Despite this status, Richard’s ten-year reign found him often outside the country, an absentee monarch. Facets of Richard’s personality emerge on the pages to provide insight into the elements that have made him one of England’s most celebrated kings. She achieves the delicate balance between historical accuracy and dramatic license, which makes historical fiction like hers an exceptional treasure trove of facts. What sort of person will emerge, if ever, from captivity? A downtrodden soul who has lost faith in his own mythical persona? An embittered cynic who sees enemies in shadows everywhere, even among his own family? The valiant warrior king, still set on the purpose for which he left the Holy Land?Īs with her earlier novels, the author immerses readers in the medieval period with exceptional attention to detail. While awaiting payment of the ransom Heinrich demands, Richard spends more than a year in the castle of Trifels, despite the Papal prohibition against harming any crusader. On the pretext of Richard’s guilt, Leopold holds Richard and company for three months until their transfer to the custody of the Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich. Although Richard’s men go free from Engelbert’s court, another relative of Conrad’s, Duke Leopold of Austria, is not so forgiving. In the guise of pilgrims returning from the Holy Land, Richard’s companions request safe passage through the count’s lands, but Engelbert sees through the ruse.

His arrival has brought him close to the city of Gorz, ruled by Count Engelbert who might have a personal grudge against Richard for the death of his relative Conrad of Montferrat. Richard has no choice now except to travel overland through the territory of his adversaries. Rudderless, the pirate vessels reach marshy ground bordering the northern Adriatic Sea. Bad weather continues to hound the travelers.

Of course, Richard’s magnetism disarms them and he hires the pirate ships for the duration of the journey. The weather, as much a threat as his brother and the French, forces him to retrace the ship’s route along the Mediterranean island of Corfu, which brings about an engagement with pirates.

Warned of the dangers presented by the prevailing forces aligned against him, Richard sails in November 1192, braving ferocious winter storms in the company of a varied cast of supporting characters. Faced with the greed and enmity of several rivals, including his own infamous brother John, who is allied with the French king, Richard sets out to reclaim his English kingdom, which is in danger of being wrested away. King Richard I of England undertakes a harrowing sea journey from the Holy Land as Sharon Kay Penman’s latest novel, A King’s Ransom, begins.

A King's Ransom by Sharon Kay Penman