Renaissance men existed long before the Renaissance.
No prisoner can tell his honest thought
Unless he speaks as one who suffers wrong;
But for his comfort as he may make a song.
My friends are many, but their gifts are naught.
Shame will be theirs, if, for my ransom, here
—I lie another year.
They know this well, my barons and my men,
Normandy, England, Gascony, Poitou,
That I had never follower so low
Whom I would leave in prison to my gain.
I say it not for a reproach to them,
—But prisoner I am!
The Richard of Legend is a much better man that the Richard of History, but perhaps less interesting.
Though mostly fiction I enjoyed Cecile B. DeMille’s The Crusades (1935) which starred Henry Wilcoxon as Richard the Lion Hear, Loretta Young as his Queen Berengaria and Ian Keith as Saladin. As a teen I thought Henry Wilcooxon quite the matinee idol.
What seems to be fact is that Berengaria and Richard’s mother, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, were with Richard for part of the crusade.