Conrad of Montferrat - Role in Fiction, Film and Art

Role in Fiction, Film and Art

The Monferrine court was Occitan in its literary culture, and provided patronage to numerous troubadors. Bertran de Born and Peirol mention Conrad in songs composed at the time of the Third Crusade (see external links below). He was seen as a heroic figure, the noble defender of Tyre — the "Marqués valens e pros" ("the valiant and worthy Marquis") as Peirol called him. In Carmina Burana 50: Heu, voce flebili cogor enarrare, he is described as "marchio clarissimus, vere palatinus" ("the most famous Marquis, truly a paladin"). However, subsequently, the long-term prejudice of popular English-language writing towards Richard I and his "Lionheart" myth has adversely affected portrayals of Conrad in English-language fiction and film. Because Richard (and his chroniclers) opposed his claim to the throne, he is generally depicted negatively, even when Richard himself is treated with some scepticism. A rare exception to this is the epic poem Cœur de Lion (1822), by Eleanor Anne Porden, in which he is depicted as a tragic Byronic hero.

An entirely fictionalised, unambiguously wicked version of Conrad appears in Walter Scott's The Talisman, misspelled as 'Conrade of Montserrat' (the novelist apparently misreading 'f' as a long 's' in his sources) and described as a "marmoset" and "popinjay". He is also a villain in Maurice Hewlett's fanciful The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay (1900). He appears briefly, again in a negative light, in Ronald Welch's Knight Crusader (1954): the description owes much to his portrayal in Cecil B. de Mille's The Crusades, mentioned below. The nadir of his fictional appearances is in Graham Shelby's 1970 novel The Kings of Vain Intent. In this, he is thoroughly demonised — depicted as a sinister figure, physically resembling a vampire; in a chapter added by the author to the U.S. edition, he beats and rapes Isabella. These works reflect the later Renaissance and Gothic novel cultural/ethnic stereotype of the 'Machiavellian' Italian: corrupt, scheming, dandified, not averse to poisoning, even (as in Shelby's novel) sexually sadistic. In contrast, the Russian-born French novelist Zoé Oldenbourg gives him a more positive but fleeting cameo-role — proud, strong, and as handsome as Choniates described him — in her 1946 novel Argile et Cendres (Clay and Ashes, published in English as The World Is Not Enough in 1948). He is the hero of Luigi Gabotto's 1968 novel Corrado di Monferrato, which covers his whole career. Another sympathetic portrayal is in Alan Gordon's mystery novel, The Widow of Jerusalem (2003), which investigates his murder.

In film, he has been consistently depicted as a villain, and with scant regard for accuracy. In Cecil B. de Mille's 1935 film The Crusades, he is played by Joseph Schildkraut as a scheming traitor, plotting Richard's death with Prince John in England at a time when he was actually already defending Tyre. The 1954 film King Richard and the Crusaders, loosely based on The Talisman, similarly depicts him as a villain, played by Michael Pate. Egyptian director Youssef Chahine's 1963 film Al Nasser Salah Ad-Din also shows Scott's influence in its hostility towards Conrad (played by Mahmoud El-Meliguy) and Philip, while depicting Richard more favourably.

On television, he was played by Michael Peake in the 1962 British television series Richard the Lionheart, which derived some of its plotlines loosely from Scott's The Talisman. In the more faithful 1980–1981 BBC serialisation of The Talisman, he was played by Richard Morant.

In painting and drawing, Conrad figures in a small contemporary manuscript sketch of his ship sailing to Tyre in the Annals of Genoa, and various illustrations to Scott's The Talisman. There is an imaginary portrait of him, c. 1843, by François-Édouard Picot for the Salles des Croisades at Versailles: it depicts him as a handsome, rather pensive man in his forties, wearing a coronet and fanciful pseudo-mediæval costume. He is shown with dark hair and beard; it is more likely that, like his father and at least two of his brothers, he was blond.

In the game Assassin's Creed, set in 1191 during the height of the Crusades, William V of Montferrat, father of Conrad of Montferrat, is one of nine Templars the main character must assassinate. This is based on the real life death of Conrad, who was assassinated by the real life Hashshashin.