A ll along, the Doctor knows that Richard’s Third Crusade will fail. “Even now his armies are marching on a campaign that he can never win,” he says in the final episode – after telling Vicki how the so-called ‘Lion’ will see Jerusalem, but “Only from afar. He won’t be able to capture it…”
On 2 September 1192 – having twice been forced to retreat from the Holy City, and with his brother John threatening to usurp him at home – Richard indeed signed the Treaty of Jaffa and withdrew from the Holy Land.