Tags
Anthony Hopkins, Homosexuality, James Goldman, Medieval Europe, Philip II, Richard the Lion-Hearted, The Lion in Winter, Timothy Dalton
At the start of this blog, I discussed perhaps my favorite movie of all time, The Lion in Winter (1968, dir. Anthony Harvey). But there was one facet of the movie that I didn’t discuss in that post, namely the claim that the movie makes that Richard the Lionhearted was homosexual. So I want to look at that today.
In the film, Richard (Anthony Hopkins) meets with Philip II (Timothy Dalton) and reminds him of a night that happened several years earlier, during which they had been physically affectionate (the film doesn’t specify exactly what they did, but the implication is that they had sex). Richard clearly feels something for Philip, and is distressed when Philip cruelly tells him that he submitted to Richard’s advances purely to gain a weapon to use against Richard and his father. He viciously describes how disgusted he felt when he pretended to be attracted to Richard. Richard is deeply distressed by the revelation. Later, Philip shocks King Henry (Peter O’Toole) by describing the encounter to him, and then taunts him “What is the royal policy on boys who do with boys?”
Richard and Philip
When The Lion in Winter came out, it was still a year before the Stonewall Riots ignited the Gay Liberation movement. Homosexuality was a taboo issue, and Philip’s revelation would have been as shocking then as an admission of incest might be today. Because homosexuals were stereotypically depicted as effeminate, the notion that the great medieval soldier Richard the Lionhearted might be homosexual was startling. But was author James Goldman just making this detail up, or is there something to this claim?
In 1948, historian John Harvey, in his book The Plantagenets, put forward the argument that Richard was homosexual. Among the evidence for this claim is the fact that Richard married rather late to Spanish princess Berengaria of Navarre, and never had children with her, and that according to the very well-informed medieval chronicler Roger of Hoveden, Richard had been rebuked by a hermit for not sleeping with his wife and for indulging in ‘the sin of Sodom’. He twice confessed and performed penance, possibly for sodomy. Since Harvey put forward the idea, a number of other authors have explored it, adding one or two pieces of evidence. In particular, it has been pointed out that Hoveden also says that they shared a bed chamber, or perhaps a bed. If you want to see the passages in question, you can read them here.
John Gillingham, perhaps the most expert scholar on Richard, has argued against this claim and asserted Richard’s heterosexuality. Richard had at least one illegitimate son, Philip of Cognac, and he is noted in some accounts as raping women. The fact that he never had children with his wife might be partly due to the fact that soon after he married her, he was separated from her by events around the 3rd Crusade, and on his return home, he was captured in Germany and held prisoner for more than a year. This would obviously have reduced his opportunity to sleep with his wife in the early years of his marriage. He does not seem to have had much affection for her; after his return to England, he did not spend time with Berengaria until Pope Celestine III ordered him to be faithful to her. Thereafter he attended worship with her on a weekly basis. Thus he may simply not have liked her as a person, since this was a political marriage. And, of course, it is possible that she was barren.
Berengaria of Navarre
Jean Flori, another expert on Richard, has come down in the middle, arguing that Richard was probably bi-sexual. (All of this assumes, of course, that medieval sexuality can be analyzed in terms of the modern notion of sexual orientation.)
The specific claim that Richard and Philip were lovers is based on a reference to them having once shared a bed or bed chamber (the Latin is ambiguous on this). While two adult men sleeping in the same bed would certainly be sexually suggestive nowadays, in the 12th century, this was a much less sexually-loaded practice. 12th century households had much less furniture than modern houses do, and the royal household carried its furniture with it as it traveled about from one estate to the next. Servants very commonly slept on the floor in their master’s bedroom. So even a king might not have spare beds in which to put up a royal guest, and inviting a visiting king to share one’s bed would have been much more about courtesy and hospitality than it would have been an opportunity to conduct a personal examination of the royal jewels. So even scholars who support the notion that Richard slept with men generally discount the claim that Richard and Philip were ever lovers.
However, at the time Goldman wrote his play, Harvey’s book was much closer to the cutting edge of scholarship than it is today, and his assertion that Richard and Philip had been lovers creates a good deal of interesting tension in the script. And certainly to audiences of the 60s, the revelation of the relationship would have seemed quite shocking, especially since Richard the Lion-hearted is one of the most celebrated warriors of the Middle Ages, whereas in America, the US military was still issuing dishonorable discharges for homosexual activity in 1967.
Want to Know More?
The Lion in Winter (1968)
John Gillingham’s study of Richard I focuses heavily on the myths that have developed around this king. As I noted, Gillingham disagrees with the notion that Richard was homosexual. I’m not sure I entirely buy his argument, but it deserves serious consideration.
An Historian Goes to the Movies 
The case for Richard being heterosexual is much, much stronger than the case for homosexuality, or even bisexuality. Even Richard’s enemies, who were constantly on the lookout for anything that could be said to his detriment, never seem to have accused him of this sort of “unnatural vice” (though they did accuse him of the unnatural vice of warring on his father). They did accuse him of unbridled lust, but the objects seem always to have been female, such as the wives and daughters he is supposed to have debauched as Duke of Aquitaine. Contrast this with the quite unequivocal accusations launched at William Longchamps (or later, at Edward II or the Templars), The arguments for Richard’s homosexuality are flimsy at best.
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I agree that the evidence is not particularly strong, and most of the arguments in support of the claim can be addressed fairly easily. But Hoveden’s claim that Richard was rebuked for and confessed and did penance for sodomy is not so easily refuted. Hoveden was knowledgeable about the English court, so there is a reasonable chance the statement is true. Obviously sodomy could refer to a number of different things, from homosexuality to anal sex to non-missionary position sex and others, so it’s not iron-clad evidence that Richard was into guys, but I don’t think we can entirely discount the possibility.
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Well, anything is, of course, possible, but I notice that Hoveden doesn’t actually refer to “sodomy” or “sodomites,” but rather to “the destruction of Sodom” (subversionis Sodomee); the emphasis is on the punishment, not on the particular type of sin. The sinners to whom Hoveden compares Richard, the publican and the Canaanite woman (who was not really even a sinner), again, point not to the specific type of sin, but only the magnitude of the mercy; surely no one imagines that Richard had a demoniac daughter. Nor, again, does Master Roger ever refer to “unnatural acts” or anything of that ilk, but only “illicita,” which is a pretty weak word, even for a twelfth century ecclesiastic.
Further, when Richard’s reform after his confession is described, it takes the form of 1) attending Mass, 2) not deserting his wife, 3) giving to the poor, and 4) restoring the church vessels which were sold to raise his ransom money. You’d expect at least some mention of foregoing male companionship of at least some kind.
It’s not that the sexual habits of a man dead for over eight hundred years really matter, of course. It’s just that I think there is a great danger in allowing modern preoccupations to shape our perceptions of the past to any great extent. Surely one of the most important uses of history is to allow us to escape from the prison of the Zeitgeist.
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Oh, yes. Viewing the past through the lens of the present is something I criticize a lot–300 is especially bad that way. But there is some value in examining the past in light of modern concerns. For example, the whole idea of ‘queering’ past figures does have value when it’s done right. If only view society through its own lens and never through ours, our ability to learn about and understand the past is sharply limited. So I think that asking the question “was Richard homosexual?” is useful; in Golding’s case it opened up a rich vein of character development that was at least based in an actual question scholars were asking, and presented gays with a history in which they had some sort of participation.
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Jewish writer. What more is there to say?
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I have no idea what you’re trying to say.
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I believe the implication is either 1) that the Jewish culture that Goldman came from is so inveterately anti-Christian that it seeks to blacken the character of a Christian crusader by imputing homosexuality to him, or 2) that homosexuality is so accepted in Jewish culture that a Jewish author like Goldman will grasp at any evidence to claim a heroic character as a homosexual. The two ideas may even both be at play, though they are logically mutually exclusive. It is of some interest, perhaps, that John Harvey was himself vehemently anti-Semitic.
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Both of those are possible. I have no patience for anti-Semitism, but I also try not to put words in my readers’ mouths. So I figured I would give him the opportunity to explain himself before I pass judgement on what he means.
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Just so you know, in the top photo you’ve posted, captioned “Richard and Philip,” it, in fact, shows King Henry (O’Toole) and not Richard (Hopkins), at all.
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Good lord, you’re right. How did I screw they up? Surprising that you’re the first to catch that. I’ll have to fix that. Thanks.
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That was already part of the original movie? I thought it was added for the remake, to modernize the story and to incorporate the ambivalent research about Richard possibly not having been entirely straight. But for a 1968 mainstream movie, that’s amazingly brave – both for the writer and for the actors involved. (Who, as far as I know, are straight, so this isn’t the same as someone like a young Ian McKellen or Derek Jacobi taking the risk and playing a sympathetic gay character even though they can’t be publically out yet, because they have a personal stake in helping the political rights movement along. Back in that day, any hint that an actor might be non-straight, and be it just the willingness to play a gay role, could easily end his career, or at the very least prevent him ever getting “male lead” roles again. Hell, that’s basically still the reason why someone with the perfect “matiné idol” look as Matt Bomer was rejected as a candidate to play Superman, a few years ago.)
“(All of this assumes, of course, that medieval sexuality can be analyzed in terms of the modern notion of sexual orientation.)”
Well, modern sexual identity labels and their attendant ideas about oneself and one’s place in society probably don’t apply, but human biology doesn’t change over just a few centuries. So I think that medical/academic term “men who have sex with men” (MSM) might be useful here in any case.
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There were a fair number of movies in the 60s that had clearly homosexual characters. To some extent Richard fits how they were depicted—miserable and pathetically begging for love. What makes LiW different is that Richard doesn’t end badly at all. He’s the first gay character I can think of for whom that’s true.
Actually, there’s evidence to suggest that human biology can change that quickly, at least at the level of ‘soft’
things like this.
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