Richard was the son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine (see entry), both of whom were French by birth, and throughout his lifetime he remained more emotionally attached to France than to England. Not only did he hold the title "duke of Aquitaine" (Aquitaine was a region in France), but his first language was French, and some historians maintain that he despised his adopted country, England—the country he hoped one day to rule.
Richard was one of four brothers, all of whom fought constantly with one another; thus when his younger brother John (see box in Eleanor of Aquitaine entry) later seized the throne in Richard's absence, he was only carrying on a family tradition. Richard's fortunes were helped by the death of his two older brothers, Henry and Geoffrey, and this left him with only one other significant male rival: his father.
In his early twenties, Richard allied himself with a contemporary, Philip II Augustus of France (ruled 1179-1223) against Henry. By the time he was thirty-two, in 1189, Richard had his father on the run, and chased him across France. Forcing his father to surrender, he demanded that the latter declare him his rightful heir, and when Henry died a few weeks later, Richard mourned little. (It should be noted that Henry was no saint: in 1170, he had ordered the murder of Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury [see English Scholars, Thinkers, and Writers entry], and had treated Eleanor so badly that she became his sworn enemy.)
World History
