Richard I’s son and heir, Richard II (r. 996–1026), also used family ties and the church
to bolster his authority. The duke’s brothers and cousins staffed the secular and
ecclesiastical administration through which he governed, and the marriages of his female
relatives secured alliances with neighboring lords. His powerful uncle Count Rodulf
effectively put down a peasant rebellion early in Richard II’s reign. In 1013–14, Richard
II waged a successful campaign against Eudes II of Blois-Chartres, which helped secure
the duchy’s southern border along the River Avre, and he also allegedly supported King
Robert II the Pious against Burgundy. His son Richard III reigned less than a year.
Cassandra Potts
[See also: NORMANDY]
Bates, David. Normandy Before 1066. London: Longman, 1982.
Boüard, Michel de, ed. Histoire de la Normandie. 2nd ed. Toulouse: Privat, 1987.
Douglas, David C. “The Earliest Norman Counts.” English Historical Review 61(1946):129–56.
Searle, Eleanor. Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1988.
RICHARD I THE LIONHEARTED
(1157–1199). King of England (r. 1189–99). Richard I, second son of Henry II of
England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, was installed as duke of Aquitaine in 1172 and played
a nominal role in the rebellion of his brother and mother against his father in 1173–74.
His first independent exercise of political authority came later in the 1170s, when he put
down a number of Aquitanian revolts. From 1182, Richard became involved in wars
between Henry and his sons over plans for the succession to the various parts of the vast
Angevin empire, which included England, Normandy, Anjou, Brittany, and Aquitaine. In
1188, Richard allied with his father’s enemy Philip II Augustus of France, and their
successful opposition to the dying Henry brought Richard all the Angevin holdings on
Henry’s death in 1189.
Richard, like Philip, departed for the Third Crusade in 1190. On the way, at Messina
in 1191, the two made a treaty that redefined the relationship of Richard’s fiefs with the
French crown. Richard’s capture in Germany when returning from crusade in 1192
allowed Philip to attempt the dismemberment of the Angevin possessions, with the
collusion of Richard’s younger brother John. Ransomed in 1194, Richard began a set of
campaigns against Philip that consumed the next five years. Richard pursued two
strategies: conquest of the strategic Vexin from his newly built fortress of Château-
Gaillard and the detachment of the counts of Toulouse and Flanders from alliance with
Philip. Despite the overall success of these policies and two victories over Philip
personally on the battlefield, Richard had not yet regained all of Normandy when he died
in 1199 while putting down a revolt in the Limousin.
Richard was the friend of many troubadours and trouvères and is himself credited with
two French lyrics. The more famous, a rotrouenge composed while he was a prisoner in
Germany, complains of Philip’s perfidy and the inconstancy of his own friends; the
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