Richard was raised by his Occitan mother Ida and learned the
langue d'oc as his first language, only learning Italian later in his childhood. His early years were difficult due to rumors among the Italian peasantry that their count was a coward, possibly stemming from his public grief after the death of his brother Lucian in 1074. Also that year, Pope Alexander II and Bishop Hildebrand feuded, and Ida guided the Orsinis into an alliance with the pope. Costance, then five years old, was sent to Rome as a fosterling to seal the alliance. The alliance helped end Hildebrand's career. Pope Alexander, now in a position of strength, launched the First Crusade to reclaim Jerusalem, and Denmark and Sweden went to war with Egypt, where Alexandria was conquered by 1079. The Duchy of Tuscany continued to be an enemy of the Orsinis; their alliance with the pope did not prevent Matilda from making sure the son of Jacob was excommunicated too.
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In 1076, Robert de Hauteville died and Roger Borsa inherited the duchy of Apulia and Calibria. Eager to press his claim to the duchy of Sicily, Roger invaded the island but was repulsed by 1079. The earlier distraction in Capua had sapped Apulian strength and the Muslims managed to seize most of southern Italy. Sensing an opportunity for her young son, Ida went to war to recover Capua from the Normans. Martin, Orvieto's marshal, fought a series of encounters with small bands of Normans before fleeing into exile after being defeated by a force of five hundred knights commanded by Roger Borsa, but in 1081 a large Papal army arrived and forced Roger to surrender. Apulia would not recover and would be reduced by Muslim conquests to the city of Lecce by 1086.
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Orvieto held Capua for only two years before eight hundred Berber warriors crossed the border on behalf of the Zirid king. The Italian general charged with the defense of the city, with barely four hundred soldiers at his command, repulsed the Muslim attack, but the Muslims retook the initiative by summer when four thousand soldiers arrived from Tunis. Ida agreed to surrender Capua. On Christmas Day, Pope Alexander died; Isleifur of Vestisled, a wise and zealous Norse priest, was elected Pope Gregory VII. The Muslims marched unrelenting on the city of Rome. While Richard turned sixteen and celebrated his marriage to Ana d'Angoulême, Rome fell to the Muslims. Orvieto's weak showing in the war alienated the Orsinis from Pope Gregory, who tried to oust them as counts of Orvieto, but Richard refused to give up his title. This chaos encouraged the Tuscan Duchess Matilda to invade southern Italy, ostensibly to fight the Muslims but in actuality to make Tuscany master of the peninsula. With nine thousand soldiers entering Rome and another three thousand marching on Capua, Matilda overwhelmed Apulia within months, leaving the county of Orvieto encircled by enemies. Despite a bloody Muslim counterattack that slowly rolled back Tuscany's conquests, Ida was spooked by her vulnerability. She fled to Urbino, abruptly ending the regency.
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Richard had a reputation for naivety early in his reign, but he worked studiously to expand his power through subtle political pressure. In 1089, he married his sister Constance to the brother of the Governor of Pisa, a strong Republic at war with Tuscany. He declined to join the crusades, noting that Spain had fallen to the Muslims and Poland to the Pagans, while the Muslim army in Italy had reached the Po and the crusaders in the Holy Land proved unable to seize Jerusalem. In 1090, his first wife died, and he chose as a new bride the daughter of William, the powerful duke of Toulouse. This marriage was purely a political weapon to wield against the Tuscans; Richard was wildly unfaithful to his wife, fathering bastards Stephen and Arnold while Eleanor was pregnant. Despite all this political maneuvering, Richard was never in a position to strike against Matilda, and the duchess's alliance was able to shrug off a war with Byzantium, push the Muslims out of Italy, and sail for Tunis. The exhausted Muslims surrendered all of their Italian provinces to Tuscany to prevent a Christian invasion of North Africa. Although the equally-exhausted Tuscans were in no position to attack Orvieto, Richard was keenly aware of his weak position in Italy.
