Wow their leader is Morcar of Mercia!?
My exiles will be following a different path though. Thanks for linking them.
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Wow their leader is Morcar of Mercia!?
"Earl Valthiof the brave
His foes a warming gave:
Within the blazing grove
A hundred men he drove.
The wolf will soon return,
And the witch's horse will burn
Her sharp claws in the ash,
To taste the Frenchman's flesh."
The powerful Godwinsons' were too influential. Also the very much overlooked fact, why did you think William stressed he had the Papal Banner. The English Catholic Church was in conflict with the Catholic Church in Rome. William promised to fox this, Harold only went with the status quo.Well Harold was an English noble with close ties with dynasties all over England and Scandinavia. The Godwinsons had essentially been ruling the kingdom for decades by the time Edward died, AND he was chosen by the Witan. Both the secular and religious authorities in the Kingdom supported his coronation, and in England the Witan picked the King. Harold was the legitimate king according to all English customs.
I really doubt it was under duress, they may have regretted it later on, but, when those untrustworthy Anglo-Saxons kicked them out, their Norman relatives gave them refuge.Edgar though was certainly up there in the line of succession even if he was a Hungarian-born teen who had just arrived in England on 1057, as was King Sweyn Estridsson of Denmark, the nephew of Cnut the Great. William though? He was just a bastard from across the sea, and according to English laws, only children of legitimate marriages were eligible for succession, so he was never even eligible. There was also another son of Godwin in Normandy, Waltheof I think, but he died mysteriously under captivity by William. William also likely killed a nephew of King Harold who would have been a claimant. The enemies of the Bastard all dropped like flies around him for some reason, including his rival, the Duke of Brittany.
Williams supposed claim was likely false, and a common tactic he employed. He used the same tactic to seize Maine saying the previous Duke bequeathed him the title upon his deathbed. Even if Edward really did promise him the crown, it was likely under duress.
When he felt he was still ferttile and the Godwinsons were still a threat he tried to divorce her, after a point he gave up. It doesn’t mean Edward was happy with the prospect of Harold as his heir, he had arranged the return of Edgar the Atheling for a reason, but when he died Edgar was a bit too young.King Edward did try to break Godwin and sons power repeatedly and although he failed to do so in life, one may say he was ultimately successful as historians speculate the reason he never had children was to deny Godwin the possibility of being grandfather to the King of England, a choice which led to the events of 1066.
I think it's an exaggeration to say the English Church was in conflict with the Roman one. Rome had an issue with Archbishop Stigand for his pluralism in holding both Winchester and Canterbury, and he was excommunicated for it. William did claim Harold's ascension to the throne was illegitimate because he argued Stigand who hadn't received his pallium yet and been canonized crowned Harold, but it had been the Archbishop of York Ealdred who did the ceremony, making such claims false. Even if that claim had been truth, it was a mere excuse to bolster his claim as William had no issue keeping Stigand at court and letting him continue to consecrate bishops until 1070. It was a piece of propaganda, of which there was much of during and after William's time.The powerful Godwinsons' were too influential. Also the very much overlooked fact, why did you think William stressed he had the Papal Banner. The English Catholic Church was in conflict with the Catholic Church in Rome. William promised to fox this, Harold only went with the status quo.
I really doubt it was under duress, they may have regretted it later on, but, when those untrustworthy Anglo-Saxons kicked them out, their Norman relatives gave them refuge.
When he felt he was still ferttile and the Godwinsons were still a threat he tried to divorce her, after a point he gave up. It doesn’t mean Edward was happy with the prospect of Harold as his heir, he had arranged the return of Edgar the Atheling for a reason, but when he died Edgar was a bit too young.
This may be true in most occasions, but had King Harold not rushed so quickly to meet William in the South, stopping for longer to gather more nobles and men, he may have easily dispatched of the Bastard and cemented himself as the most legendary of English kings. Alas, the Normans' brutality lured the King to act in haste as those lands William was ravaging were the personal possession of the King, and thus he wanted to put and end to it quickly. One of history's most painful what-ifs.In a three-way even fight, whoever avoids the first duel will probably be the ultimate victor as the first winner will be bloodied by the loser. Thanks
You'll get more chapters then. After this one events should speed up a bit more, taking years rather than days like these last two, meaning it'll go by faster. I've marked the threadmarks of these prelude chapters so people know the gameplay hasn't started yet.Slaughtering them won't give the Anglo-Saxons any reason to surrender to William.
I'd like a few more chapters on the aftermath before we get to gameplay, but I don't really care either way.
I wonder if the (implied) Papal support for William will cause a further fraying of relations between the Anglo-Saxons and the Catholic Church. Maybe they will become heretics out of spite?
“Just as hungry flies attack in swarms wounds brimming with blood, so from all sides the English rush to dance attendance on the king. Nor do they come with hands empty of gifts. All bring presents, bow their necks to the yoke, and kiss his feet on bended knees.”
The Domesday Book all but rejects your notion of him being "relatively mild." He was brutal from the start, all across Sussex, Kent, Surrey, Middlesex, and Hertfordshire lay tons of "wasted" towns. Depopulation plagued the Southeast following his landing and subsequent ravaging of the land. It was never mild. It was savagery unlike anything the English had seen before, and it only got worse with time. Even his biggest propagandist William of Poitiers tells us this despite his best attempts to hide it and justify, and both Orderic Vitalis and Bishop Guy of Amiens, as well as the Anglo-Saxon chronicle make it abundantly clear. The Normans chevauchee tactics which William had perfected in the mainland caused great destruction in England.King William the Conqueror former duke William the Bastard (say that in his presence to your own peril). Had to fight for his authority in his duchy from a young age, one of his guardians was killed, when he was still a child.
The destroying of the countryside had some practical reasons as well, he needed to feed his army, but also needed to assert his control over his new land. Destroying also had limitations, since he needed to reward not only his own Normans, but he had attracted support from all over northern part of the kingdom of France, from Flanders, Picardy, Champagne, Anjou etc. they too needed their rewards. For this you don't want a totally destroyed kingdom, there was a process, which lead up to the Harrying of the North. It was a response to a series of revolts against his rule, king William initially was relatively mild, becoming more harsher after each revolt. He had plenty experience with this given his youth in Normandy.
He was a conqueror with contested claim, but he also stressed the continuity with Edward the Confessor, not the for his case usurper Harold Godwinson. Edward the Confessor, who due to his exile after Cnut the Great had conquered, had spend almost half his life in Normandy. The Godwinsons OTOH rose to prominence under Cnut.
As such there were already Normans in England before the Conquest, brought in by Edward.
Back to William he was a far to good politically gifted warlord to just plunder and pillage for the sake of it, though brutal he did it to establish and reaffirm his rule and that of his dynasty.
This is a trend that they will continue on perpetuating sadly.Gutless English nobles live in a greater hell than William. For they failed to do a lord's #1 duty: protect your subjects. You cannot be a king if there is no kingdom. Thanks
That it got worse with time, that I hopefully did clarify, each revolt was responded by a harsher response. Until he finally had his authority recognised. Savagery, I really doubt that the distant kinsmen of the Normans, Vikings, weren't as bad. I also wrote relatively mild, he wasn't more brutal in England as he had been crushing the revolts in Normandy. It's exactly there were he learned to perfect such tactics, he had to, otherwise he would have lost his duchy.The Domesday Book all but rejects your notion of him being "relatively mild." He was brutal from the start, all across Sussex, Kent, Surrey, Middlesex, and Hertfordshire lay tons of "wasted" towns. Depopulation plagued the Southeast following his landing and subsequent ravaging of the land. It was never mild. It was savagery unlike anything the English had seen before, and it only got worse with time. Even his biggest propagandist William of Poitiers tells us this despite his best attempts to hide it and justify, and both Orderic Vitalis and Bishop Guy of Amiens, as well as the Anglo-Saxon chronicle make it abundantly clear. The Normans chevauchee tactics which William had perfected in the mainland caused great destruction in England.
I tend to agree with the reading, that this pillage started with a mistake, not a deliberate cue, or that it encompassed soldiers, who felt that they hadn't received the reward they felt their due.This is a trend that they will continue on perpetuating sadly.
I'd be willing to die on the hill that the Vikings were nowhere near as brutal as the Normans were, even in their initial "mild" rampage in the South. You could argue William's treatment of Sussex was indeed a tactic to lure Harold in haste before he could gather a large enough army, and that those of Middlesex and Hertfordshire were to destroy the morale in London, but then you have Kent and Surrey, and even in places he had interest in keeping like Dover, William and his men were just as brutal as in the other shires. It was indiscriminate.That it got worse with time, that I hopefully did clarify, each revolt was responded by a harsher response. Until he finally had his authority recognised. Savagery, I really doubt that the distant kinsmen of the Normans, Vikings, weren't as bad. I also wrote relatively mild, he wasn't more brutal in England as he had been crushing the revolts in Normandy. It's exactly there were he learned to perfect such tactics, he had to, otherwise he would have lost his duchy.
Still the later Harrying of the North, is an escalation, which can be explained by all the previous revolts, brutal by Norman standards, the destruction in the Southwest, especially in the Godwinson dynastic home land, had certainly, before Hastings a military value.
I'm sorry to be an Advocatus Diaboli here, since I really like your TL a lot.
The burning of London? Quite possibly. Even his closest followers abandoned him in the Abbey once the commotion started rather than ensuring his safety. Loyalty was in short supply in his army, and he didn't really control them. Still, while I too believe London was likely not a command of his, it is not out of the norm from what he had been ordering them during his campaign.I tend to agree with the reading, that this pillage started with a mistake, not a deliberate cue, or that it encompassed soldiers, who felt that they received the reward they felt their due.
I hope my nuances didn't bring you to this. It only wanted me to place your ''villains'' in perspective. Don't get discouraged by my overexcitementI'm actually unsure if I should continue the timeline of events in such a detailed manner. I feel this may detract some people from reading as I'm not using too many pictures, nor talking about new things. It's also taking quite a while as many events did take place and I wanted to give them their proper due. Maybe I'll continue the timeline as is, and then start a new thread once the events of the run actually start, so that it's all gameplay, all while linking this thread so people know where to find the backstory if they wish to.