For many years, this was my favorite medieval film, an acerbic, witty drama involving two of my favorite medieval personages, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Becket figures into this story only peripherally; however, as most of the major players in this drama were contemporaries of Becket, The Lion in Winter is a good film to rub elbows with the people that Becket would have known.
The Lion in Winter is an Anthony Harvey film, based on James Goldman‘s play of the same name. It is filmed in the “revisionist” style of the late 60’s/early 70’s, when medieval times were portrayed in all their grit, filth, warts, and carbuncles – you get no gleaming Camelot here, no perfect shining armor, no perfect teeth, hair, or make-up. Part of the power of this drama lies in its verisimilitude, from its period costuming to its spartan sets, right down to the almost-crumbling French castle where it was shot on-location.
The film won 3 Academy Awards, one for Hepburn’s performance, one for
Goldman’s screenplay, and one for non-musical score (the soundtrack is
available on cd, and is highly recommended).
Richard, with nothing better to do, spends his time hacking and
slashing his way through the continent, while sparing just enough time
to engage in a homosexual affair with a then-thirteen year old Philip II
Augustus. He hates his father for favoring the Young King, but he
also hates his overbearing mother, who uses Richard’s affections as a pawn
in her own Machiavellian schemes.
John, the “cretin”, is a childish, spoiled brat, given to fits
of violence, pouting, sulking, and gloating. While he does point
out that he read 5 languages and has studied law, he is only a teenager,
and a brutally immature one at that. He has little affection for
anyone other than himself, although he idolizes big brother Richard from
afar, and believes he has a friendship with middle brother Geoffrey.
Of the 3 brothers, John would clearly be the worst candidate.
Geoffrey, the “fiend”, suffers from “middle sibling” disease; he is championed and loved by neither Henry nor Eleanor, and thus, growing up alone in the cold Plantagenet family, becomes a cold sociopath loner. Described by his father Henry as “a machine, with wheels and gears”, and seeming to possess no love for anyone but himself, the only way he can grab the throne is to somehow “sell everyone to everyone else”, and become all that’s left.
Alise, emotional and vulnerable pawn first endowed to Richard when she was seven for the Vexin, a small county 20 miles away from Paris, suffers the most of all of Henry’s extended family. She genuinely loves Henry, in spite of his many flaws, and yearns to marry him and produce a son. She sees Henry’s family a nest of vipers, and has conflicted feeling for Eleanor, who helped raise her as a child. Despite her strong emotions and level head, she cannot rise above her station as pawn in a power game of intercontinental rivalries.
Philip II is not immediate family, but wishes to be, more so out of hate than love. He knows that the wedding between Richard and Alise would make Richard too powerful in Henry’s eyes, not to mention cause personal pain, and Philip is all too eager to cause Henry as much pain and problem as he can. Philip detests Henry for the way he triumphed over his father, Louis VII: “You were always better than him. You beat him down in every war, you twisted every treaty, you bellied with his wife, you played mock the Monk…and then you made him love you for it.” Philip has information which he hopes will discredit Richard (the homosexual affair), information that Philip savors and hopes to use to cause maximum carnage.
This heady brew comes to a dramatic climax on Christmas morning, 1183,
and Chinon castle.
First, I’d like to address the subject of historical accuracy.
Hollywood, and even off-Hollywood, like this production, has never been
known for keeping hard and fast to accurate historical events, yet this
film is far more accurate then most of its kind.
As previously mentioned, the costumes, sets, and exteriors used during
the film are excellent, and are as accurate as can be given the period’s
relative paucity of costume information. Henry did keep a castle
court at Chinon, and as the film shows it was probably a cold, drafty,
barren place, even for a king. Stone walls and floors are rough and
uneven, and are covered by rushes; wooden buildings are rather crude and
undecorated; furniture is at a minimum, and look locally-crafted (which
it probably was). Weapons are dull and spartan in appearance, as
is the chain mail and boiled leather armor – no fancy, gleaming full-plate
suits of the High Middle Ages here, thank you!
The characters certainly seem believable, given their colorful histories. Henry was a bit of a rake, a lusty, ill-tempered man who loved wine, women, hawks, and general carousing – one of his best carousing partners was, in fact, Thomas Becket! But the film does bring out the other side of Henry as well; the law-loving Henry who discovers peace is preferable to constant war. In fact, Henry’s reign was a model of law and order following the years of chaos, the “19 long winters” which marked the feud between King Stephen and the Empress Maude (Matilda). This feud had so destabilized and divided England that it had become a virtual state of anarchy. The compromise which finally allayed the state of chaos gave the throne to Henry (Maude’s son) in 1154, even though Stephen reigned as king before him.
This is not as odd as it appears; primogeniture, the system by which the eldest son inherits the throne, had only recently been introduced into England from Normandy via William the Conqueror, Henry’s Great Grandfather. The old Anglo-Saxon tradition elected kings from a small circle of royal houses; they took the out-going king’s recommendation in account, but elected whom they felt would best serve the realm. As recently as 1066, before the invasion, the Witan had elected Harold Godwin as king, even though Edgar (then only a boy) was next in line to the Confessor’s crown. This is a critical point because frequently (in the film), Richard asserts his claim to the throne based on the fact that he “is next in line.”
Richard, who grew up and spent most of his young life in Norman France as a second son, certainly expected to be named when the Young King died in the summer of 1183. It is just as certain that Henry did not necessarily think that was so, hence the series of civil wars fought by Richard and Eleanor previous to 1183. Clearly, Richard was trying to carve himself out as the strongest claimant to the throne – through Eleanor, Richard already acquired the Aquitaine, the richest province in France, and a marriage to Alise would solidify his strength by giving him the Vexin and a family alliance with Philip.
Henry wants none of that. In an allusion to Shakespeare, Henry remarks that he has:
“…much in common with a legend of a king named Lear: we both have kingdoms and three children we adore. But there it ends. He cut his kingdom into bits, I can’t do that. All of Britain, half of France, I’m the greatest power in a thousand years, and after me comes John.”Henry sees no problem in marrying Alise to his cretinous son John, and then keeping her as his mistress. John, who believes he is next on the throne as “father’s favorite,” would happily comply. Richard has no love for Alise, but wants both the crown and the Vexin, and will not trade off one to get the other.
In the film, nothing dynastically is resolved in the end: Richard, Geoffrey, and John all escape Chinon, where Henry had them imprisoned, plotting vainly to make new sons through Alise.
Historically, it didn’t take long before Richard finally asserted himself onto the throne. Richard, with the assistance of Philip II Augustus of France, attacked and defeated Henry on July 4, 1189 and forced him to accept a humiliating peace. Henry II died two days later, on July 6, 1189. Geoffrey died even earlier, in 1186. John would eventually ascend to the throne upon the death of Richard on Crusade in 1199.
John “Lackland” has gone down in history as one of the world’s most maligned leaders. Not one to fall too far from the tree, John inherited all of his fathers worst attributes, and combined it with his own brand of poor judgment, immaturity, and bad luck – he would retain the throne after Richard’s death, administer as well as he could, but he eventually faced revolts from both the gentry and the peasants. The Barons forced John to accept a humiliating treaty, later known as Magna Carta, the single largest check to royal power in the Middle Ages. While Henry could overcome Becket and The Constitutions of Clarendon, John could not defeat Magna Carta. The Lion in Winter portrays John in all his uncouth villainy and immaturity.
In the film, Becket is alluded to only briefly, both times by Eleanor. Once occurs during an argument between Henry and Eleanor, chiefly about each other’s dalliances:
“What’s your count? Let’s have a tally of the bedspreads you’ve spread out upon.”I personally have never heard of this rumor, that Henry’s wife and best friend had an affair, and it seems unlikely. Both had the character for it, certainly Becket did before becoming Archbishop*, and both were available around the time Henry found Rosemund during his Welsh campaigns. However, my feeling is that the dialogue is meant more to reveal just how hurtful and spiteful Eleanor’s character had become. The “tying of horns”, or making a cuckold of, one’s husband was a very real social fear in the Middle Ages, and that Eleanor chose the one man with whom Henry still felt genuine remorse and guilt over only compounds the wound she delivers.
“Thomas Becket’s…”
“That’s a lie!”
“I know. You still care about what I do.”
Historically, Henry never quite forgave himself for Becket’s death. William of Newburgh wrote in his history: "I think that God wished to punish him severely in this life in order to show mercy to him in the next." Another notes that:
…when, as the climax of six years of persecution which followed the saint's rejection of the Constitutions of Clarendon, the archbishop was brutally murdered on 29 December, 1170, there is no reason to doubt that Henry's remorse was sincere. His submission to the humiliating penance, which he performed barefoot at the martyr's shrine in 1174, was an example to all Europe.So it is that Eleanor’s remark cuts Henry both ways; the film shows both Eleanor’s brilliant wit and brutal viciousness with that one remark.
A second allusion comes earlier, during a conversation between Eleanor and Richard. In it, Eleanor teases Richard, who the film portrays as a very proud man driven toward achievement, by recounting all the things Henry had accomplished before Richard’s age of 26. She speaks of the early years of Henry’s reign, the good years of their marriage: “There was no Thomas Becket then, or Rosamund. No rivals. Only me. Then Young Henry came, and you, and all the other blossoms in my garden.”
It is curious that Eleanor sees Becket as such a rival for Henry’s attentions and friendship. Historically, Henry married Eleanor in 1152; Henry was introduced to Becket two years later by the then-archbishop Theobold. The two became fast friends, having many similar interests, and King Henry named Becket to be his Chancellor. When Theobald passed away in 1161, Henry saw his chance to maneuver his friend into even more power, and had Becket named Archbishop in 1162. That, of course, was when all the trouble started. Rosamund would appear next, in 1165, following the births of Young Henry and Richard; all of a sudden there were many persons seeking Henry’s attention, and it is obvious that Eleanor felt threatened by them all.
In conclusion, my personal feeling is that The Lion in Winter is a splendid,
historically-faithful film. Anyone who enjoys good drama, history
(especially concerning the times and peoples who were part of Becket’s
later life), and great music should find this film to be completely entertaining.
Would that all historical film should be so.
Paul A. Presenza 2004
(MooCowMoo)
* Contrary to what some popular portrayals suggest,
most notably the film Becket, Thomas
was not some kind of libertine in his early life. Contemporary writers
agree that he took a vow of chastity in his youth and kept it. And
while the written record is not always completely trustworthy (says the
historical archaeologist), it's telling that there's no disagreement on
this point. Besides, there would be no need to invent an unblemished
past when biographers could easily have told the story of a great sinner
who became a great saint, in the pattern of Augustine.
On the narrower topic of whether Eleanor
and Thomas could have had an affair, a friend of mine points out that it
would have gone completely against Thomas's character and would have been
both personal betrayal of Henry and treason against the king, putting Thomas's
career and life in jeopardy. Not to mention that Eleanor would most
likely have thought Thomas, with his humble origins, beneath her. -CJB