William I the Conqueror

From the north came others.

Robert, the Duke of Normandy, was the eldest son of William the Conqueror, a brave and likeable man, but a poor manager of his own affairs.

To raise money for the journey, he mortgaged the entire Duchy of Normandy to his younger brother, the King of England, for 10,000 marks of silver, which gives some sense of what these men were willing to stake on the venture.

Robert, the Count of Flanders, joined as well, a seasoned warrior whose father had served the Byzantine Emperor.

And there was Stephen of Blois, one of the richest men in France, married to a daughter of William the Conqueror, a cultured and somewhat reluctant crusader who would write home long, Vivid letters to his wife, and who would, in time, become the great cautionary tale of the expedition.

Hugh of Vermandois, brother of the French king, rounded out the company, bringing royal blood, if not royal authority.

Here it is worth pausing to look more closely at the world these men came from, because the army marching east was, in miniature, a portrait of medieval European society itself.

And so we had a substitute teacher who was a teacher I knew from another class.

And And because she thought that it'd be easier, she said, oh, well, why don't you just write a story for this period while I'm covering you? So I wrote a story called 1002, A Space Oddity, with time-traveling aliens who came down and affected, they came down to Earth a little bit before the Battle of Hastings and the advent of William the Conqueror and affected that whole timeline.

And I would have been seven at the time.

And my teacher told me not to make things so complicated, which still annoys me to this day.

Yeah, well, it is an extraordinary story.

I mean, my podcast starts with the Norman invasion, William the Conqueror, King William I, which is where the modern royal family draws their line back to.

And it's a family saga.

You can follow the same family forever.

Isn't that roughly when the royal family began? Was it 1066 or 1088 or something

like that? Yeah, 1066 is when William the Conqueror crosses from Normandy, crosses the English Channel, and he becomes king, ends the Anglo-Saxon period.

So he

was a Frenchman?

And he was one of those guys, he's named Edward the Confessor because he was so religious.

He loved to go to confession.

And so apparently William the Conqueror says that Edward promised it to me on his deathbed.

He told me that the crown would be mine.

that coast.

William the Conqueror stopping by for a short visit back in 1066 BC.

What

must have that been like?

That's because I love a good mackerel.

Who doesn't in this day and age,

Claire? William the Conqueror famously hated mackerel.

You know, there is a legend.

I mean, it's kind of weird to say, considering he's a grown-ass man, he shouldn't be living with his parents, but I guess that's neither here nor there for now.

But really, you're going to bring these people into your home and let them sit on the throne? I'm sure William the Conqueror is very, very happy about that.

He's not rolling over in his grave.

The source suggested that Maxwell was familiar with the palace and knew her way around.

So old boys getting it from both ends, right? He's catching heat from both ends, both sides of the pond now.

Where are you going to go? What, are you going to go run away and hide with one of your arms dealer friends in Buran or something? Because that's the next step for this dude.

I'm telling you right now, if this was the old days, and we're talking about the Tudors or the Plantagenets or William the Conqueror, bro, this guy would have been sent to the furthest flungs of the empire.

Would have been put in London Tower until nobody ever saw him again.

All right.

But we're not here to talk about the Vikings or the Battle of Clontarf or William the Conqueror or Strongbow because that's why those things aren't in my notes.

And I'm bad at memorizing dates.

St. Mikan's is a small church.

Welcome back to the Great Company making its stand on the bank of a river, facing what appears to be a last roll of the dice by the Orc Chief as he commits himself and his hearthguard to one great charge.

Is this like William the Conqueror's last cavalry charge at Hastings? Or is it more despot throwing his life away and that of his followers because he cannot bear to live defeated? Round 8.

Spell declarations.

Umbert declares Ventriloquism.