Review: "Lionheart," Sharon Kay Penman

By Paul Carrier

He was known in French as Coeur de Lion, in English as Lionheart: Richard I, who ruled England from 1189 until his death a decade later. Arguably one of the most famous kings in England’s history, Richard was the larger-than-life son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. His bravery and daring earned him the sobriquet of Lionheart, even before his central role in the Third Crusade, which sought to reclaim the Holy Land from Muslim forces.

It is that period in Richard’s life that prolific historical novelist Sharon Kay Penman chronicles in Lionheart, the fourth of five novels in her Plantagenet series. The series opened with When Christ and His Saints Slept, followed by Time and Chance and Devil’s Brood. The last two books — Lionheart and A King's Ransom — deal with Richard’s relatively brief but tumultuous reign.

Penman has been recognized for her exhaustive research and attention to detail. Her novels, including the freestanding The Sunne in Splendour, the Welsh Princes Trilogy and the Justin de Quincy Mysteries, focus on the nobility of medieval Europe, particularly England, France and Wales.

The Richard of Lionheart is charismatic, bold and personally reckless, but open-minded enough to respect and even admire his Muslim adversaries, whom he sees as enemies but not evildoers. He is a brash and magnetic character, one who is sure to leave a lasting impression on readers from the moment he first appears in the novel, riding into a castle’s bailey.

Richard led a short life (1157-1199), but it was more than eventful, and Lionheart introduces several of the more memorable figures he encountered along the way, including Saladin, the renowned sultan and military leader of the 12th-century Muslim world.

Yet despite Richard’s reputation as a valiant warrior, Lionheart is not all swordplay and derring-do. In fact, it is less focused on graphic battle scenes than on a character-driven plotline. The setting does not shift to Outremer, as the Holy Land was called, until about midway through this lengthy novel (574 pages in hardcover).

Nor are we entering an exclusively male domain. Eleanor of Aquitaine, who outlived Richard, is the most famous woman in the Christian world during this period, and a political force in her own right. Penman pays close attention to Richard’s sister Joanna, widow of the late king of Sicily, and Richard’s wife Berengaria, daughter of the king of Navarre, both of whom traveled with him to the Holy Land.

That makes for a well-rounded profile, focusing not only on Richard’s exploits but also on the domestic, personal aspects of his life. My one regret is that the reader never actually “meets” Saladin, who plays a major role but always remains offstage.

Thanks to Saladin's prowess, the health of the so-called Kingdom of Jerusalem, a crusader state established in 1099, is indeed dire by the time of the Third Crusade (1189-1192). Most of the Christian kingdom, including Jerusalem, has fallen to Saladin, and the crusaders are far from unified, despite their shared opposition to the famed Muslim leader.

Richard is perennially at odds with his nemesis and ostensible ally, King Philippe II of France, who also participated in the Third Crusade. Rivalries plague the crusaders, who cannot agree on strategy or even on who should rule what’s left of the Christian kingdom. Saladin, who was of Kurdish origin, is fortunate to have such mutually distrustful forces arrayed against him and his fellow Saracens, the European term for the Muslims of Outremer.

Even the ultimate goal of the Third Crusade comes into dispute among the quarrelsome crusaders. While some are determined to capture Jerusalem or die trying, Richard comes to believe that the city cannot be taken, and that only a negotiated peace with Saladin will allow Christian pilgrims to gain access to the city.

In the end, Penman’s Richard is a sympathetic character, despite the fact that the author began her research for this series with a critical view of him as “one-dimensional, drunk on blood and glory, arrogant, ruthless, a brilliant battle commander but an ungrateful son and a careless king,” as she writes in an author’s note.

Penman later concluded that Richard was neither a bad son nor a bad king, although he was not a faithful or devoted husband, at least later in his marriage. He cared for the safety of his men, was highly intelligent, valued diplomacy, and became a legendary military commander despite frequent bouts of illness. Most surprisingly, Penman writes, he was no religious bigot, developing "cordial relations with the Saracens" and getting along with them better than he did with his French allies, even in the midst of a "holy war."

Review: "Here Be Dragons," Sharon Kay Penman

By Paul Carrier

When it comes to historical fiction set in England, the 12th and 13th centuries offer a wealth of characters, real and folkloric: Richard the Lionheart; his brother and successor as king, John; their parents, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine; and, of course, Robin Hood.

But what about Llewelyn the Great? Never heard of him? Neither had I until I read Sharon Key Penman’s Here Be Dragons, which centers on the (quite real) marriage of Prince Llewelyn of Wales and Joanna, the illegitimate daughter of England’s King John.

Born about 1172, Llewelyn eventually ruled most of Wales, which he dominated for some 40 years. As he and John vie for control of that country, the conflict leaves Joanna torn between the two men she loves.

The novel’s title notwithstanding, this is no fantasy. There are no dragons in Penman’s carefully researched and well-told tale (although the red dragon is a Welsh symbol) nor does Robin Hood make an appearance. But the novel teems with nuanced characters who spring from the pages of history, as well as action aplenty: an imprisoned queen, sibling rivalry, infidelity, a battle for the English crown, hints of incest, blind ambition, a clash of cultures. And, of course, the fate of Wales, which hangs in the balance.

We meet Henry II as his life ebbs away, but Eleanor of Aquitaine survives him. She emerges here as a brilliant, cynical and manipulative woman who favors her warrior son Richard (of Lionheart fame) over his scheming brother John. Richard inherits the crown, but John ascends to the throne after Richard is wounded in battle and dies.

Llewelyn is ambitious, good-natured and nationalistic, a skilled fighter in his own right. Following her marriage to him, Joanna blossoms from a confused and frightened orphan into a thoughtful and intelligent wife, mother and diplomat. But it is John who proves to be one of the most intriguing characters in Here Be Dragons, because he is far more complex than the one-dimensional villain who figures so prominently in Hollywood’s periodic forays into Sherwood Forest.

Initially overshadowed by the charismatic and battle-hardened Richard, John is a brooding, insecure and resentful plotter obsessed with obtaining the crown for himself. Yet he dotes on his children, whether legitimate or not, and displays more depth and administrative ability than Richard did while he was king. John is determined to subjugate Wales, while Llewelyn gambles that disgruntled English barons will rise up against their king if squabbling Welsh princes put up a united front.

Penman’s familiarity with setting and period is apparent. When the young Joanna finds herself at a banquet, for example, we get a detailed look at the menu: “roasted venison, lampreys in sauce, a rissole of beef marrow, pea soup, glazed wafers, pancake crisps, and a sweet spiced wine (John) called hippocras.” The novel's cast includes intriguing historical figures with whom we are unfamiliar, such as Nicholaa de la Haye, the female caretaker of Lincoln castle who retained that office even in times of war.

The author respects the intelligence of her readers; it doesn’t hurt to have a dictionary handy while tackling this novel, which spans some 50 years. Cambridge is referred to as Cantebrigge, for example, and the 700 pages of Here Be Dragons are peppered with arcane but appropriate terms, such as bar sinister (illegitimacy) and seneschal (a steward in charge of a lord’s estates). Penman reminds us that England’s nobility during this period, being of Norman ancestry, speak French, not English. Yet to the Welsh, any distinction between the Norman conquerors of England and their Saxon subjects is irrelevant.

Occasionally, Here Be Dragons reads like a romance, with pillow talk and marital squabbles tumbling across page after page. And the Welsh names, in addition to being difficult to pronounce, are hard to sort out; for the uninitiated there is a certain sameness to them. An introductory listing of who's who would have been helpful.

But the sweep and believability of Penman’s tale, coupled with the elegance of her prose, carry the day. When Llewelyn suffers a setback and finds himself forced to submit (temporarily) to John and his barons, for example, Llewelyn “could count his enemies like rosary beads” and saw that they “watched him with mocking eyes and smiles like unsheathed daggers.”