On this date in 1199 English King Richard the Lionheart dies

On April 6, 1199, King of England Richard the Lionheart died from an infection after a crossbow bolt was removed from his shoulder.

Old kings die and new kings take their place; but few successions had such a dramatic impact on history and the map of Europe as the death of Richard and his replacement by his brother John.

When the 41-year-old Richard I died he was not just the King of England he was also the Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Poitiers, Duke of Normandy, Count of Anjou, and Lord of Ireland. He was effectively the King of England and the most powerful lord in France with arguably more real-world military power than the King of France could muster. Richard was widely admired for his chivalric manner, military victories, and crusading zeal. John inherited the most powerful realm in Europe at the time and quickly lost all of his inherited possessions on the continent. John was so tyrannical that he soon lost support of the Catholic Church and most of the English lords, who had both feared and admired, Richard and their father, Henry II, rebelled. John was forced to sign the Magna Charta limiting the powers of the monarch. An agreement that he soon broke leading to open warfare and even an invasion by France.

It is doubtful that if Richard had lived to be an old man that the English crown would have lost its continental possessions much less lost the support of the Church and nobility leading to a parliamentary system of government.

Another important side effect of this was that England became more English. The Plantagenets came to power in 1066 when the Duke of Normandy William 'The Conqueror" invaded with a Viking/French army and destroyed the English army. The result was Norman lords ruling over a population of Anglo-Saxon and Brittonic peoples. Richard, like his ancestors, did not speak English. He spoke multiple dialects of French and most of his lords – themselves descendants of Norman and French lords who sailed with William. William spent more time fighting Saracens in the Holy Land than he did in England – just ten months. He was locked in conflict with King Phillip of France. Phillip, who had plotted with John during Richard's lifetime easily took most of John's possessions. Richard would have sold London to pay for his crusade; but he couldn't find a buyer. The English monarchy with most of their once vast French possessions gone became much more enmeshed in internal English affairs and their court was full of English barons and scribes rather than French ones as Richard had been surrounded by.

It is very likely that Richard would have prevailed over Phillip and then returned to the Holy Land for a rematch with Saladin – it was John's plotting with Phillip, disease, and supply issues that caused him to give up his effort to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims.

It is very possible that a longer-lived Richard could have reshaped not just the history of England and France; but also that of Israel/Palestine. There is a myriad of ways a Richard led England would have differed from a John led England

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