I should never have seen Robin Hood in the theatre

By the way . . . the horse is not sited at an easy gallop to the Chanel

From what I read Richard the Lionhearted had a homosexual lover Philip of France but later they became enemies. Richard also had to fight for his French possessions so he was in France most of his life. Next, he got kidnapped so his brother had to tax the people to pay off that ransome. So people blamed his brother for the high taxes. It is confusing as who is the villain and who is the hero. I think there is enough dirt to spread around and enough heroism to spread around as well.

Richard the Lionheart regarded himself as french, thought the British isles were foggy country good only for sheep, spoke one or two words of english at most and only visited the country a couple of times and left quickly. Yet the English claimed him as their own. He was King of France and England, a title gained from the Norman invasion.

Actually, from his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. She ceremoniously married him to the fictional St. Valerie, patroness of Aquitaine, when he was invested as Duke of Aquitaine. This is an echo of the Celtic Sovereignty Goddess.

Richard was not the King of France, nor did he ever claim to be. His father, Henry II Plantagenet, had claimed, in his own right, Normandy, Poitu and Anjou. In addition, Richard's mother, Eleanor of Acquitaine claimed her patrimony, in despite of her former husband, the King of France--which meant the Plantagenets claimed roughly the western half of what is modern France. Henry fought all his life to maintain what was commonly known as the Angevin empire. Richard did the same, and that attempt was the ruin of his brother John, who faced an uprising of the baronage as a result of his fiscal mismanagement as he pissed money away on a lost cause. John's father and brother were militarily competent, and found it almost impossible to keep the Angevin empire together. John and his son Henry III found it completely impossible, in both cases not the least of the reasons being their own incompetence, which in both cases lead to rebellions of the baronage.

This is Robin Hood according to the egomaniac Russell Crowe. Undoubtedly for sake of his ego, he has transposed the action from Walter Scott's version, taking place in the reign of Richard (1189-99), to the reign of his brother John (1199-1217). That's so he (Crowe) could put his own mug in the Magna Carta picture.

After John first signed the great charter, and then repudiated it, rebellious barons did bring in a French Army in 1216. John died in 1217, and his son Henry III was still just a boy. A life-long faithful retainer of John's mother, a man named Guillaume le maréchal, or William Marshall in English, was Lord Protector during the minority of Henry, and fought the rebellious barons and the French troops they had brought in.

There was a young knight, loyal to the royal family, who harried the French supply lines. His name was William of Kensham, and he became known as Williken of the Weald or Williken from the Weald. A great forest ran from just outside the walls of Dover to the heights in Kent which overlooked London, and that forest was known as the Weald. Prince Louis had been attempting to operate an army against first John and then William Marshall in the heart of England, but all of his supplies had to come in through Dover and be transported through the Weald. Williken raised a "militia" by impressing able bodied men who then practiced guerrilla warfare against the French in the forest. The silly stories which have attached themselves to the figure of Robin Hood were probably originally cobbled together from the tales of Williken of the Weald.

The only fact, certain sure, which attaches to this motion picture is that Crowe is a raving egomaniac.

Who really knows? Although Richard I never produced as heir. The movie The Lion in Winter has some stellar performances. A very young Anthony Hopkins plays a youngish Richard Coeur de Lion and the future 007 Timothy Dalton is Philip and they leave no doubt of the homoerotic relationship.

A late friend who was a wonderful historian watched that movie at least once a month. He would call me and say, "Peter O'Toole is Henry!"

Crowe phoned in his performance as Robin.

My mistake and I knew better...it was first claimed by Edward III in 1340. Through the holdings of the King of England and Duke of some french provinces, Richard had more french people and lands then The King of France.

Prize to Setanta for stating the bleeding obvious!

It sounds like someone took a liberal interpretation of Robin Hood, Plain.

Don 't u hate it, when that happens ?





David

Philip III Capet, in the direct or "right line" of descent from Hugh Capet, died late in the 13th century, at about the time (perhaps a little later) that Edward succeeded Henry III, who was the son of John, which provides the link to the Robin Hood story (and so far as anyone can prove, it was just a story).

Philip had two sons, one of whom became his successor, Philip IV, and the other was Charles de Valois. That Philip, Philip IV, had four children who survived into adulthood, Louis, Philip and Charles, all of whom succeeded him on the throne, and Isabella, who had been married off to the Prince of Wales, son of Edward, and to succeed in his own right as Edward II. Philip's first cousin, Charles de Valois, had a son, Philip, who survived into adulthood.

When Philip IV died, he was succeeded by his son Louis, who had no adult son. When Louis died, he was succeeded by his brother Philip, and when he died he was succeeded by his brother Charles. In two cases, there were surviving daughters, but no surviving sons. So, when Charles died, the French invoked an alleged Salic law that no woman could succeed to the estate, and therefore, the throne passed to the son of Charles de Valois, who became Philip VI.

The Salic laws were not alleged, but no one has ever provided reliable documentary evidence that the Salic laws prohibit inheritance or rightful descent in a distaff line. This was true in the 14th century, too, apparently, because Edward III--son of Edward II and his wife, Isabella, daughter of old King Philip IV--rejected the claim about the Salic law, and claimed that he was the most direct descendant of Hugh Capet, and therefore was the best candidate for the French throne because of descent "in the right line."

I believe, however, that Edward made his claim prior to 1340--the naval battle of Sluys was in 1340, and i think Edward declared his intention to take the French throne in 1336. That's a trivial consideration, of course. What was significant was the use of the longbow en masse. The French King employed Genoese crossbowmen, and Beauvais archers who also used longbows, but the French chivalry despised them, and charged through them on more than one occasion, squandering the advantage they might have provided.

The Robin Hood story relied upon claims about using the longbow. Many amateur "historians" will point out that English yoemen were required to practice "at the butts" every Sunday morning, and that football and other sports were prohibited for that reason. Those claims, however, ignore the relationships in time. Walter Scott's version of Robin Hood places him in the reign of Richard, 1189-1199. Modern writers place him, on documentary evidence, in the early 13th century, if indeed he ever actually existed.

But the longbow was not known in England then, and Edward's requirement for practicing at the butts dates from, obviously, after his succession to the throne in 1272. The Angl9-Saxon warriors did not use the longbow, certainly, and although Saxon peasants my have hunted with bows, the longbow was not introduced into England until Edward subdued the Welsh. Llewellyn the Great has supported Simon de Monfort, brother-in-law of Henry III, in his rebellion. Llewellyn had brought to the battles he fought the longbowmen of Powys in South Wales, having overawed and secured the allegiance of the Lords of Powys and of South Wales.

But Llewellyn's principality fell apart after his death, and he was "succeeded" by his grandson, Llewellyn ap Griffith, who could not secure the allegiance of Powys. When Llewellyn ap Griffith himself fought against Henry and Edward, the longbowmen of South Wales remained aloof. When Henry died in 1272, and Edward came back to England, his first serious public measure was to attack Llewellyn with the intention of subduing Wales. (Henry had thought to make Edward the Prince of Wales, but Llewellyn the Great had had other plans. Edward eventually made his son Edward the first non-Welsh Prince of Wales.) This time, the men of Powys came in on the side of Edward. It was after the successful conquest of Wales that Edward required English yoemen to practice at the butts with the longbow.

In his campaign to subdue Scotland, Edward was confronted with the use of the shiltron by the Scotts. A shiltron was roughly speaking the equivalent of a shield wall, and was usually a circular formation, intended to fend off heavy cavalry. The Scots typically, though, did not use shields, they used bucklers, and you can't make a shield wall with that. So they used long sharpened stakes which they planted in the ground to hold off heavy cavalry.

Edward incorporated both the long bow, and "shiltrons" of bowmen behind sharpened stakes. His poor, pathetic son Edward II made no use of any of his father's military techniques, but his grandson Edward III did. I suspect that Edward only intended to use his claim to the French throne in an attempt to regain at least part of the formerly claimed Plantagenet lands in France. The Garonne remained loyal, more or less, which no doubt arose from the fact that the English were the best customers for Bordeaux wines. But Poitu, Anjou, Normandy and Brittany were no longer even notionally English. Edward began his active land campaign against the French with an invasion of Normandy. At Crécy, in 1346, the French chivalry charged the English, first cutting down the Genoese crossbowmen in their path, and over a distance of several miles, and involving them in a swamp. Philip had tried to prevent them, but they wouldn't be gainsaid. They exhausted their horse in attack on the Genoese, the long approach ride, and getting through the swamp. Even though the English position was on a low slope, they were worn out by the time they got there. Behind their sharpened stakes rammed in the earth, the longbowmen slaughtered the French in an appalling manner.

I think then that it dawned on Edward that he might really make a war of it, and to his profit and that of England. The war was not popular, but as long as he was winning, he could carry it over the objections of the people, and of a weak Parliament. (His grandfather, the first Edward, had created the permanent Parliament, taking a page from Simon de Monfort, who had called a Parliament during his rebellion against Edward's father Henry III.) Thereafter, Edward's son, Edward, Prince of Wales, known as the Black Prince, carried on the war in France. A decade after Crécy, the son of Philip VI, Jean le bon, proved that the French had learned nothing. They had the English surrounded near Poitiers, and could have bagged them by simply sitting down to wait. But the French chivalry wanted "glory," and Jean was foolish in a way his father had not been. He not only allowed the army to attack, he lead the attack. By some bizarre line of reasoning, the French decided that they had lost a decade earlier because they had been mounted, so this time they attacked on foot! Not only were a great many of them slaughtered this time as well, but Jean and his son the Dauphin were both captured.

The heyday of the longbow was long after any plausible allegation for the lifetime of Robin Hood. The Robin Hood stories are entertaining, but bear exactly that relationship to history that Christian Science does to science.

you should have stopped the statement before you got to the "in the theatre" part

Although the wiki website for white horse at Uffington claims it was used in the movie, it is not what we see on the screen which does resemble the white horse at Westbury.

There were performances worse than Crowe's: the three men who played the three kings involved in the movies plot.

I never heard of Oscar Isaac who played John Lackland. He looked the part with his dark hair and neatly trimmed beard. Was surprised to see he studied at Juliard.

Danny Huston as Richard was "sturdy." There seems to be no credit available for the actor who played King Philip but the role was written with a standard sort of joke on the frog king line.

Why is there a convention of huffing and puffing whenever a king is played?

It is quite interesting to see the different muscular development in the arm bones of a longbowman. A dead give away as to his profession, and a valuable profession at that. Records show how much a lord was prepared to pay to put a good longbowman beside him as a personal guard, and it equals or exceeds the amount for a lesser knight.

There is some debate about the origin and time of effective use for long bows, with some saying they were not as effective during the Battle of Agincourt as they had been earlier due to the "discovery" of steel for armour rather than iron. This is based on one suit and the assumptions that everyone had the new armour, which I find rather wanting. How many knights used their fathers armour (with adjustments), how many had blacksmiths who could work the new processes....there is also the assumption that the few iron arrows found at the site are very typical of what was used for anti-armour and they couldnt penetrate the French armour, based on one hardness/penetration experiment using reproductions.

No doubt the mud and the funneling effect of the terrain at Agincourt played an important role, but I would maintain that the longbow was still a very effective and probably more importantly, feared weapon. Even as late as the Napoleonic Wars, the british had internal arguments to bring back the longbow, but the length of training required for a longbow versus cheap musketmen made the decision obvious.

The origins of the longbow seem to be in Wales and its move into and acceptance of it in England is not reliable knowledge but certainly the most common era for Robin (whatever his last name was ?) would be before it was accepted in middle England.