John Brompton

His memorable line is that no ship ever brought England such misery, and he doesn't say what he's most often credited with saying.

A much later compiler named John Brompton claimed Malmesbury reported that William Adeline had threatened, if he ever became king, to make the English pull the plow like oxen.

That sentence appears nowhere in Malmesbury, and it's a later invention that's been repeated ever since.

This was, in essence, a later attempt to make the entire White Ship disaster look like a bout of good fortune for England, which is ironic, since this disaster led to something called the Anarchy.

Oh, right.

And he's sometimes called William Etheling in other chroniclers.

So that is to denote him as a legitimate prince and a legitimate claimant to the throne.

Rex, fact.

Yes, keep him.

It's croissants.

There's no other source to suggest anything along those lines, and it's very common for chroniclers and obviously monks to interpret human disasters through the lens of divine vengeance.

Also, maybe just a sense that when tragedies happen, you have to explain it somehow.