The kings of vain intent

Sequel to The Knights of Dark Renown.\nGraham Shelby's first novel about the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem, The Knights of Dark Renown was widely praised for its combination of pace, colour and vivid characterisation.
In this, its sequel, as in the earlier book, the things which the reader will find most difficult to believe in are those for which there is the best historical evidence. The story of the Third Crusade could not have been invented by anyone who bothered about probability. And the character of Richard the Lionheart who dominates it in this book as he did in real life personifies those extraordinary contradictions of romance and avarice, of chivalry and cold-blooded atrocity that fascinate the most unwilling imagination.\nWhen the book opens the Crusaders are bitterly divided: the King and his advisers who are responsible for the catastrophic defeat at the hands of Saladin are trying to pick up the broken remnants of their authority. But the unscrupulous adventurer Conrad of Montferrat holds the ace of trumps in the shape of the all important harbour and castle of Tyre. Both factions are busily intriguing for the support of the great rulers of the West, Richard of England, Philip Augustus of France and the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who have solemnly vowed to come to the rescue of the Christian Kingdom. The clash between the comparatively sophisticated and civilised Saracens and the fierce barbaric representatives of the Christian West, is one of the strangest and most exciting episodes in history. It is a world in which the marriages of Queens are determined by the merciless calculations of military power, in which cold-blooded massacres are ordered by the legendary champions of chivalry; a world that knows that it is not the world of everyday. The Crusades are a compulsive subject and Graham Shelby has made the most of his opportunities.