Originally posted by Dinsdale
snuggs,
Do you think England would have survived as a single entity had Hastings been reversed?
I consider the fusion of post-conquest Norman and Plantagenet innovation combined with the fledgeling centralized Saxon state to be the defining moment in English history.
Reading through what I wrote above it does look as if I'm trying to say the Norman conquest was inconsequential - of course it was anything but. What might have been is something I've given a great deal of thought to.
There is cause to believe it might have turned out the way you say. The late Saxon earldoms have the characteristics of fledgling territorial principalities. In fact, here beyond the Tees there's not much sign of central control at all, not from York and certainly not from Winchester. It's quite easy to imagine England going the way of France or the HRE given a line of weak kings or divided succession.
On a dynastic level, it all depends on how 'Harold II' chooses to establish himself and his dynasty. What he does with Edgar Aetheling and the other domestic claimants, and how if at all he deals with Sweyn Estrithson. I see him ruling long and well, but you can see succession becoming a major issue. IRL Edgar Aetheling lived well into the twelfth century and it's not hard to imagine him coming to rule after Harold's demise albeit with the Godwine dynasty remaining the power behind the throne. What happens after this God knows, but even if power transfers smoothly after Harold's death we can choose to see dynastic strife on the horizon.
Externally, the Godwine family's links with Flanders might lead to dynastic union somewhere down the line. I had an 'Arnulfing' dynasty under a line of Baldwins, Harolds, Edwards and Conrads. In my skit, this led ultimately to a Hundred Years' War style confrontation in the Low Countries and Germany between a rampant France vs an Anglo-Flemish / Aquitainian axis, with various HRE and Iberian minors, internal rebels and Scotland on the periphery.
Lacking the Norman influence I see no Ranulf and no Strongbow. I imagine the English conquest of Wales proceeding far more incrementally, almost as a local affair as border lords pushed up towards the Clywd and southwards across the Wye. Scotland is an enigma. On the one hand they'd face a far weaker southern neighbour - at least this far north - and a near-autonomous and easily manipulated Northumberland, on the other they'd suffer unknowably in the long run due to the non-availability of new ideas and Anglo-Norman and Flemish immigrants. I envisaged Scotland, to a greater extent even than England, coming to face Scandinavia rather than the continent. Not hard to imagine a Nordening of the Scottish court and aristocracy - God knows what long-term effect that might have had. Maintaining the unity of the state would be even more problematic than it was IRL, though they would probably have retained Cumbria and supremacy north of the Tees for the foreseeable future.
Normandy, meanwhile, would be finished as a regional power, to the great relief of all its neighbours. I had an 'Angevin' dynasty wrest the royal title in the 1140s and unite northern France, ultimately creating a monster.
Many more questions have answers that can't even be guessed at. Do the English ever embrace cavalry tactics? If not, does it matter? Do they build castles and cathedrals of Continental size? What happens in Ireland? How does OE develop as a literary language? What status has the Church, Pope and the various monastic movements? Can we see the free merchants of England cornering a vastly more powerful Hanse-like network? (I pursued this idea to include wholesale English participation in the Baltic crusades, while the First Crusade was directed at a still-heathen Sicily.) And so forth.
In the end I had great fun plotting the advance of
Englisc across North America, thinking of suitable Saxon-style names for things. Envisaged uber-France (by now HRE) colonising most of the CSA, the Caribbean and Mexico - Spain forms out of Leon and Portugal to dominate most of South America, Aragon by then being a vassal of France. Lost the whole thing to a hard disk crash
