In October 1192, during the Third Crusade, after having taken Acre, Arsuf, and occupied Jaffa, Richard I looked poised to take Jerusalem, when suddenly he decided to return home. What prompted his decision probably lay in the situation that had been emerging back in the West. Richard, who had only been crowned king of England a short while before leaving the country for the crusade (3 September 1189), had left government of the kingdom to his brother John, offering him lands in England and the county of Mortain in Normandy to try and keep his ambitions in check. John lost little time in plotting against his brother, especially once Philip Augustus, who had left the crusade earlier, in August 1191, was back in France and was seizing the opportunity to manipulate John to his advantage, despite having made an agreement with Richard (what might be termed a ‘gentleman's agreement’ between crusaders) that neither would attack the other's interests while one or both were serving God's cause.

Richard's journey home was planned rather differently than his outward journey in 1190. At that time he had travelled first to Vézelay to meet up with Philip Augustus, then on to Lyon and Marseille, whence he sailed down the Italian coast, stopping off to see, I suspect Virgilian and Norman, sites in Naples and Salerno, visiting Mileto in Calabria and finally reaching Sicily on 23 September, where he intended upholding his sister Joan's rights over Tancred of Lecce. Joan had been widowed in 1189 on the death of her husband William II of Sicily, who had bequeathed her considerable sums of money along with the lordship of Monte Sant'Angelo on the Gargano peninsula in Apulia. William had left no male heirs and the Sicilian throne was contested by his illegitimate cousin, Tancred, and by the emperor, Henry VI, in the name of his wife, Constance de Hauteville, daughter to Roger II of Sicily. In 1190 Tancred was on the throne and had no intention of giving Joan her inheritance, keeping her a virtual prisoner at Palermo. This, then, was the matter Richard came to discuss in Sicily, also because Joan's inheritance would have been useful for covering some of the costs of the crusade.