The Reign of Richard Lionheart: Ruler of the Angevin Empire, 1189-1199 (The Medieval World) - Paperback

This ground-breaking new study considers Richard's reign from a perspective that is as much French as English. Viewing the king himself as a great military commander, it also shows him as a more competent administrator than previously acknowledged. Modern revisionist work on feudalism allows them to correct many misconceptions about Richard's French possessions that arise from seeing them through a traditional 'feudal' lens; and they take advantage of recent scholarship on Richard's rival, Philip Augustus, to examine the formidable, and probably insurmountable, threat that the re-surgent Capetian monarchy represented to his empire. This is a very fine work of substance on one of medieval history's most fascinating periods.