WI: Leopold V gets more from Richard's ransom?

Zioneer

Banned
So on his journey back to England after the Third Crusade, Richard the Lionheart was captured by the Babenburg Duke Leopold V. He was ransomed, supposedly for six thousand buckets (23 tons) of silver. A hefty price, and one that apparently repaired Vienna's walls and established the first mint of Austria.

But what if he demanded and received more from the ransom? What would the Austrians want beyond the silver, and what butterflies in history would this cause?
 
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If I remember correctly, it was something like 100,000 marcs + another 50,000 marcs. It was already heavy for the time, and Eleanor of Aquitaine payed 2/3 of it.

Asking more would probably be NOT GOOD for english treasury and might prolong Richard's captivity. And if Richard remains prisonner longer, this greatly plays in favor of John Lackland and Philip II Augustus.
 

Zioneer

Banned
If I remember correctly, it was something like 100,000 marcs + another 50,000 marcs. It was already heavy for the time, and Eleanor of Aquitaine payed 2/3 of it.

Asking more would probably be NOT GOOD for english treasury and might prolong Richard's captivity. And if Richard remains prisonner longer, this greatly plays in favor of John Lackland and Philip II Augustus.

Well, I was thinking about additional, non-money concessions. What kind of political concessions could Leopold pull out of Richard and England itself?
 
I don't know that they would really want any political concessions. Austria is a good distance from England, and it's not like the Babenburgs were players on the international stage like their successors. Thus the leader of a, then, backwater German duchy has no interest in English politics other than to extort money. It's not like Leopold would want an English fiefdom or anything...
 

Zioneer

Banned
I don't know that they would really want any political concessions. Austria is a good distance from England, and it's not like the Babenburgs were players on the international stage like their successors. Thus the leader of a, then, backwater German duchy has no interest in English politics other than to extort money. It's not like Leopold would want an English fiefdom or anything...

I was thinking more upon the lines of a forced alliance, English aid with certain endeavors, and perhaps a marriage to seal the deal.

I suppose Leopold would want Richard to publicly declare that he murdered Leopold's cousin, Conrad of Montferrat (whether this is true or not).

And why would the Babenburgs stay a backwater power if the Hapsburgs didn't? It was only a few decades after this that Rudolph of Hapsburg started running around, after all.
 
I was thinking more upon the lines of a forced alliance, English aid with certain endeavors, and perhaps a marriage to seal the deal.

I suppose Leopold would want Richard to publicly declare that he murdered Leopold's cousin, Conrad of Montferrat (whether this is true or not).

And why would the Babenburgs stay a backwater power if the Hapsburgs didn't? It was only a few decades after this that Rudolph of Hapsburg started running around, after all.

Well, they managed to stay obscure and backwater OTL, and Rudolph was the gosh darn emperor - it takes a while after even that before Austria matters, if i remember correctly.

Sure the Babenburgs could rise, but it would probably take more than this to make that happen given how much they got from Richard OTL.

A marriage might be possible if Richard has any female kin around - Leopold is a duke after all, he's not unworthy of a spare daughter.

And what exactly is England going to do to help Austria?

I like the idea of a timeline where Leopold getting a marriage leads to a Babenburger Austria being something serious and the Hapsburgs being just some random minor noble family in the Alps.

That would be fun to read.
 

Zioneer

Banned
Well, they managed to stay obscure and backwater OTL, and Rudolph was the gosh darn emperor - it takes a while after even that before Austria matters, if i remember correctly.

Sure the Babenburgs could rise, but it would probably take more than this to make that happen given how much they got from Richard OTL.

A marriage might be possible if Richard has any female kin around - Leopold is a duke after all, he's not unworthy of a spare daughter.


And what exactly is England going to do to help Austria?

I like the idea of a timeline where Leopold getting a marriage leads to a Babenburger Austria being something serious and the Hapsburgs being just some random minor noble family in the Alps.

That would be fun to read.


It looks like there's only one possibility of a Babenberger marriage. Leopold could marry Joan of England. She had a husband, William II of Sicily, but he died without Joan giving him any surviving sons.

She married Raymond VI of Toulouse in 1196, but what we're interested in is December 1192 through March 1193, when Richard was captured.

The thing is, wiki says Leopold was married around this time (to Helena, daughter of King Geza II of Hungary), so there has to be the butterfly of her dying.

Hey... maybe that's what would cause the butterfly; Leopold loses the alliance with Hungary due to his wife's death, and despite already having two children, (one of whom would be the future Duke Leopold VI), he marries Joan along with the massive ransom.

He's certainly canny and ruthless enough, if he risked (and recieved) excommunication for capturing a fellow crusader.

So I think that's a good bet.

Oh, and while looking for info, I found out that not only was Leopold related to the Komnenos dynasty (his mother was Theodora Komnenos), yet another one of the stipulations for the ransom was the release of Isaac Komnenos, Despot of Cyprus into Leopold's care.

I could probably fit Isaac in somehow. Maybe he marries a local heiress, and his Germanized Komnenos family branch becomes powerful in Austria? Or maybe he goes off to the Levant in another scheme to become Emperor?

In any case, the Joan connection (with the PoD being Helena of Hungary's death) seems like the best bet.
 

Zioneer

Banned
Sorry for the double post, but I had another idea; if Leopold is excommunicated already, then he'd likely have little qualms about taking church property, right? So would he be able to take Salzburg for himself if he wanted to?

Salzburg could be wildly changed by it's early seizure by the Austrian Dukes.
 

Zioneer

Banned
Bumping this again; have any more suggestions for what I could do to have the Babenbergs mess up Europe even more?
 
Depends on what happens in the greater world to some extent. I don't think there's any more that can be extracted from the situation at the moment (Leopold's second marriage), but Leopold can make his duchy stronger and better off - which means any later ambitions are that much more likely to succeed.

As for seizing church property, he's more likely to try to get out of his excommunication than try to further blacken his reputation.
 
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