They call me the first English king, although I came from France
Normandy (French: Normandie) is a region of north-west France, given by the French King in the 9th century to a group of Viking raiders to settle in. It takes its name from these settlers ("North Men" -> "Norman" -> Normandy). The first Duke of Normandy was a man named Rollo (Hrólfr in his native tongue, Old Norse), a Norsenote chieftain who had fought numerous campaigns against the French — raiding up and down the Seine and frequently menacing Paris, besieging the city at least once — before finally being decisively defeated in battle in 911. Rollo agreed to be baptized and become a vassal to the French king, and in exchange received the lands that would become the Duchy of Normandy (which not coincidentally were the lands surrounding the lower reaches of the valley of the Seine as it approached the English Channel, i.e. the same route Vikings such as Rollo used to raid inland) as a fiefdom. Although subordinate to France and its king, by the 11th century it was for all intents a powerful and autonomous state of its own, with the Duke of Normandy being a respected statesman. Throughout 11th century, the Dukes of Normandy would develop trade, military, and kinship ties with one of their nearest neighbors: the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of England.
In January 1066, Harold Godwinson was elected King of England by the Witan (a council of high ranking nobles and religious leaders), following the death of King Edward the Confessor of The House of Wessex, who begot no children. The election result failed to meet with the approval of one William, Duke of Normandy, who claimed that Edward, his first cousin once-removed note , had promised the throne to him several years earlier.note In October of that same year, the then-Duke William added the Throne of England to his territories in what came to be known as the Norman Conquest, ending the era of Anglo-Saxon dominance in that country and beginning a two hundred year period where England was ruled by either Frenchmen or French-influenced disloyal vassals, depending on your level of Francophilia or Francophobia; Henry III, an Angevin, being the first to begin identifying more as English than "a Norman who happens to rule Normandy and England". 1066 typically marks the Year Zero of 'modern' England: what is now the common starting place in history lessons to start learning about the monarchy, and the point where cultural customs, politics, economics, and the nation's language itself all changed swiftly and dramatically. The Norman dynasty lasted until 1154, where the King more closely identified himself as an Angevin "Plantagenet" monarch. William and his heirs, however, still held French land and therefore owed fealty to the French king. This would cause endless problems in the years to come.
The Norman rule of England is credited with starting a divide between its English aristocracy who became Normanized (French speaking, with Norman titles) and the English lower classes, in a way that didn't exist in Anglo-Saxon England. While Anglo-Saxon England was filled with slavery and hierarchy of castes between slave and freemen, the nobles and the subjects spoke the same kind of English and lived closer to their community, or at least were perceived to be such. On the other hand, Norman lords lived in castles fortified to protect them from peasant uprisings (which it did do very well until the English Civil War saw the destruction of most of the Norman castles) and were more openly aristocratic in reminding peasants of their place in society. William and his successors also did their best to ensure that the lords' holdings were widely dispersed across the kingdom, especially for the most powerful magnates, as a means to limit their ability to build a local power base that could challenge the Crown; this had the desired effect, but also served to further distance lords from the people, as the lords had to travel great distances across the country to keep an eye on their property. While the Normans ended slavery, they also replaced it with serfdom, liberating slaves while also reducing freedmen to a lower social status than existed in Anglo-Saxon England. The introduction of French among the nobility and the influx of Norman words into the English language led to a separation of classes in terms of language. Thus it became common to speak of the "Norman Yoke" of nobility over the Anglo-Saxon lower classes in later centuries.
The Norman conquest also coincided with the rise of The House of Dunkeld in Scotland to the north: Malcolm III had been an ally of The House of Wessex (his consort Queen Margaret was a granddaughter of King Edmund Ironside) and fought with William and William Rufus off-and-on for decades, leading to his death in battle in 1093. His son King David I was partially raised in the Norman court and used Norman customs as the main basis for an extensive reform and modernization program, made many Norman nobles and knights into Scottish lords, and backed Empress Matilda, his niece, during the Anarchy. He subsequently made a Norman-Breton knight named Walter Fitzalan the hereditary High Steward of Scotland; he went on to be the forebear of The House of Stuart.
Note that the regnal numbers given below are anachronistic. Norman kings were known by their first name and a sobriquet, either a nickname or their place of birth. Regnal numbers were assigned by law clerks only in the time of Edward III. Each king's most common sobriquet is listed here after his Consort.
William I of England, Duke of Normandy
Called Guillaume in his own Norman French tongue, he was a bastard in both magnificent and literal terms: the illegitimate son of Robert I of Normandy and a tanner's daughter (at one siege, his foes hung tanned hides from the battlements to mock him – not very wisely in the long run, since he chopped off both hands and both feet of every member of the garrison once he captured the place). His father died when he was eight, and he would spend the next twenty years involved in the battles between various French vassal states, as well as fighting Norman nobles who thought "Duke" sounded pretty good in front of their own names.
He married Matilda of Flanders, at least in part to secure his northeastern border and shore up his English credentials (she counted Alfred the Great as an ancestor); according to some, she spurned the bastard duke at first, leading to William allegedly throwing her off her horse by her hair and pimp-slapping her. She agreed to marry him immediately afterwards, defying a papal ban to do so - although this may have been a story made up by writers of the time to bolster the image of their marriage (at the time it was thought that women liked violent enough men). Still, their marriage was not only a political success but also a personal one. They truly loved each other unlike most other royal couples throughout history and she became a dutiful and reliable partner to him. She bore him four sons which shored up his reign and was entrusted to rule in his stead for him while he was away. Despite his descendants’ reputation for licentiousness, it would seem he remained faithful to her throughout the roughly thirty years they were married. There is no record of him having a single mistress or bastard child. (His own status as a bastard might also have contributed to this.) Her death four years before his own is said to have devastated him; he supposedly gave up hunting (a favourite hobby of his) to mourn her death.
The Build-Up To Hastings
According to William's chroniclers, in 1051, King Edward the Confessor of England visited William, who was his first cousin once-removed. Edward had actually grown up in Normandy, exiled from England after the Throne was seized by the Danish King Canute (Cnut), and had been a bodyguard/regent for William until Canute's death opened a power vacuum and tempted him across the English Channel.
Edward had a problem named Godwin, Earl of Wessex. He had grown quite powerful under Canute, and during the struggle for the throne had Edward's older brother murdered. Despite this crime, Godwin was too powerful to remove, and Edward had to give him free rein, including accepting Godwin's daughter in marriage. Edward's chance came in 1051, where a dispute between Godwin and another noble allowed Edward to banish Godwin.
It's during this period that William says Edward visited him, and gave him a verbal assurance that William would receive the throne of England after his death. Given Edward's clear desire to keep the throne away from Godwin's family and William being by far the most powerful of Edward's own relatives, it's quite plausible that this promise could've really happened. Shortly after this Godwin came back with new supporters, regained his old power and ensured Edward was now under his thumb. Not that he got to enjoy it for long, because he died of a stroke in 1053.
This didn't let Edward off the hook though. Godwin's title went to his son Harold, and the Godwinson family was generally considered the most powerful family in England. However, Edward had his own card to play: Godwin had made him marry his daughter so there would eventually be a Godwinson on the throne, so Edward decided not to consummate the marriage. This naturally raised a question of succession: while father-to-son inheritance was not ironclad, it was the usual way things were done. To a casual observer, the answer was obvious: Harold Godwinson was handsome, popular, rich, had a cadre of loyal family members, and was already quite powerful.
Then, for reasons unknown to modern historians, Harold went to Normandy. His ship was apparently blown off course, and he was arrested in a vassal land of William. The Duke graciously showed leniency, invited Harold to take part in a campaign against another French vassal state and made him a knight of William's court. This involved Harold swearing an oath, which was Serious Business indeed. The contents of the oath are unclear, although William claimed it was to support William's claim to the throne when Edward died. To make the oath even more binding, William persuaded (tricked?) Harold into making it over a reliquary of a saint.
The reason much detail from this period is unclear is that, from Harold's visit to William right up to the end of the Battle of Hastings, our sole primary historical source is The Bayeux Tapestry: a giant 230ft (70m) embroidered strip of cloth preserved for hundreds of years in the Cathedral of the city of Bayeux in Normandy, probably commissioned (like the cathedral itself) in the immediate post-Conquest years by William's half-brother Bishop Odo. It should be noted that the tapestry features a comet, which appeared in the spring of 1066 and (as was commonplace at the time) was considered an ill omen for King Harold's reign. This comet, it would be discovered centuries later, was none other than Halley's Comet. The Tapestry is preserved in its own dedicated museum since 1983.
The Year of Three Kings – a.k.a. 1066 And All That
On January 5th, 1066, Edward died. The nobles of England had no trouble proclaiming Harold as the new King – especially after he did them such a nice favour, which shall be explained later.
William was not happy with this. Despite this, his nobles were not overly keen on a foreign invasion. This changed when William took his cause to The Pope, citing the broken oath, combined with stories about how Harold was defiling churches. It worked beautifully, and the Pope blessed his endeavours – and with spiritual rewards now added to the potential of land and riches, many flocked to William's (and the Pope's) banner. He raised an army, built a fleet and prepared to set sail for England. Harold wasn't sitting on his hands either. He too raised an army, equal in strength to William's, and waited.
And waited.
God didn't seem to want the fight to happen just yet, because the winds wouldn't allow William to set out across the English Channel. Two months passed, the maximum time under law that Harold could call up his conscripted farmers to fight. With the harvest due, Harold sent these men home.
He was right to feel uneasy about this, and to explain why we now need to explore why he was so strongly supported as king. He had the support from the powerful nobles of Northumbria, after getting rid of a pest in 1065. The pest was Tostig Godwinson, Harold's own brother, who during his ten-year reign as Earl of Northumbria had basically antagonised everyone in his lands with his taxes, murders of dissenting families, usage of Danish mercenaries as enforcers, frequent violations of the terms of the peace banner, and general bad qualities. Knowing their support would be useful when the time came to claim the throne, and fearing civil war if he backed his brother, Harold supported the nobles, and Tostig was exiled, but now, a few weeks after Harold demobilized his army, Tostig had returned, bringing in tow a thousand Scottish and Flemish mercenaries (he fled with a large fortune to Flanders, and the Scottish king was a personal friend) as well as three hundred longships carrying an army of ten thousand Horny Vikings, with the terrifying King of Norway Harald Hardrada coming to claim the throne through the line of Canute. The initially unenthusiastic Hardrada had been swayed by Tostig's pitch, and took England by surprise, butchering the outnumbered forces of Northumbria and Mercia mustered to meet him at the Battle of Fulford. Harold wasted no time, however. In a truly impressive feat of logistics, he force-marched from London to York, gathered his army as he marched and completely annihilated Tostig and Harald's forces at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, effectively ending the age of Viking raids on England.note
Which, of course, combined with the forces of Mercia and Northumbria being cut to pieces at Fulford, depleted his forces and them completely winded when it came for William's own subsequent invasion – which as luck (or divine providence) would have it, followed almost instantly on the heels of Stamford Bridge, as the winds in the Channel finally turned and swept his fleet across to the south coast of England. Harold, probably not believing his ears, promptly cobbled his army back into shape, swung them around and marched them right back down the country again: 241 miles (388 km) in a mere five days. Heroically, they managed to engage the Norman army almost straight off the boats, at the Battle of Hastings – and, astonishingly, almost won. Famously, at the crucial moment of greatest English initiative, William was driven back and feared lost – until, in a classic Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated moment, he raised the visor of his helmet to show his face and rally his troops.
Still the English fought on throughout the day; in an era when most military engagements were done and dusted in a couple of hours, the two sides battled nearly to a standstill for nine. As sunset approached, a halt would have been called for the night; with Harold able to call on reinforcements by morning, a remarkable second straight defensive victory would have been all but assured the next day. Knowing this, the Normans made one last cavalry charge supported by their archers, and Harold possibly/probably (the Tapestry is ambiguous) took an arrow through the eye, and was hacked down and killed. William was crowned King of England on 25 December 1066 at Westminster Abbey (the choice of date helped sell the notion of 1066 as a "Year Zero").
The Harrying of the North
William faced many rebellions to his conquest. The most significant one was from Anglo-Saxon holdouts led by Edgar Ætheling who retreated to the North of England (the territory that is now Yorkshire and neighboring counties). Edgar allied with Anglo-Saxons, Anglicized Danes, and even sent overtures to King Sweyn of Denmark, putting aside the old Wessex-Danelaw rivalry over what they recognized as a greater threat in the Franco-Normans. William laid siege to the North but was denied battle. The rebels hoped that William's army could be withered in attrition over the unfamiliar terrain of the North (where the roads at the time weren't as developed as in the South). William however decided to respond with complete brutality by introducing scorched earth tactics. He ordered farms destroyed, crops burnt, and lands to be made unusable. Anyone who resisted was brutally put down. This campaign came to be called "Harrying of the North". The word 'harry' in the Middle-English period meant to chase, hunt, trouble, plunder, and loot the enemy (the word "harried" in contemporary English still has this connotation). The effect of the harrying was that large parts of Northumbria was reduced to waste, people were reduced to the state of beggars in their own land, and with their crops burnt, became subject to famine. In military terms it was successful, and William was able to replace the Anglo-Saxon nobles in the North with Norman ones and Edgar Ætheling and other rebels fled in exile to the Continent.
The deprivations visited by William, punishing the regions of the rebel forces so that they may not provide any help to his enemies, wasn't too far from standard military procedures of the time, but the scale of the devastation appalled many contemporaries, even people aligned with William's factions. The Benedictine monk Orderic Vitalis, an Anglo-Norman said, "I have often praised William in this book, but I can say nothing good about this brutal slaughter. God will punish him." William was still warring as an old man, remaining strong though undeniably very podgy, as he had in his latter years developed quite a generous appetite for good wine and banquets, eventually dying from internal injuries from hitting the high pommel of his saddle while falling off his horse.
William's legacy in later centuries was always mixed. He was always respected as a founding figure for the English monarchy, and he was never hated. But he was never loved, nor was he heralded by latter day English statesmen as one of its great kings even if he transformed England in a way nobody did. It's been noted that a sign of this is the fact that while William claimed to be the inheritor to the English crown, the fact that the people called him "The Conqueror" indicated that most of his subjects didn't truly believe his claim was legitimate in any legal sense and that his crown was attained by force of arms. The "Harrying of the North" was a campaign that appalled his own contemporaries and most Englishmen balk at celebrating a man whose path to power was paved over the blood of large numbers of his own subjects. The one major positive of his reign was the end of slavery, a process that he significantly set in motion. This was slavery of the white Christian European kind to be sure (and for the ones who survived William's Conquest at any rate) and largely in the United Kingdom, and then later in Ireland. While William never passed a direct law abolishing slavery legally, he did pass a law banning the sale of English slaves abroad and in 1080 CE passed a law banning the sale of Christian slaves to "pagans and heathens". In this he was influenced by Lanfranc, the new Italian-born Archbishop of Canterbury who took over from Strigand, the pre-Conquest Archbishop who William deposed. Lanfranc had been William's tutor since his adolescence. In terms of actual practice, there are many accounts of the Harrying of the North that mention people selling themselves into slavery to avoid starvation. The Domesday book itself documents the existence of slavery in 1066 CE but entries in 1086 CE show the number of slaves as being reduced significantly. Of course some of this might just be due to their deaths in the Harrying of the North. Legally, slavery wasn’t made illegal in England even under ecclesiastical law until 1102, under the reign of William’s son Henry I, but most historians credit William for laying the groundwork in practice more than policy. Many dispute however if this was motivated by moral considerations or was simply instrumental or indirectly done as a result of economic and social changes, rather than any true moral inclination.
The Normans displaced the Anglo-Saxon nobility of their lands and titles and to better protect their new realm (principally from rebellions by the people it actually belonged to) they took to building castles (a method of fortification familiar to them in France but not quite known in similar scale and scope in Anglo-Saxon England at the same time). They built perhaps the most extensive castle network in Europe in the newly conquered England, and William commissioned the central keep (White Tower) and the Tower of London by which he could police and control the capital of his kingdom. Equally important is William commissioning what has come to be called the Domesday Book, a complex record of the kingdom's holdings conducted with the intention to provide the new King better knowledge on how to tax and extract wealth from his subjects along reasonable lines. The Domesday Book in later years came to be revered as the most complete record of Medieval England ever assembled, with data about villages, towns, and boroughs, that is still referred to by historians for knowledge about its time.
Fun fact: Every American President is provably descended from William the Conqueror—lyes, even Barack Obama (as well as 33% of people in the world with British ancestry).note
William II of England
Notably not the eldest son of the Conqueror, but Robert Curthose (who had rebelled against his father before, due to his brothers dumping a chamber pot on his head) was made Duke of Normandy instead and agreed to be heir presumptive to his younger brother. Will Jr. was an effective fighter and ruthless ruler (you had to be ruthless to be a strong king back then) but not beloved by his nobles.
He was named Rufus for his red-faced and maybe red-haired appearance (probably matching his temperament), and notoriously was killed in a hunting 'accident' in the New Forest. With a crossbow bolt in his lung. He is rumoured to have been pagan and/or gay.
It may be worth noting that his brother Henry was also part of that particular hunting party. And that William’s fellow hunters abandoned his body there - it was later retrieved for burial by the local people.
Contemporaries of William raised concerns about a court dominated by homosexuality and effeminacy, and while during his reign William himself was never openly accused of homosexuality, in the decades after his death numerous medieval writers spoke of this and a few began to describe him as a "sodomite". Whilst it's not possible to state with certainty whether William was gay or not, he never took a wife or a mistress or fathered any children. For that reason, the throne necessarily had to go to one of his brothers. The one who ultimately claimed it was...
Henry I of England
The youngest son of William the Conqueror. William apparently recognized Henry's commanding tendencies from the beginning, and bequeathed him cash rather than land holdings, acknowledging that Henry would soon end up with everything anyway. Henry quickly rode to Winchester to secure the treasury after his brother's death and was aided by Robert being far away, returning from the First Crusade. Among his arguments in favor of his accession to the English throne over Robert was "porphyrgeniture"—he argued that his claim was strongest since he was "born in the purple", i.e. born to William I while he was King of England. (If this sounds weird, note that it was well known in his time; in particular, The Byzantine Empire was known for preferring porphyrogennetoi to take the throne ahead of their older brothers, and Byzantine princesses "born in the purple" were prized over their older sisters as marriage prospects for princes across Europe.)
He granted a charter which would form the basis for future documents such as the Magna Carta, and undertook extensive legal and financial reforms during his reign.
Initially, Robert recognized Henry's rule in exchange for a yearly tribute. But an exiled English noble, Robert of Bellême, tried to stir up further dissent. This led to Henry invading Normandy, and beating his brother at the Battle of Tinchebray in 1106. Duke Robert was captured, and imprisoned in England until his death in 1134. Bellême would again try to forment rebellion with Duke Robert's son, William Clito, but was captured in England in 1112 and would also spend the rest of his life in prison, supposedly dying before Duke Robert did.
It should be noted that it was during Henry I's reign that he instituted the Exchequer, a table with a checkered cloth that was used to keep track of the royal finances. The earliest known use was during his reign, with continuous records existing from during Henry II's reign. It is the source of the Finance Minister of the United Kingdomnote being known as the "Chancellor of the Exchequer".
Married Edith (aka Matilda) of Scotland, one of the daughters of Malcolm III and Margaret of Wessex, thus linking his descendants to the pre-conquest House of Wessex royal line, as Edith was a granddaughter of Edward the Exile. Famous for having the largest number of bastards of any British king (at over 20, possibly as many as 25, still nothing on Walder Frey).note Only two legitimate children lived to adulthood, his son and heir dying in the White Ship disaster, whereupon he made his barons swear to serve his daughter, Matilda (Maude).
Stephen of England (de facto monarch)
Count of Boulogne, nephew of Henry and grandson of William I, he had an elder brother who luckily did not want to be a contender to the throne, which made Stephen (Etienne) the closest male candidate. He was nearly killed in the sinking of the White Ship
, which claimed Henry's only legitimate son, but left the ship before it sailed because—according to the chronicler Oderic Vitalis—he had a sudden bout of diarrhoea. Proclaimed himself king upon Henry's death, claiming the latter had changed his mind about his intended heir, and was given the support of most of the barons in a peaceful start to the reign.
Was not a very effective ruler; various explanations have been given for this, of which the most famous is that he was too much of a nice guy to stand up to the great lords and enforce order on the country. The magnates began to pursue various schemes for to enhance their own power and wealth, like building castles, generally at the expense of the people. (This is the account given by the Peterborough Chronicle, which calls Stephen "a gentle man, and soft and good", and describes in harrowing detail the depredations—including literal robbery and torture—the barons inflicted on the English people because the King had not the backbone to stop them.) Within a few years Matilda had gained enough support to contest her claim. His rule was marred by The Anarchy, a civil war running from 1139-1153 which severely diminished royal power. It ended when Matilda's son was named as heir instead of Stephen's. Though Stephen was of the House of Blois through his father, he is commonly included with the House of Normandy in lists.note
Empress Matilda of the Holy Roman Empire (de jure monarch)
Daughter of Henry I and his chosen heir — hence de jure (“by law”). Known as Empress Matilda from her previous marriage to Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor her name is also sometimes given as Maud or Maude, since at the time Maud and Matilda were considered the same name. She was an unpopular choice for ruler not only because of her sex, but because her second husband Geoffrey of Anjou was from a powerful French house who were the traditional enemies and rivals of the Dukes of Normandy. Was aided in her fight by her half brother (and past claimant), the illegitimate Robert, Earl of Gloucester, the eldest of Henry's bastards and a powerful captain and nobleman. Such was his importance to her fight that after her forces captured Stephen she later had to trade her rival back in return for Robert when he too was captured.
Ultimately Matilda's quest to establish herself as the first ruling queen of England ended in failure (and the country would have to wait another 400 years for one), but she had the last laugh in the long run: her son, Henry Curtmantle,note was made heir in 1153, ending the direct rule of the House of Normandy and ushering in The House of Plantagenet.
The war of "The Anarchy" saw the end of the male line of the House of Normandy, but the line of William the Conqueror continued in the female line and was inherited by The House of Plantagenet, who were also a Norman ruling family that spoke French as a first-language until the tail-end of the The Hundred Years War.
Depictions in fiction
- A young William appears in A Thing of Vikings, where he becomes Hiccup's friend and later adopted brother and is given sanctuary on Berk from assassination attempts.
- The opening of Les Visiteurs has Henry I Beauclerc chasing after King of France Louis VI the Fat and French knight Godefroy de Montmirail, with Louis having a quite chaste affair with Henry's niece. Henry punches the niece with his metal gauntlet on and kills the niece's maid with a crosswbow in rage when he learns of it.
- The War Lord takes place in the late 11th century and follows a Norman knight taking his place as the feudal lord of a village at the time of William the Conqueror and doing his best to fight Frisian raids off.
- William the Young Conqueror (2015), French film about the youth of William. He's portrayed by Dan Bronchinson.
The House of Normandy in literature:
- Brother Cadfael takes place during the Anarchy, and contains a lot of believable representations of the politics and personalities of the time.
- Rosemary Sutcliff's Dolphin Ring novels The Shield Rinh, Knight's Fee and The Witch's Brat take place during the reigns of William Rufus and Henry Beauclerc.
- The Last English King is a Historical Fiction novel that depicts the fall of Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest. The English are the protagonists, so William the Bastard who became Conqueror is depicted not just as a French Jerk but as The Sociopath and A Nazi by Any Other Name.
- The Pillars of the Earth spans the Anarchy and ends during Henry II's reign.
- The Stones of Green Knowe, the sixth and final book of The Green Knowe Chronicles, is set during the reign of Henry I.
- The Wild Hunt Trilogy span two generations of a feudal family during the reign of The House of Normandy.
Others:
- A Song of Ice and Fire portrays the Targaryens as a combine of both The House of Normandy and The House of Plantagenets, with Aegon the Conqueror being the analogue of William the Conqueror and the Dance of the Dragons a Succession Crisis between siblings Aegon II and Rhaenyra I like the Anarchy between Empress Mathilda and Stephen of Blois. Rhaenyra's son Aegon III eventually inherits the throne like Henry II Plantagenet.
- Cadfael, a TV adaptation of Brother Cadfael, is set in Shropshire during the Anarchy, and several episodes touch on the civil war. Stephen de Blois himself appears in the pilot episode "One Corpse Too Many" (played by Michael Grandage), having led his army to capture Shrewsbury from Empress Maud's forces. The plot of the episode is kicked off when Brother Cadfael realizes someone has concealed the Body of the Week amongst 94 of Maud's supporters whom Stephen executed.
- House of the Dragon follows its source material in adapting the backbone of this conflict (i.e. stand-ins for Matilda [the Princess Rhaenyra] against Stephen [Prince Aegon II])—albeit the aesthetics of the period is more akin to The Renaissance, to highlight how the apex of Targaryen rule would be broken and lead to the Medieval Stasis we see in the original show, Game of Thrones.
- King & Conqueror, a 2025 series that adapts the events of 1066 (though it plays quite fast and loose). It stars Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as William, James Norton as Harold and Clémence Poésy as Matilda of Flanders.
- Age of Empires II: The Conqueror has the Battle of Hastings as a Historical Battle, where you play as William the Conqueror in his conquest to claim the English throne.
- Crusader Kings:
- The original game has a bookmark for the Battle of Hastings, allowing you to start as William the Conqueror.
- The House of Normandy is playable in Crusader Kings II. William's ancestor Rollo exists as a landless courtier in Norway in 867 AD (as Hrolfr de Normandie, marshal to a Norse chief), and the two 1066 bookmarks bracket William's campaign for England. All three sides of the war are playable and there are achievements for succeeding as either Harald or William (as well as the little-known King Sweyn II of Denmark, who also had a claim but wasn't involved in the historical war). With the adjustable start date system, players can also start at a date where Henry was born.
- Crusader Kings III also features the House of Normandy, with the Fate of England bookmark focusing in particular on the Norman Conquest. Hrolfr de Normandie also reappears in the 867 start date, either as a landless courtier as before or (with the Roads to Power DLC enabled) as a landless adventurer leading a camp named the "Walkers of the North" (a reference to his nickname, "the Walker").
- The campaign of Medieval: Total War begins in 1087 with the Kingdom of England led initially by King William II. As is standard for the series, it is up to the player to decide what happens from there. The game's tutorial also uses the Battle of Hastings.
- Medieval II: Total War is much the same, though its Grand Campaign begins in 1080 with England led initially by William the Conqueror with Rufus as faction heir.
- Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? (1997): Case 5 takes the Time Police to 1086, where they're tasked to help William the Conqueror fight off a Saxon revolt after one of Carmen Sandiego's mooks stole the Domesday Book from him.
- OverSimplified did a Mini-Wars episode about the Battle of Hastings.
← Prior to these guys and the Norman Conquest was the Wessex Dynasty
→ After these guys, we're into the Plantagenet Dynasty