Coeur de Lion

The Journals of Richard the Lionheart

By Isla Tate

Impossible to read Richard’s fictitious journals about his 12^th century Holy Land warmongering without drawing parallels with the unholy oil wars in the Middle East as we speak.

East versus West for possession of Jerusalem – ground zero of Islam, Christianity and Judaism – is now about access to oil reserves, buttressed by logics equally mediaeval.

Iran, battered, brutal and belligerent, will fight its ideological/religious cause to the last civilian. The US, foolish, confused and denied oil it had untrammelled access to before the Iran conflict, is looking for a way to exit its Epic Balls-up with its dignity intact.

Fair chance it will declare victory if Tehran somehow acquiesces to providing that access once again. Which is probably what you’ll find in future dictionary definitions of vainglorious. Along with Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezeula, Cuba …

Richard the Lionheart, shrewd son of the Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitane, was as French as he was English and spent most of his working life at war with his family spread across two countries. The hatred, betrayal and cruelty attendant to this was oddly and ironically eclipsed, at least partially, by the Saracen Saladin’s regard for him.

No such esteem forthcoming from the East for our contemporary Richard I avatar. His fervour’s nothing on that of the Templars. His attention span’s incapable of anything resembling a siege and his military record is a draft-dodging zip. The bone spurs might have been in his head.

Richard, by contrast, was a veteran battlefield commander deemed the sharpest general in all Europe. History’s written by the victor, of course, or used to be. Nowadays it’s written by the loser, too. Neither are too accurate.

Which is a kind of undercurrent to Tate’s Coeur de Lion journals. Alluring as they are, loaded with chilling violence, gratuitous sex and Machiavellian palace intrigues, they’re also patently bullshit. He didn’t write them, just in case you’re unclear about things.

These journals, like history, politics and journalism, don’t really let the facts get in the way of a good story.

But brother versus brother, versus mother then with mother, for and against dad, not to mention in-laws, with the body count mounting all the while, make for grand coliseum stuff.

There’s nothing like a brutal evisceration or 20, let alone a terrifying flaying that makes getting burnt at the stake look good, to keep you glued to the page.

And yet there is a fair degree of truth in there.

Richard’s wife’s travails are chilling, horrifying and mysterious, their love story tragic. His brother Henry, the young king, is a bombastic, ignorant dolt. His favourite brother is a turncoat while his mother is expert at running with the foxes and hunting with the hounds. His purported ally, Phillip II, King of France, is a duplicitous poltroon of the first order.

All good fodder for lovers of historic faction, naturally. Throw in a sniff of the supernatural, if religion’s not enough, such as the Hashishiyyin, or the Assassins, and their leader, the Old Man of the Mountains, and you have more than enough adventure, politics, religion, sex, violence, exotic and enigma for a best-seller.

Which, of course, is what Coeur de Lion is. And a book about what the current Middle East crusade could possibly become too. I’ve got a working title: Cur de Guerre – The Journals of Jeffrey Epstein.