The Unhappy Death of the Conqueror
The Personal Cost of Conquest
The Highs, Lows, and Haunted Death of William the Conqueror A Bitter Harvest? He was born a bastard and died a king. Few figures in human history have cast a…
The All-Consuming Fire of the Harrying of the North
The Long Shadow: The Legacy of the Harrying
History is often written by the victors, but even the victors' own chroniclers couldn't hide the horror of 1069. When William the Conqueror marched north to crush a rebellion fueled…
The end was inevitable
Legitimacy through Fire: Was the Harrying Necessary?
The crowning of William the Conqueror on Christmas Day, 1066, did not end the Norman Conquest; it merely signaled its bloodiest phase. While Southern England was relatively quickly pacified through…
Two Queens for England
Two Opposing Medieval Queens, Two Differing Fates In the year 1066, the fate of England was not decided solely by the clash of steel at Hastings, but by the influence…
The Power Behind King William/Duke of Normandy
Mathilda of Flanders: The Queen Behind the Conqueror
We know his name: William the Conqueror. We know the date: 1066. We know the outcome: The Battle of Hastings and the start of Norman England. But history often remembers…
What else did they know
5 Secrets of the Bayeux Tapestry: More Than Just a History Lesson
What you might not know about the Bayeux Tapestry The Bayeux Tapestry is perhaps the world’s most famous "comic strip." Stretching nearly 70 metres, it tells the epic saga of…
Tancred: Minor Lord, Major Patriot
Tancred of Hauteville & the ‘Norman Miracle’
In the annals of medieval history, few transformations are as breathtaking as the rise of the Normans. In just a few generations, they evolved from Viking raiders settled in northern…
How much Viking was left?
The Norman Miracle: Viking Traces in the Warriors of 1066
How much Viking was left in the Norman Warrior of 1066? The Norman warrior who charged up Senlac Hill in 1066, armoured on horseback, cut a figure vastly different from…
The Conqueror’s Children: William and Mathilda’s best and worst
Like many medieval monarchs, William ‘the Bastard’, Duke of Normandy and King of England, fulfilled his destiny by creating a dynasty that, although it did not last long, was full…
From Conqueror to King
The Importance of William the Conqueror’s Follow-up Actions
Whether William the Conqueror was a brilliant strategist or just a lucky general has been a matter of conjecture, depending on whose side you were on. However, no one could…
