William will always be a bastard...

Zirantun

Banned
Before I post my alternate timeline to get some feedback, I want to just say that I'm glad to be here. I tried to register in the past and my registration was turned down on account of my "looking suspicious" I believe the reason was... I'm not sure why anyone would've gotten that impression, as I've never been a member here, but I'm really happy I was able to get in, cuz I've really wanted some feedback on this for awhile.

Now I know this is probably a yawn for you guys. A lot of people have probably tried to speculate on the subject of a Norman loss at the Battle of Hastings in the past. A lot of the alternate timelines I've seen on this subject have been yawns for me too. They're either radical and way too vague as to how they turn out such radical consequences, or they don't observe the possible ripples well enough, and end up being boring... to me anyways. I'm not sure about you guys.

Anyways, my attempt at this has so far tried to take in as many factors as I can think of, but simultaneously has taken a few liberties. For example, the existence of a Breton who fights his way to the top in late 1060s Brittany named Treveur al Louarn. He is completely fictional, but the name was a common name in the Breton language at the time, and since I don't elaborate on his familial background, I don't see that it much matters.

Also, my primary interest in this is actually linguistic. I'm a linguistics major, and a fluent speaker of 8 languages, and what the English language might look like had the Normans never conquered England is a subject that has always fascinated me.

Just to make sure that I'm never accused of plagiarism: there are a few ideas in here that I got from another person's timeline. I forget her name though, and I've been unable to find it online since. Specifically most of the details about how William loses, the idea that Hildebrand of Sovana never becomes Pope Gregory VII, and the further development of a rich trading culture amongst the Norse-Gaels in the Isles. After those things though, everything is pretty much mine.

So in my next post, I'll give you guys what I have so far, and then I'll await the criticism.
 

Zirantun

Banned
The Battle of Hastings: Normandy Fails

The year is 1066 AD. After a march of epic proportions (London to York in four days), King Harold Godwinson has defeated the Norse at Stamford Bridge, killing King Haraldr Harðráði of Norway (and giving him the promised six feet of earth, or as much as he is taller), and also killing Tostig Godwinson, Harold's brother who had sided with Harald. The Norse army is eliminated as a fighting force.
While the celebrations are on, news of William the Bastard's landing in southern England arrives in York, and Harold and his huscarls promptly begin the march south. William is burning the south, and Harold feels compelled to bring him to battle as quickly as possible.
So far, no change from OTL. Harold and his huscarls, after a second epic march, face William and his Normans at the hill later to be called Battle. Harold's army is formed up on the top of a long hill, with William's formed at the bottom. In OTL, the battle went on through most of the day, past sunset, when the Saxon line broke.
The point of departure here is the first retreat by the Breton forces in William's army, which most historians believe was not a deliberate ploy. Panic started to ripple through William's army, when the cry went up that William was slain. In OTL, William was able to rally his shaken army. In this AH, the Bretons are not rallied, although William is able to hold his centre and right firm. Gyrth and Leofwine Godwinson (more brothers of Harold (seemingly Earl Godwin and Gytha didn't have television to distract them at night - Svein, the eldest son, had already died after a pilgrimage to Jerusalem) were with the advanced right flank of the Saxon army, while Harold was with the centre.


William was now in a tricky spot, with his left flank open. He launched a fierce assault on the Saxon right flank, which did not have the slope advantage. Heavy fighting followed as William tried to eliminate this flank threat. Gyrth and Leofwine both fell, but a very heavy toll was taken of both sides. When both sides were fully committed to this fight, Harold advanced down the slope, sweeping aside the Norman infantry on the left, and William's centre broke.
Military historians have long pondered why it was that Harold took so long to advance. Some say it was caution over abandoning a strong defensive site, and hindsight is a good thing, but it wasn't clear to Harold that such a move would win so effectively. Others have suggested unscrupulous motives - the memory of betrayal by his brother Tostig may have been in his mind, and now the last two brothers had paid the ultimate price to prove their loyalty.
The Norman cavalry was able to escape; William survived. The riders didn't draw rein before reaching the stockade at Hastings. William was in a quandary. He could embark and return to Normandy - safe, but with his tail thoroughly between his legs. Or he could stay and force Harold to attack him in this strong defensive site. Luckily, he had time to think it through, and let his troops and horses catch their breath. Cavalry travel faster than infantry.
He wasn't the first to underestimate the strategic marching power of the huscarls, however. William had taken half a day to decide to withdraw, and his troops were embarking, when the hard-marching huscarls approached the beach. It wasn't a battle. Duke William of Normandy received the same deal as Haraldr Harðráði, and Harold had kept the English throne secure.


A United Kingdom



King Harold had, at some cost, destroyed the powers of Harald and William. England was now no longer threatened by invasion. At least for the moment.
The changes to the coinage that he had started to introduce carried on, easing trade both within the country, and allowed the wool trade to expand. Although just because the English had won the Battle of Hastings, does not mean that they had not been impacted by it. Harold knew that he had come dangerously close to losing, and we all know what the consequences would have been should this have been the case. Seeing the advantages in heavy cavalry, Harold decided to start training his huscarls to fight on horseback, who become England's first heavy cavalry unit. Of course, Harold himself is no heavy cavalry expert, but he has kept one such expert alive – Hugh de Grandmesnil. Hugh de Grandmesnil was one of William of Normandy's great supporters, but after Hastings, he would forever go down in history as Hugh the Traitor for his services to King Harold II. Of course he only did so at the point of a sword, but nobody ever sees the victim's side of history. Hugh was from a family of horse trainers, and an accomplished horseman himself as well as a cavalry commander of William's; no one could have been more qualified for the job as far as the English were concerned. For his service, he was awarded lands in Cheshire, in staunchly Saxon territory where he could not be of any trouble to the king.
Now, having dealt with the two major threats external to the islands, Harold wanted to launch a counter invasion of Normandy, but he decided that before he did so, he wanted to test his knew heavy cavalry units, and he knew just where to do it – Wales.
Welsh raiders had been problems from time to time, and had indeed enabled Harold to develop the forced march as an effective strategy in the days of Edward the Confessor. Caradog ap Gruffydd, the young King of Gwent, had destroyed Harold's hunting lodge at Portskewet in 1065, and had been continuously raiding up the River Severn ever since. Determined to put the Welsh king in his place, to build his damn hunting lodge, and prove the prowess of heavy cavalry, Harold defeated Caradog at the Battle of Portskewet where he won half of the the Kingdom of Gwent. It was here that Harold would initiate the second part of his own personal Normanization of England, with the building of Chepstow Castle, (yes, in the same spot as we know it today), which he ordered his nephew, Hakon, now Earl of Hereford, to oversee. Harold had been a hostage in Normandy previously, and so he was familiar with the French use of castles, so this was just the beginning of a string of construction projects across the country to build up her defenses. If England was ever to come as close as it just did to foreign dominance again, he wanted real, viable defense options for his progeny.
With the Welsh kings subjugated to the power of the English heavy cavalry, his heavy cavalry proven as a formidable force, and English confidence at an all-time high, Harold decided that the time was ripe for his counter invasion of Normandy.


The year was 1068.


Meanwhile...


Things had been happening outside of England following Harold's victory at Hastings.
In Norway, the army that had come over in 300 ships had returned in 20. This destruction of its best warriors left it in no condition to be an immediate threat. As Scotland itself was a divided entity, and Norwegians sovereignty in the area could no longer be considered a reality, it left the Norse islands off Scotland rather more vulnerable than they liked. The islanders were not interested in becoming part of Scotland, but could no longer expect to receive much in the way of support from Norway. So the Norse-Gael kingss of the islands applied to Diarmait mac Maíl na mBó, High-King of Ireland (with opposition), who currently controlled Dublin and Man. He granted them protection as colonies under Kingdom of Ulaid, which brought the Hebrides and the Rhinns under the direct control of King Fingal Mac Gofraid of the Isle of Mann.
From this point on, the fighting in the isles came to a minimum, as they began to carry foreign trade to and from the nations of Ireland, England, and Scotland. It actually made sense for these Norse-Gaels to be the intermediaries for a rich country (England), rather than a poorer one (Norway). This negotiation between Ireland, Scotland, and England proved very profitable in the future for Ireland, providing a new source of wealth that would eventually solidify Diarmait as High-King of Ireland. Of course, there was a lot of commerce between the islands and England/Scotland, leading to a lot of ties, and a growing intermingling of the two separate entities. This commerce kept the Norse-Gael kings rich, and kept their ties to one another considerably stronger than they were in our own timeline, where they frequently bickered.
Elsewhere, there were rather more dramatic changes. Pope Alexander II had given mild support to the Norman cause (the support was hardly full-blown, but he did say words to the effect that if William could win, it would probably be a good thing, and gave him a consecrated banner). That banner was now in English hands, and caused a lot of questions in religious circles.

This begged the question, if God was on William's side, how could he lose? Yet lose he did.

If Harold could capture a consecrated banner, what good was a consecrated banner?

The English had not sought the support of the Pope, and won. William had, and lost.


This posed a number of problems, and raised questions that the Pope really did not want raised, nor did he want to have to answer. An obvious explanation was at hand: William had received the blessing of the Pope when he set out. The evidence of God's favor could be seen in the way that the weather always turned favorable while he was waiting, and crossing. God was clearly on William's side up until then. However, when William landed, he began a systematic destruction of the land, burning and devastating in a decidedly non-Christian manner, and his behavior caused God to turn His face from William's cause.
That was how the Pope rationalized the course of events. This led the Pope to say that Holy Wars must be fought with Holiness as a principal quality - which meant charity to the weak and the fallen and the non-combatants. Such words were, of course, more often ignored than heeded. However, it would lead to a precedent being set for later on (the Crusades would take a markedly different course).

But besides these, an especially dramatic consequence was brewing in Rome. The public support that Archdeacon Hildebrand gave to William, and the fact that he advised the Pope utterly incorrectly destroyed any ambitions he might have cherished of becoming Pope himself (and hence, he never becomes Pope Gregory VII).
In England, there was a definite growth in general feeling of antipathy towards the Pope - who had backed William and lost. The general feeling was that the Pope, the Vicar of Christ and God's representative to mankind, had got it wrong; this led to the inexorable conclusion that the Vicar of Christ was not always right.


In Normandy, there now existed a power vacuum. Sven Estridsen of Denmark had promised William support, but had failed to deliver, preferring to keep his strength to take advantage of whatever might result. The Emperor Henry IV had promised William German support, but had likewise kept it in reserve. In addition, Flanders, which had actively supported William, but still had strength, was looking to profit, as were France, Brittany and Anjou.


Ripples: The Rape of Normandy


We have left England in preparation for an invasion of Normandy. The rest of the world was, obviously, going to be affected to a greater or a lesser extent, according to distance and interactions.
William and his forces were butchered on the beach, down almost to the last man. The number of men who got away might have been under 100. The Norman nobility was deeply impacted, and a substantial number of major players were dead. Among those killed at Hastings was Robert, Count of Mortain, whose death would prevent the birth of Eleanor of Aquitaine in the years to come. Normandy becomes a power vacuum, with a number of ambitious nobles from France, Flanders, Brittany, and even as far away as Denmark looking for new lands.
Early on October 16, 1066, the remaining Norman troops landed at Caen, in Normandy. The town was at first put on alert as the watchmen saw ships in the distance in the English Channel, but they were soon recognized as Norman, and so the Duchess of Normandy, Matilda of Flanders was awoken to greet the returning soldiers. Whether or not she expected such an event to occur is the speculation of a number of historians, but many scholars of the time say that she seemed prepared for what she heard in the harbor that morning. Walter Giffard, and another of her husband's companions and longtime supporters, William FitzOsbern brought the news of the duke's death. William's eldest son, Robert, was 13 years old at the time, and he was proclaimed duke shortly thereafter. This of course presented Normandy with an interesting problem; while young Robert was undeniably brave, he suffered from an unusual temperament among Normans - he was pleasant, easy-going and easily persuaded. There were a number of people with vested interests in the area. For example, his grandfather, Baldwin V, Count of Flanders, had been a co-regent in France with the queen Anna of Kiev, and he would now be co-regent of Normandy with his daughter. As young Philip I came of age, Baldwin wanted to extend his political sphere of influence over young Robert as well for his son, Baldwin VI and Robert's uncle, bringing Flemish influence over both France and Normandy. In Brittany, there were a number of Breton barons who were angry over the support that Robert's father, William had garnered there, and they sought to control him or take control of the duchy. Because of this, there were several skirmishes on Normandy's western border in 1066, but nothing serious. The barons in Brittany were far more concerned with removing the Duchess Hawiz and her husband Hywel from their seat of power at Rennes. For a couple of years, Robert was able to keep his enemies from actually invading by giving each the feeling that he would make a good puppet king. Unfortunately for each, he was able to play one off against the other, and maintained an impossible situation with remarkable skill, especially given the fact that he was still just a boy.


This situation of course could not, and did not last.


Harold would be invading the seriously depleted Duchy of Normandy in the spring of 1068 with his new Grandmesnil-trained armies, first sacking Boulogne, Ponthieu, Eu, Arques, and Caux. Immediately the Flemish responded with a counter attack led by Baldwin VI himself, at which time his brother, Robert the Frisian took the opportunity to seize control of his county with the support of his wife's armies in Holland. Arnulf III, Robert the Frisian's 13 year old nephew and Robert Curthouse's first cousin was executed immediately, and his aunt Richilde, Baldwin's wife was held for ransom. So far, the situation was playing off beautifully for Harold, since Baldwin VI had to turn around and secure his realm from the hands of his traitorous, murdering brother. Harold had sacked Caen within just a month, winning several decisive victories against both the Normans and the French (Simon de Montfort became involved when his inherited lands in Évreux were attacked). As the town was being overrun, Robert Curthouse, at the age of 15 and in a highly unexpected show of valor emerged from the manor and challenged Harold himself in single combat. The boy was laughed at, and Harold is said to have charged at him on his war horse, intending only to smack the boy on the head with the flat side of his sword to taunt him, but Robert cut the legs out of Harold's horse, causing him a fall that permanently injured his right shoulder, putting his days at the front officially to an end. Harold's 19 year old son Godwin attempted to interfere, but young Robert is said to have fought him off, putting his own seax through his arm and breaking his nose. Robert was only killed when he picked up the Godwin's sword and came for him, at which time one of Godwin's huscarls, Sihtric Fyrenson, came to his aid.
Quite different from our own timeline, Robert Curthouse would be known for his bravery, not for his impudence, and is recorded later on as Robert Cor de Lion. Furthermore, it has been said that Morcar of Northumbria himself was the first to rape the Norman duchess, Matilda, as she was locked in a barn house, but whether or not Morcar participated in her rape is not proven, and may be Norman propaganda. Richard escaped with his younger siblings with the help of William FitzOsbern, who took them first to Bayeux, and later to the Guernsey Island.
 

Zirantun

Banned
Ripples: The Chaos Over Normandy and A Solution to the French Problem


By the end of 1068, Harold's counter invasion of Normandy was almost a complete success. He controlled the coastline from Guines to the Contentin Peninsula, and he had also taken the inland counties of Évreux, Rouen, and Mortain as well. The heart of Normandy was now in English hands, and her duchess, was going back to England as the prize wife of Northumbria's earl Morcar. Of course the death of young Robert Cor de Lion, the threat of further invasion, and the kidnapping of the Duchess of Normandy naturally provoked a French response. Of course Harold was not actually interested in controlling Normandy, rather, he just wanted to see it to burn. The Normans after all, had nearly conquered England a year and a half earlier; the counter invasion, which came to be known as the Rape of Normandy, was to make sure that the Normans would never come that close to taking England again. This is why the English used scorched earth tactics, burning everything from Boulogne to the tip of the Contentin.
So, when the French actually did respond, the English were on their way home, with Matilda of Flanders on board en route to Northumbria. There were three important consequences of the Rape of Normandy. First of all, Normandy was crippled beyond any foreseeable recovery. The duchess had been kidnapped, the heir murdered (although he went down most valiantly), and her fields, her houses, her churches, burned, and her livestock killed (at least all of it that the English couldn't fit on their boats). Second of all, the French reinforcements (mostly from Brittany, some from Anjou, Champagne, and Blois) found themselves at the heart of some very contested territory, and they did not particularly feel like leaving when the threat of the English was gone. Third, Robert the Frisian had usurped control of Flanders with his wife's armies from Holland, which sparked a war between the Holy Roman Empire and France.
Ideally, the regency of the duchy would be handed over to Baldwin VI of Flanders until Richard FitzWilliam came of age, but he was busy trying to assert his claim to his own territory, and so in no place to rule over the burnt Normandy. That left William FitzOsbern, a distant cousin of William FitzRobert the Bastard who had swindled the other children off to the Isle of Guernsey. But the long contested duchy of Normandy was now in mixed hands. Fulk IV of Anjou of course, ever the entitled dunce, believed that Normandy should go to him, since Robert Cor de Lion had done him homage in 1066 before his father departed to England to be butchered on the beach. But his claim too was contested, since the first to answer Normandy's plight were Celtic barons from Brittany, who were the only ones besides the Normans to actually fight the English. One such baron, one Treveur al Louarn had actually routed an English army at the Battle of the Sélune River. Although his victory was a small one, this Treveur an Louarn had been a powerful and faithful servant of Fulk's interests in Brittany, but he was disagreeing with his lord on what to do with Normandy. He actually wanted to give it back. Treveur was an idealist, as well as a sort of medieval nationalist, and Fulk was greedy, and the two had a fight and Treveur killed Fulk. This left Anjou with a succession crisis, since Fulk was childless at the time of his death, and his pregnant wife, Hildegarde de Beaugency was but the daughter of a sire, one Sire Lancelin II de Beaugency. There was a distant claim to Anjou in Aquitaine, another in Robert I of Burgundy, and an even closer one in Hawiz, Duchess of Brittany.
The audacity of what this lowly baron had done was a very shocking moment to every noble in France. Treveur was not a member of the primarily ethnically French nobility of Brittany, but instead, a lowly Celt who had risen in the ranks solely by the merits of his actions, which was a controversial idea at the time. His rise came during the conflicts of Fulk and Hawiz over western Brittany, and because of his victories against the duchess and her husband, which were accomplished largely through guerilla tactics once he came into a position of command (hence the name al Louarn, meaning “the fox”), he came into a spot of respect amongst his fellow barons and knights. So, while the forces of Anjou might have outnumbered him, Treveur was a superior tactician and they knew it, especially when the previously inefficient leader and former Count of Anjou, Geoffrey III le Barbu was released from prison to prevent Anjou from becoming the same kind of power vacuum that Normandy had. Although Geoffrey had no interest in anything but securing his own borders and control of his county, since he was not particularly in mourning over the death of the brother who had imprisoned him, his mother, Ermengarde of Anjou, was an aunt of the king, Philip, by her marriage to his uncle, Robert I of Burgundy, and thus had the young king's ear. She wanted revenge for her son's death, and the king's robber uncle supported her, hoping that Geoffrey might get himself killed, passing Anjou into his hands. The king, fearing the situation of a rising Celtic nobility and wanting Normandy officially subjugated under the control of the Kingdom of France, decided that pulling Anjou's armies out of Normandy was not the best course of action, and that Geoffrey would stay and fight.
Geoffrey, an ineffective leader and not one fraction of the tactician that Treveur was, met several defeats in Normandy has Treveur gathered Norman knights (and some of the remaining barons) and used the same guerilla tactics he had against Hawiz. Geoffrey himself was not killed, but his defeats in this winter war were enough to demoralize his troops (who were not loyal to him in the first place), bringing French interests in Normandy to a stalemate in the County of Maine. Of course the pressure on Philip to solve the Normandy problem was not all coming out of France. The Pope, Alexander II, was unnerved by the situation in England (he had after all, made quite the fool of himself), as he was in the process of trying to consolidate a more centralized papacy. If he wanted a strong, central papacy, then he needed more strong bulwarks that would cast their support behind him if he ever wanted to see his reforms realized. France had the potential to be that kind of bulwark, but in order to do so, France needed to organize itself, and these autonomous, unstructured northern duchies just didn't do in his eyes. Also, and more importantly perhaps, Pope Alexander II wanted the French Normans out of the picture to prove God's displeasure with how William had conducted his campaign so that eyes would not be turned in his direction for being wrong. If he could get everyone on the continent at least to quit asking why William had lost while his army carried a papal banner, then he could garner some more support for his reforms (which he would be doing without Hildebrand of Sovana). Even though Robert was a loyal young Catholic, and indeed a candidate for sainthood in his martyrdom, the pope was happy that he was dead, and wanted his family to just simply disappear.




This additional pressure from the pope, who urged local bishops to preach from their pulpits of the will of God being the punishment of the Normans and all who supported them (including those nasty Breton barons that the French were having trouble defeating), and that it was the responsibility of the French to act as the agents of God in this matter. It was a crusade without official declaration of a crusade, and the French dukes and counts along the Norman/Breton border were eating up every minute of it, with the exception of Geoffrey, who due to his weakness needed to be replaced. Poor Geoffrey, he had only inherited Anjou because his uncle had died childless, and he had already been imprisoned once by his brother, and now the King of France himself was calling for his replacement. Of course, as a good Catholic, acting in the agency of the pope, Philip knew that he could not invade Anjou, since that would be counter productive in the first place. So, he staged the killing of Geoffrey in a “Breton raid”, and imprisoned him again – this time, he would not be getting out. Philip officially replaced him with the onset of summer in 1069 with Lancelin II de Beaugency as regent, while his daughter, Hildegarde, awaited the birth of her child, which everyone was anticipating to be a son that would be raised during his grandfather's regency. On the contrary, Hildegarde gave birth to a girl, who would not be named for her father's mother, Ermengarde of Anjou, as she was in our timeline, but instead given the name of Lyobsinde. The situation was unstable, since Philip was trying to keep Anjou within the bloodline of Fulk Nerra, but the fact that Hildegarde had given birth to a girl left the rulership of Anjou in competition by her father's younger brother, Jean de la Fleche. But Philip was confident in his decision temporarily, given the fact that Lancelin II was childless, even though his brother Jean de la Fleche had an 8 year old son, Helie, the brothers were rumored to be close, and so war between the two was unlikely. In point of fact, they seemed much more likely to efficiently lead the armies of Anjou against Normandy cooperatively against the Celtic guerillas. Furthermore, Philip sent emissaries to Hawiz of Brittany and her husband Hoël, asking them to form an alliance with Anjou so as to cooperate in the war effort, promising the couple the Contentin, Avranches, Martain, and Bayeux in return. While the offer might have been tempting under other circumstances, the troops of Anjou had worked in unison with Treveur and his barons against the duchess and driven them from Nantes, Retz, Donges, Dinan, Penthievre, Porhoët, Poher, and Trégor. Despite her earlier plights to the king, he had ignored her, but now all of the sudden, he wanted her help – he could burn in hell as far as she was concerned.
Instead, Hawiz turned to England with a more expanded offer than Philip had given her: she was willing to cede all of Normandy to England in exchange for their help against France. England had no real quarrel with France though, their only quarrel had been with Normandy, and the way Harold saw it: had he wanted Normandy, he could have taken it in 1068. Harold didn't want Normandy, he just wanted to see it burn. What became of it was not his concern. Besides, he was now busy with all the things that a king does when he's not on expensive foreign adventures, like the economy and other matters pertaining to the internal structure of his country. Hawiz was on her own, and so was Philip: the two would be fighting a single enemy, but not cooperatively, in theory anyways.
The young French king's plans at silencing the Normans were foiled when William VIII of Aquitaine, recently divorced from his wife, demanded Hildegarde's hand in marriage. This was an unanticipated move, since Hildegarde was kind of plain, but her marriage would oust her father as regent and bring Anjou under the dominion of Aquitaine, which had recently acquired Gascony and Poitou. Fearing the growing power of the Duke of Aquitaine, Philip tried to make arrangements with the Count of Nevers to offer his daughter, the considerably more beautiful young Ermengarde, who was already betrothed to Hubert I of Beaumont, but he would hear none of it – Ermengarde would be the next Countess of Beaumont. It seemed Philip did not have as much control over his vassals as he had previously thought, and with the Normans reorganizing under the influence of Treveur al Louarn and William FitzOsbern, it seemed that the reign of the House of Capet might soon be cut short. Desperate to assert himself, Philip turned to his stepfather, Ralph III of Valois, to use his silver tongue in whatever way he could to repair the situation. Ralph went to the Kingdom of Navarre in search of a bride for the greedy Duke of Aquitaine, where he found a young Ermesinda Gartzia still single. Her brother, Antso IV of Navarre, fearing the influence she held in his court, feared that should she marry William VIII of Aquitaine, that Navarre might become yet another possession of the duchy, so he declined. There were other Spanish brides to be had however, and Urraca of Zamora was at the forefront, herself proposing marriage in the hopes of keeping her ever ambitious brother Sancho II el Fuerte, in check with the agreement of inheritance that their father had laid out. Upon arriving at her court in Zamora, Ralph saw that she was actually quite beautiful, and seeing the dynastic situation unfolding the way it was, he thought she would be a most excellent choice for William, as she would keep him distracted with adventures in Spain.
Now, upon the arrival of Ralph III of Valois personally in Toulouse to carry news of the Lady of Zamora's proposal of marriage, William was all of the sudden made more powerful (albeit completely by accident) by his rivals in the north. Of course, since he saw alliances with the kingdoms in Iberia as greatly important, and in our own timeline he married all of his daughters to Iberian kings, he happily accepted. However marrying Urraca de Zamora carried some unforeseen and certainly unintended consequences. First of all, William by no means fancied himself as entitled to anything south of the Pyrenees, and he certainly was not about to throw his time and his money into an expensive campaign to displace the already well-grounded Castilian nobility, that was firmly behind Sancho II el Fuerte. It didn't really strike him as a profitable endeavor. However, what did tickle his fancy, was cementing himself to the existing kingdoms of Castile, León, and Galicia, by marrying her, therefore putting him in possession of three allies that the other French nobles didn't have, thereby heightening the intimidation of the French king, and potentially forcing him to withdraw Lancelin II de Beaugency as count-regent of Anjou.




Of course, things in reality were not as simple as they seemed. Sancho had engaged in a border skirmish with his brother Alfonso VI the previous year at the Battle of Llantada, due probably in part to Alfonso's exacting of tribute from the Taifa of Batalyos, and also because his inheritance had wound up being considerably smaller. Sancho felt threatened when he heard the news of his sister's engagement to the Duke of Aquitaine. Aquitaine had recently inherited Gascony and Poitou, which had doubled the size of the Duchy. This intimidated him, since he and his cousin Sancho Remíriz d'Aragón had reduced the Kingdom of Navarre to a mere county in the War of the Three Sanchos, leaving little resistance between Castile and Aquitaine should William decide to be as ambitious as Sancho. William wasn't of course, but that didn't stop Sancho from convincing Alfonso to unite against their sister to stop her from going to Toulouse. William, was angry, but unless he wanted to go to war in the high Pyrenees against Navarre, there wasn't anything he could do to stop it. His marriage was going to have to wait until the situation had resolved itself. So, William decided that instead of chasing after his lovely Spanish fiancee or demanding the hand of the simple Hildegarde de Beaugency, he'd just take Anjou, without a dynastic marriage, without papal approval, without anything – he was acting in his own interests. He was actually in a position to have his way as well. He was in control of the largest duchy in France, commanded the largest army, and he was an uncle to the young Holy Roman Emperor, Heinrich IV, and had his ear should things go south. However, before bloodshed could ensue, Ralph III of Valois met with him in Anjou with orders from the king to cede the county to him on the conditions that he would A) aid in the fight against Treveur al Louarn and the Normans, and B ) agree to the betrothal of any future son of his to Hildegarde de Beaugency's daughter, Lyobsinde d'Anjou. William, who could afford the war more than the counts of France, happily accepted – Lancelin de Beaugency would return home to his seigneury with his daughter and grand-daughter. The only problem with the agreement was that Lyobsinde was already born, and William as of yet did not have a son, only a daughter, Agnes, whom he had formerly been considering giving to Alfonso VI before he had set himself on marrying Alfonso's sister. So, while he took his armies against the Normans and Bretons, he sent emissaries to Italy, in hopes that an Italian suitor would strengthen his already good relations with the Holy Roman Empire, as he was beginning to fancy himself something of an overlord in France.
But as the year of 1069 came to a close, something happened that would change the face of the war: Robert the Frisian was killed in the same battle that claimed his brother's life, Baldwin IV, which meant Flanders was going to a young, impulsive, and hormonal ruler – Arnulf III, Baldwin's 15 year old son. Arnulf, upset at the death of his father, pursued Robert's family into Holland, where he captured his step-cousin Dirk V with the help of Wilhelm I, Bishop of Utrecht, and exiled him and his mother, Gertrude of Saxony to Denmark. After securing his claim over Flanders and dividing Holland with Wilhelm I of Utrecht, he turned his attention to his cousins' plight in Normandy. Now, if anyone in Europe had balls at this particular point in history, which was the Christmas of 1069, it was little Arnulf III of Flanders.
Immediately he called the pope out in two ways. First of all, if God had condemned his uncle, William of Normandy for pillaging the English coast during his invasion, then why had God not been on the Normans' side when Harold returned the favor in 1068? Why exactly had Normandy fell, with the rape of her women (including her duchess), and the death of her heir, yet England prevailed?Furthermore, why had the pope not at the very least excommunicated Harold Godwinson for his actions, and for allowing the Duchess of Normandy, Arnulf's aunt to be swindled away as Morcar of Northumbria's war prize? Why was the pope so concerned with making Normandy disappear, when Normandy had been so horribly wronged? If Pope Alexander II was so vehemently against simony, then why was he able to be bought with French support of his reforms?


All of these questions coming out of a 15 year old boy.




Of course these questions, no matter whose mouth they were coming out of, proved very valid to the German nobility, who up until this point had been very split over the Investiture Controversy. The pope of course had a very simple explanation: England's raid on Normandy was God's wrath for William's sacrilege in carrying a papal banner to England and then shitting on everything that such a banner stood for. But Pope Alexander II at this point had seriously done himself in. His explanation was only bought by a fraction of the German nobility, while the others wanted to know just when rape and murder were acceptable in the eyes of the pope, and why then, was he issuing these banners out to the French, who were pillaging and murdering in Brittany? The pope was now talking out of both sides of his mouth, and rapidly losing vital support in Germany and Italy for his reforms. So, because the pope was obviously a politically interested dickweed, young Heinrich IV called the Reichstag (Imperial Diet) to a historic meeting in Bamberg at what would come to be called the First Council of Bamberg, to discuss what was to be done. While the discussion veered off in a number of directions, one thing was definitely for sure in the minds of most of those attending: they needed a new pope. Several supporters of Alexander II declared that they would vote against any anti-pope that the council should elect, however they were in the minority. Most agreed that Alexander didn't have the divine spark for the job, but people were much more divided as to who was to be the next pope. While Henry IV would have liked to put someone with more political interests on the papal throne, the situation was calling for something a little more sincere. Alexander had proved himself to be a massive ass hypocrite, so the question at hand was not whether or not the church gets to appoint its clergy, but whether or not the Germans were going to continue to appoint people with clear political agendas. Two important decisions came out of this meeting at Bamberg:

1. Sieghard of Beilstein, who was at the time the Patriarch of Aquileia, was appointed as Pope Rufinus by the Reichstag.
2. Because Alexander's claim to the papacy was now officially invalid, so was France's war with Normandy. In fact, because France, acting as an agent of the evil Pope Alexander II, it was evil itself, and had to be stopped.


Now from here on, there were a number of interesting developments, some of which I think need to revise. Also, I just moved to Denver from Hawai'i, and the Open Office document that this file is in is on my PC. I am yet to download into Drop Box...

But uh... thoughts?
 
Last edited:
This looks pretty good. You've done a lot of work. Avoid gimmicks and this will run well, I think.

Seeing the advantages in heavy cavalry, Harold decided to start training his huscarls to fight on horseback, who become England's first heavy cavalry unit. Of course, Harold himself is no heavy cavalry expert, but he has kept one such expert alive – Hugh de Grandmesnil. Hugh de Grandmesnil was one of William of Normandy's great supporters, but after Hastings, he would forever go down in history as Hugh the Traitor for his services to King Harold II.

I hardly think so. His liege lord is dead, and he's free to accept a new liege. Lots of medieval figures changed allegiances without being regarded as traitors.
Now, having dealt with the two major threats external to the islands, Harold wanted to launch a counter invasion of Normandy...

To what end? England cannot conquer or hold Normandy.

Elsewhere, there were rather more dramatic changes. Pope Alexander II had given mild support to the Norman cause (the support was hardly full-blown, but he did say words to the effect that if William could win, it would probably be a good thing, and gave him a consecrated banner). That banner was now in English hands, and caused a lot of questions in religious circles.

This begged the question...

NO NO NO!

To "beg a question" is to presume a particular answer to the question without asking it.

For instance, asking "Where did John hide the money?" assumes that John had the money.

In this case, the circumstance invited the question.


if God was on William's side, how could he lose? Yet lose he did.

If Harold could capture a consecrated banner, what good was a consecrated banner?

The English had not sought the support of the Pope, and won. William had, and lost.

This posed a number of problems, and raised questions that the Pope really did not want raised, nor did he want to have to answer.

Except this outcome was no big deal. Previous Popes had intervened in secular conflicts many times, and very often the side the Pope favored lost. No one thought that undermined the Pope's authority - which was quite limited anyway.

In England, there was a definite growth in general feeling of antipathy towards the Pope - who had backed William and lost. The general feeling was that the Pope, the Vicar of Christ and God's representative to mankind, had got it wrong; this led to the inexorable conclusion that the Vicar of Christ was not always right.

Old news. Very old news. Just 18 years earlier, Pope Benedict IX was deposed for the third time. He was just one of several dissolute Popes in that period.
 
@Rich, you forgot to mention that Anglo-Saxon England did have Cavalry, despite their Infantry-centric tactics. It was in another thread; there is linguistic and pictorial evidence for mounted warriors before the Norman Invasion.
 
I love the idea of a timeline that will include ATL English.

I do agree with Rich and others that there's no reason for Harold to invade Normandy, even more so if Willliam is dead.
At best there'll be a few punitive raids on the coast.
 
So, because the pope was obviously a politically interested dickweed

Subscribed for this alone.

I agree with Rich, though, that William's failure under the papal banner wouldn't necessarily be a big deal. The medieval popes were very political, and the noble class from which many of them came had no illusions about their holiness. Also, papal infallibility didn't become doctrine until 1870, so there wouldn't automatically be religious ramifications if the pope wrongly proclaimed a holy war.

Of course, there would be political ramifications, and if a 15-year-old boy who hasn't yet learned cynicism raises questions about the Pope's conduct, and if those questions are convenient to certain nobles who oppose the pope (or oppose other nobles whom the pope favors), then then the Norman invasion and its aftermath might become a big deal...
 

Zirantun

Banned
Shit in a bag... this is an active forum. The only other forum of which I'm a member is Speculative Evolution, and it can't boast a fraction of the active users that this one can. I could post a topic and, depending on what section of the forum it was in, it might still be at the top of the list by this time the next day...

Thank you guys by the way for replying.

To what end? England cannot conquer or hold Normandy.

To see it burn. He's not interested in conquering it, he just wants to make sure that the Normans will be so busy trying to keep people like Fulk Nerra and the House of Capet out of Normandy that they won't have time to invade England again for awhile. Didn't William kind kind of throw his full force into Normandy? I haven't been able to find a lot of material on the specifics of Norman politics at the time. Wherever I read about the contestors of William's title as Duke, it just says there were "contestors"...


I hardly think so. His liege lord is dead, and he's free to accept a new liege. Lots of medieval figures changed allegiances without being regarded as traitors.

True, but Grandmesnil's changed allegiances in this case almost destroy Normandy. I am aware that the Saxons did have cavalry but as someone else in here said, they had very infantry-centric tactics. When Grandmesnil changes allegiances at the point of a sword for the Godwinsons, this signifies a major shift in English military tactics, and military tactics across the whole of the British Isles as Harold's friends marry his daughters and come to visit and observe.

I see a lot of criticism about the pope thing too. I had also thought about this, since popes were dickheads at the time. However, I had thought that the situation might be a little bit different because of the budding Investiture Controversy and the reforms and all. Wouldn't Alexander II have wanted to appear sincere? His relationship with much of the German nobility was already pretty strained, and if things were to go as disastrous as I've laid them out to have gone, wouldn't it call for an anti-pope?
 
To see it burn. He's not interested in conquering it, he just wants to make sure that the Normans will be so busy trying to keep people like Fulk Nerra and the House of Capet out of Normandy that they won't have time to invade England again for awhile. Didn't William kind kind of throw his full force into Normandy? I haven't been able to find a lot of material on the specifics of Norman politics at the time. Wherever I read about the contestors of William's title as Duke, it just says there were "contestors"...

Would not invading unite all the internal contestors against this "Conqueror" from across the Channel?
Would not harrying the Norman ports while they fight among themselves be more effective?
I don't recall contempory sources portraying Harold as a "let's burn them to the ground" kind of character. He's always portrayed as a very noble christian rather than a bastard crusader.

(welcome to the forum by the way ;))
 

Zirantun

Banned
Lol thanks.

And a noble Christian? Was there even such a thing at the time? lol.

It probably would've been. But I still think it would've been important to burn Caen.
 
To see Normandy burn is as good an explanation as any. People have conducted similar actions for less. It would serve to destroy the logistical base of the most likely invader and in the process serve to bind the English nobility closer to Harold. Nothing like a season of looting and pillaging for that sort of thing in this era, as was said in the post those ships returning to England were not empty of cargo.

One of the consequences of this is that England remains oriented toward Scandinavia during this period as opposed to shifting towards France as in OTL. Some large cultural butterflies there.

Also an earlier reformation? :eek:
 

Zirantun

Banned
Yes, an earlier reformation is the plan. My dad and I are going to do the whole drop box thing tonight or tomorrow so I can edit and update you guys.

I had wanted the whole escapade to break up the Church entirely, at least temporarily. If Heinrich IV is able to replace Alexander II with an anti-pope in his favor, England would still be considered outside of the grace of God and Harold would be at the very least excommunicated for his raiding of Normandy. This would then create a divisive sentiment between Rome and the English clergy, since it was William the Bastard FitzRobert who had first raided and attempted to take the throne of England after they had elected their own king according to their own laws.
 
To see Normandy burn is as good an explanation as any. People have conducted similar actions for less. It would serve to destroy the logistical base of the most likely invader and in the process serve to bind the English nobility closer to Harold. Nothing like a season of looting and pillaging for that sort of thing in this era, as was said in the post those ships returning to England were not empty of cargo.

One of the consequences of this is that England remains oriented toward Scandinavia during this period as opposed to shifting towards France as in OTL. Some large cultural butterflies there.

Or, as England was the wealthiest and most sophisticated kingdom in Northern Europe at that time, instead of being oriented to Scandinavia, it develops its own orbit and drags other nations down to it.
 
Yes, an earlier reformation is the plan. My dad and I are going to do the whole drop box thing tonight or tomorrow so I can edit and update you guys.

I had wanted the whole escapade to break up the Church entirely, at least temporarily. If Heinrich IV is able to replace Alexander II with an anti-pope in his favor, England would still be considered outside of the grace of God and Harold would be at the very least excommunicated for his raiding of Normandy. This would then create a divisive sentiment between Rome and the English clergy, since it was William the Bastard FitzRobert who had first raided and attempted to take the throne of England after they had elected their own king according to their own laws.

Weren't excommunications handed out and cancelled like candy? Wasn't Phillip of Spain also excommunicated a couple times?
 

Zirantun

Banned
To my knowledge, excommunication was not a common practice at the time. When Heinrich IV was excommunicated by Gregory VII, he had to walk all the way to Rome barefoot to beg the pope's forgiveness after having lost the support of his nobles because of it.

In this particular situation, Harold is excommunicated for assuring English sovereignty after having been elected by the Witan, which was also composed of clergy. This would in theory put the bishops in England in disagreement with the Bishop of Rome. They did after all choose Harold. So, are they just supposed to get rid of him, and potentially plunge a now stable nation into civil war because of the pope's political agendas? Or, maybe they can elect their own anti-pope, and run their own church out of England until Rome gets her affairs in order.
 
To my knowledge, excommunication was not a common practice at the time. When Heinrich IV was excommunicated by Gregory VII, he had to walk all the way to Rome barefoot to beg the pope's forgiveness after having lost the support of his nobles because of it.

In this particular situation, Harold is excommunicated for assuring English sovereignty after having been elected by the Witan, which was also composed of clergy. This would in theory put the bishops in England in disagreement with the Bishop of Rome. They did after all choose Harold. So, are they just supposed to get rid of him, and potentially plunge a now stable nation into civil war because of the pope's political agendas? Or, maybe they can elect their own anti-pope, and run their own church out of England until Rome gets her affairs in order.

This is more likely to cause a schism than a reformation, with the memory of 1054 so close you could see the English Archbishop being declared the equal of the Pope and Patriarch of Constanople.
 
Top