Read on Twitter
Why I wince when I read 'The Norman Conquest: the complete story' on the front cover of @HistoryExtra and why 'Who was the rightful king? is the wrong question to ask: a thread. 1/ https://twitter.com/HistoryExtra/status/1281877137176354816
First no historian ever has known the 'complete story', not me, not Marc Morris, not William of Poitiers writing in the 1070s about the conquest. For a start, the conquest was still in progress when WP was writing. 2/
Our sources are partial in all sense of the word. They provide different histories of the battle and the conquest, emphasising different factors. The questions we should be asking should reflect that complexity and difference. 3/
Here are some examples. Why did William of Poitiers cast his narrative, including the ordering of events during the Battle as a legal drama? Was, as Mark Hagger suggests, William of Jumièges trying to create an idea of community? 4/
Orderic Vitalis uses William of Poitiers' narrative verbatim for the most part, so what's going when he strays from that and uses his own words? How does that reflect perhaps inherited trauma? 5/
What about the minimalism of the English sources? How do they, as Elisabeth van Houts has argued, suggest collective trauma? How do you write about total upheaval and brutal violence? 6/
History is not something that can be tied up neatly into a package with perfectly mitred corners. Instead it looks more like a young relative's attempts to wrap a strangely shaped and possibly concerning birthday present. 7/
The editors of BBC History know this, so why assume that their readers would not be interested in the messiness of the historiography, both medieval and modern surrounding the conquest? 8/
Which brings us to to 'who was the rightful king in 1066?' This is entirely the wrong question to ask. Instead, and I'm on public record about this several times over, we should be asking what the events tell us about how people could become king in the eleventh century. 9/
11thc England saw great upheaval in the succession and chroniclers would justify, explain on condemn often in retrospect. I'll attempt to summarise the problem here. 10/
In 1013 Svein Forkbeard invaded England, defeated Æthelred II, declared himself king and then died early 1014. His son, Cnut, was declared king by the Danes. Æthelred was recalled from exile in Normandy and booted out Cnut. 11/
In 1016 Cnut became king after defeating Æthelred and the death of Edmund Ironside with whom he shared the kingdom for a short time. 12/
It is important to note that at this time Edward and Alfred, Æthelred's sons with Emma of Normandy, were in exile at the Norman court. Edward will appear later in this thread. 13/
In 1035, Cnut died and there was a bit of a succession dispute between his sons Harald Harefoot, whose mother was Ælfigifu of Northampton, and Harthacnut, whose mother was Emma of Normandy (yes, the same Emma, but that is a thread for another day). 14
Which of these two men became king of England has much to do with Cnut's wider territory, but Harald was accepted by the English (because Harthacnut was in Denmark) and then when he died in 1040, Harthacnut became king. 15/
Edward came back from exile and became king in 1042 following Harthacnut's death against a background of complex Scandinavian politics and treaties. 16/
Edward married Edith, the daughter of Earl Godwine and sister of Harold who was to reign briefly in 1066. This is important as the Godwin family had risen to power under Cnut. Edward and Edith had no children (just like Harthacnut) so here was an opportunity. 17/
Meanwhile Edmund Ironside's children had gone into exile and ended up in Hungary. One of the sons was Edward the Exile who was father of Edgar ætheling, a teenager in 1066 and direct descendant of Ætheldred II 18/
The Normans were of course very interested in England as Edward the Confessor had spent so much time in the court. As Emma of Normandy was William II's (late the conqueror) great aunt, this meant Edward was his 2nd cousin 19/
So by 1066 England had seen men become king through conquest, descent, being in the right place at the right time and treaty. In 1066, anyone could have become king if they made themselves acceptable through politics or force. 20/
This blog post addresses the first part of the thread, but clearly I need to write something about kings https://normanlandscapes.wordpress.com/2016/10/14/reading-and-writing-hastings-the-battle-and-its-sources/ /end of thread.
