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On 29 September 1192, Richard and his queens sailed from Acre, he travelling on a separate ship from his female companions. Berengaria, Joanna and the Cypriot sailed under the escort of Stephen de Turnham.
As far as the records show, Richard and Berengaria parted, seemingly forever.
He appears to have pointedly ignored her for the rest of his life - denying her even the comforts of her inheritance in his will - while she played her part as the faithful queen.
Richard's story is well known. He blundered his way into Austria, where he was captured by Duke Leopold's police. The Archduke had three main reasons for imprisoning Richard: the disgrace of Austria's flags at Acre; the kidnapping of the Cypriot princess, his niece; and then her seduction.6
Eventually, Richard was traded to his enemy the emperor, and thus in all but body delivered into the clutches of his family's greatest foe, Philip Augustus.
This was the greatest disaster yet to befall the Plantagenets, and was to bring England's economy to its knees.
The story of Berengaria and Joanna is less well known, but sheds light on the character and role of Crusading women.
These two, together with the Cypriot princess, went to Rome where they appear to have negotiated with the aging Pope Celestine III. In Rome, they were treated with lavish hospitality, sightseeing around the eternal city, and frequently visiting the pope.
It was while in Rome that the shattering news of the capture of Richard reached them. Richard, despite his many faults and his neglectful attitude, was the magnetic force around which the kingdom was built: he was already an individual of legendary stature in his own lifetime. The queens must have been desolated by the news. But they were not to be comforted by any communication from Richard himself. Richard wrote poetry in his confinement, in keeping with his persona as a troubadour par excellence. But the verses were addressed to his half sister, Marie of Champagne. For Berengaria, nothing.
The women lived in great danger of being captured themselves, although they were under the protection of the pope. Emperor Henry wrote to some English nobles in a letter warning that he had the power to seize the two women if he wished. The implication was that their freedom would have to be paid for to be guaranteed.7
Despite much danger, the women decided to leave Rome, travelling through the summer of 1193 under the protection of Cardinal Melior. They rode to Genoa, from where they sailed to Marseille, and then travelled on to Toulouse, in the heart of southern France.
In two brief years, the lives of Richard, Berengaria and Joanna had been transformed, through their participation in the Crusades, and by the influence of the aged queen mother, Eleanor.
The Crusade was now over, but its effects were to be felt for years.
For Joanna, there was to be a tragic end to life. She spent some time living with Berengaria and the Cypriot princess in central France. The Cypriot was briefly married to Raymond VI of Toulouse, who shortly afterwards threw her over in favour of marriage to Joanna. This marriage to Raymond was a curious choice: he is described as a man devoid of graces and utterly debased. He can hardly have compared favourably even with al Adhil, a gracious and noble man, knighted by Richard with his own hand.
It is probable that Joanna married at Eleanor's behest, in order to secure a route to the sea via Toulouse, and also because Eleanor's grandfather had made a claim to the land through his forcible marriage of the heiress of Toulouse to his son William.
Joanna's marriage was not truly of the spirit, however. She retained her fiercest loyalty to her brother, one might venture the metaphor that she was almost like a lioness in a pride. It was to be five months after Richard died in 1199 that Joanna met her own end. Her husband Raymond was absent when the barons of St Felix revolted against him. Joanna, heavily pregnant, and caring for a young son, raised as many men at arms as she could and laid siege to the castle of Cassee. She was betrayed by her own followers, who burned her camp, with her in it. It was to Richard that the dying Princess fled for help, only to be met on the journey with the news of his passing. Eleanor cared for her in her last days, taking her to Fontevrault, the gathering place of the family, where Joanna took the veil. The shock of the circumstances resulted in a premature birth and Joanna's own death. Joanna's dying wish to her mother and Berengaria was that she be buried with Richard.
Meanwhile, after the return from the Holy Land, Berengaria had retired to her dower lands, where she set about her part in raising the immense ransom required for the delivery of Richard, amounting to more than 100,000 marks, four times the annual income of England , as well as 200 hostages from the noble sons of the Plantagenet empire.
In England, it was an equally difficult task for Eleanor. Never were her formidable qualities of statecraft and economic management more clearly displayed.
William Longchamps reacted ferociously to his expulsion from England by putting his diocese under interdict, that is, putting its residents outside the protection of the church.
The result was disastrous for the people of the area, who could not carry on normal life. It was to Eleanor they turned, as described by Richard of Devizes, who was present in England throughout this dark period. In his words, the worthy matron Eleanor was visiting some cottages that were part of her dower, in the diocese of Ely. There, she was devastated by the sight of men, women and children of all ranks coming to her bare footed, in unwashed clothes and with hair hanging in knots, weeping and pitiful, in all the villages and hamlets through which she passed. Through choked tears they told their story - not that they needed to. Eleanor was able to see for herself the devastation caused in their lives by the chancellor's ban: bodies lay unburied here and there and in the fields, because the bishop had forbidden their burial. No doubt she was also able to reflect that their parlous condition was compounded by the crushing burden of taxation visited on the English to raise the money for her son's Crusade.
When she learned of this suffering, the queen took pity on the living and on the dead "for she was very merciful." Immediately forgetting her own affairs, she went to London and there ordered that the confiscated revenue be repaid to Longchamps, and that Longchamps be freed from the ban that had been placed on him by the English church.
Who could resist the request of a queen so universally open to the appeal of her subjects?
Eleanor sent word to Longchamps that his offices had been restored to him, and she
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