Musings: Lionheart

Lionheart is Sharon Kay Penman's new novel about Richard I's time on crusade in the Holy Land.  It is, like all her novels, epic in scope, with an impressive amount of detail and a lot of research.  I have not read the two books that come before it in this series- Time and Chance and Devil's Brood- though I read the first in the series on this fascinating Angevin family, When Christ and His Saints Slept.  This book picks up right around Richard's coronation, after which he promptly left (on a somewhat meandering journey) to the Holy Land to pit his own military prowess against that of Salah-al-din in hopes of regaining Jerusalem for Christians.

The Angevins are one of the most interesting families in western history- they have a sordid history of deceit and distrust and ill will, and while I can't imagine that it was at all fun to be living under their rule, it is a lot of fun to read about them.  I should have read this series in the proper order, but I confess that I found When Christ and His Saints Slept to be very long, repetitive and lacking spark, so I wasn't very motivated to read its sequels.  But Richard the Lionheart is one of those giants of history, still very well known today.  And I loved SKP's book about another Richard, Richard III, in The Sunne in Splendour (in fact, it was the first book I ever blogged about!), and I was confident she would do justice to this one.

And she does.  Complex people and matters often dwindle down in history to short, extreme statements that ignore the many nuances that existed at the time.  Richard the Lionheart is often remembered as a battle-hungry man who cared nothing for his kingdom, but just wanted to fight all the time, so he went on crusade.  And while that may very well be true, he was also a brilliant military leader, a savvy ruler and a highly educated man.  Penman does in this novel what she does so well- she portrays Richard as a complex, quick-to-anger, confident man that was fully worthy of being his famed mother's favorite child.  He dominates the story, setting all the other characters in the shade and becoming a fully fleshed-out and engaging hero of the story.  I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about him.

However, when one person so dominates the story, it's hard to feel very engaged with the other characters in the story.  There were several smaller characters that were lost in the shuffle.  For example, Penman begins the book with a chapter told from the point of view of a young girl, Alicia.  But we rarely ever see Alicia after those first couple chapters.  Richard's sister Joanna gets more time on the page, but she seems set up only to play the semi-cardboard role of the unsubmissive woman who voices her mind, as compared to Richard's soft-spoken wife, Berengaria, who is a soft-spoken woman that Richard doesn't seem to spend much time thinking about.

In a way, the only other character that could have shared this book with Richard on equal footing is someone who was equally dominant and historically compelling, Saladin himself.  I would have loved to spend some time in his head, and get a more balanced view of the Third Crusade.  I know that Penman focuses on Medieval British history, so it is too much to ask, but I think that would have made me much more engaged with the story.

As it was, I felt uncomfortable reading this book.  Religious warfare is something I have much trouble swallowing, even when placed in its historical context.  I can't help but shudder when I read one side calling the other "enemies of God" or believing so strongly, fanatically, that they are on the side of right just because they happened to be born in a region that follows one religion as opposed to another.  You can say all you want about historical context, the medieval world being different and dominated by religion, etc., etc., but while I know that in my mind, I am still extremely uncomfortable with the death toll over the centuries that has risen over differences in religious beliefs- this book puts that in very stark reality, and it feels like such a waste, as even a thousand years later, that area of the world is still being bitterly contested over, still in the name of God.

Penman goes into great detail about a lot of battles and even more skirmishes, and as the book weighs in at almost 600 pages, I feel that some of these could have easily been left out.  It became repetitive, hearing how often Richard recklessly risked his life, got hurt or ill, and then worried his wife, sister and followers with the possibility of his death.  And then he'd be up again to win another brilliant victory and the cycle would begin again.  It got tiring to read, so I can't imagine how tiring it must have been for Richard himself, actually living through it!

The book was so focused on describing the dances of maneuvering:  military decisions in trying to retake the holy land, dynastical decisions about who should rule Sicily, Cyprus and Jerusalem, and political decisions on how to fight a holy war when you don't trust anyone on your side.  It is an interesting historical period, but by focusing only on Richard the Lionheart, readers get a fairly one-sided view, and it results in a lot of information-dump-type paragraphs and conversations.  I enjoyed this book for its portrayal of Richard the Lionheart, but it did not have the spark for me that Penman's The Sunne in Splendour or Here Be Dragons did.  I did not leave the book with a deep and abiding respect for Richard I as I did for Richard III, or with a thirst to learn more about the Crusades as I wanted to learn more about Wales.

Note:  This review is based on an advanced reader's copy.  I received this book for free to review.