Who they were

Richard joined the Third Crusade in 1190, took Acre, and won battles against Saladin without recapturing Jerusalem, agreeing a truce in 1192. Captured in Europe on his way home, he was ransomed at vast cost to England, then spent his last years fighting to defend his French lands, dying of a crossbow wound in 1199.

What they did

He was an Angevin king whose empire stretched from England to south-western France; England he treated largely as a source of money for war.

Legacy

Richard became a chivalric legend, woven into the Robin Hood tales as the absent good king. Historians note that his crusading fame rested on an England he rarely visited and heavily taxed.