeake Bay, the joint US-British Bering Sea Anti-Poaching Operations of 1891 over the hunting of seals. Violations of hunting laws and regulations concerning wildlife management, local or international wildlife conservation schemes constitute wildlife crimes that are punishable; the following violations
Richard I of England
Richard I was King of England from 1189 until his death. He ruled as Duke of Normandy and Gascony, Lord of Cyprus, Count of Poitiers, Anjou and Nantes, was overlord of Brittany at various times during the same period, he was the third of five sons of Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine. He was known as Richard Cœur de Lion or Richard the Lionheart because of his reputation as a great military leader and warrior, he was known in Occitan as: Oc e No, because of his reputation for terseness. By the age of 16, Richard had taken command of his own army, putting down rebellions in Poitou against his father. Richard was a central Christian commander during the Third Crusade, leading the campaign after the departure of Philip II of France and achieving considerable victories against his Muslim counterpart, although he did not retake Jerusalem from Saladin. Richard spoke both Occitan, he was born in England. Following his accession, he spent little time as little as six months, in England. Most of his life as king was spent on Crusade, in captivity, or defending his lands in France.
Rather than regarding his kingdom as a responsibility requiring his presence as ruler, he has been perceived as preferring to use it as a source of revenue to support his armies. He was seen as a pious hero by his subjects, he remains one of the few kings of England remembered by his epithet, rather than regnal number, is an enduring iconic figure both in England and in France. Richard was born on 8 September 1157 at Beaumont Palace, in Oxford, son of King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, he was a younger brother of Count William IX of Poitiers, Henry the Young King and Duchess Matilda of Saxony. As the third legitimate son of King Henry II, he was not expected to ascend to the throne, he was an elder brother of Duke Geoffrey II of Brittany. Richard was the younger maternal half-brother of Countess Marie of Champagne and Countess Alix of Blois; the eldest son of Henry II and Eleanor, died in 1156, before Richard's birth. Richard is depicted as having been the favourite son of his mother, his father was great-grandson of William the Conqueror.
Contemporary historian Ralph of Diceto traced his family's lineage through Matilda of Scotland to the Anglo-Saxon kings of England and Alfred the Great, from there legend linked them to Noah and Woden. According to Angevin family tradition, there was even'infernal blood' in their ancestry, with a claimed descent from the fairy, or female demon, Melusine. While his father visited his lands from Scotland to France, Richard spent his childhood in England, his first recorded visit to the European continent was in May 1165, when his mother took him to Normandy. His wet nurse was Hodierna of St Albans. Little is known about Richard's education. Although he was born in Oxford and brought up in England up to his eighth year, it is not known to what extent he used or understood English. 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, a Norman. One of the specific charges laid against Longchamp, by John's supporter Hugh, Bishop of Coventry, was that he could not speak English.
This indicates that by the late 12th century a knowledge of English was expected of those in positions of authority in England. Richard was said to be attractive. According to Clifford Brewer, he was 6 feet 5 inches, though, unverifiable since his remains have been lost since at least the French Revolution. John, his youngest brother, was known to be 5 feet 5 inches; the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, a Latin prose narrative of the Third Crusade, states that: "He was tall, of elegant build. He had long arms suited to wielding a sword, his long legs matched the rest of his body". From an early age, Richard showed significant political and military ability, becoming noted for his chivalry and courage as he fought to control the rebellious nobles of his own territory, his elder brother Henry the Young King was crowned king of England during his father's lifetime. Marriage alliances were common among medieval royalty: they led to political alliances and peace treaties and allowed families to stake claims of succession on each other's lands.
In March 1159 it was arranged that Richard would marry one of the daughters of Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona. Henry the Young King was married to Margaret, daughter of Louis VII of France, on 2 November 1160. Despite this alliance between the Plantagenets and the Capetians, the dynasty on the French throne, the two houses were sometimes in conflict. In 1168, the intercession of Pope Alexander III was necessary to secure a truce between them. Henry II had conquered Brittany and taken control of Gisors and the Vexin, part of Margaret's dowry. Early in the 1160s there had been suggestions Richard should marry Alys, Countess of the Vexin, fourth daughter of Louis VII
