by Ed West
William’s great-great-great-grandfather Hrolfr, literally “wolf” (from which we get the name Rolf) hailed from Norway. A man apparently so big that he couldn’t fit on any horse and had to walk everywhere, Hrolfr was said to be descended from the Ynglings (“the fair-haired”), the oldest Scandinavian dynasty who could trace their mythical origins back to the earliest migrations. As part of the Frankish deal, Hrolfr accepted baptism and took the name Rollo, and within a short period the settlers had adopted the Latinate language of the Franks and became enthusiastic Christians.
The King of the Franks and “the duke of the pirates,” as the Norse leaders were contemptuously called by their neighbors for many years afterwards, had a difficult relationship. The idea of bending the knee was especially repugnant to Vikings, who prided themselves on their freedom. The story goes that when Hrolfr/Rollo was due to kiss the feet of King Charles he refused because he “never lowered the nape of his neck to any king”; instead he ordered one of his men to do so, but the man, also a giant by all accounts, was similarly reluctant to bend down and so lifted the king up, upending him. This story is probably not entirely true but reflects an aversion to kneeling or other forms of submission.
This pirate colony was not expected to survive, and that it did had much to do with their mastery of horses. Medieval mounts were much bigger than the animals used by Greeks or Romans, and it was the Parthians (of modern-day Iran) and Byzantines who began the development of big warhorses. However northern France was where horsebreeding was intensified, and as this part of western Europe was so bitterly contested, so it saw an arms race of larger and more aggressive animals as cavalry became the most effective form of warfare. The Normans bred a warhorse called the destrier, and pioneered a new and terrifying tactic, the cavalry charge.
Cavalry was an aristocratic concern since metal was very expensive and a Frankish soldier on horseback would carry fifty pounds of iron, “at a time when a forge might only produce 10 lb of iron over a two or three-day smelting process.”5 Because of this, these destriers had to be strong, and breeding horses for war took effort and energy partly because horses found battle stressful and often bolted. The Normans developed armor to protect the mounts, but also bred animals that were temperamentally better suited for war; indeed, they could be trained to bite.
Orchestrated cavalry charges began with very small numbers of six or maybe eight men on horseback working in concert, but with the Franks and Normans that number grew into large-scale formations. The Normans also spearheaded new military technology, and innovations of this period included the conical helmet, the mail coat, and large, kite-shaped shields. These are what would become associated with the Normans in particular, although all Franks wore much the same thing, as did Saxons and Vikings, and at Hastings the two sides would have largely been distinguishable only by hairstyles—the Saxons having long locks and moustaches and the Normans crops and clean-shaven faces.
William was the illegitimate son of Normandy’s Duke Robert and a low-born woman whose father may have been an embalmer of corpses.6 Robert was said to have spied William’s mother Herleva while she was out washing by the river in her home town of Falaise, a tale borrowed by Martin to explain how Lord Bolton first saw the mother of his psychotic bastard Ramsay Snow. Yet this tale was rather more romantic, and the spot where she washed can still be seen—if the story was even true.*
Herleva was certainly of modest background, and they were unmarried, but although a bastard, William was accepted as his father Duke Robert’s heir—something that would have been unthinkable a century later. In the early medieval period, and especially among Vikings, bastards could inherit a throne or lordship if they were strong enough, but as the Church and established marriage became more ingrained, and the position of wives stronger, so the status of natural sons declined. William’s grandson Robert of Gloucester was in 1135 the most suitable person to take the throne, but by now his illegitimacy ruled him out.
The future conqueror was close to his mother’s relatives, but then his father’s relations were mostly trying to kill him. When William was only seven, his father decided to go to the Holy Land, perhaps out of guilt for the death of his brother Duke Richard, who passed away in somewhat mysterious circumstances and may have been the victim of poisoning.
Duke Robert died on pilgrimage, leaving William highly vulnerable. His first protector, Count Gilbert, was murdered, as was his tutor Turold. Later, Osbern, head of the royal household, was stabbed to death by William of Montgomery in the young duke’s bedchamber, while the boy looked on. Montgomery was himself later killed in the same fashion. That he survived to manhood, and then repeatedly defeated and in many cases destroyed rival magnates and relatives, was testimony to his strength and ruthlessness. The Normans under William had also defeated the armies of neighboring Flanders, Brittany, Anjou, and the kingdom of France itself, but he wanted more.
William claimed that Harold had sworn an oath to him when the Englishman was shipwrecked in northern France, which may be true, but if Harold did so then it’s unlikely he had much choice. By sheer right of ancestry, the crown should have gone to Ethelred’s great-grandson Edgar Atheling, but he was just a boy.
And England was also divided. The Godwin family were strong in their Wessex homeland, but the north was barely under their control, while Harold had also alienated his brother Tostig, who in a fury sailed around the North Sea looking for allies to help him attack his brother. Having been rejected by King Sweyn of Denmark, Tostig found an unlikely partner in Harald Hardrada, now king of Norway after his many years in Constantinople. Growing old, and having crushed all opposition at home, the Thunderbolt of the North gambled on one last great battle to seal his glorious reputation and ensure his name was sung of at firesides for years to come. An armada of three hundred ships set sail from Norway toward the Shetlands and down the coast of eastern Scotland, bringing more Vikings from the islands with them.
In Westeros, some members of the Targaryen family have prophetic dreams and likewise along the way Harald had a vision of meeting his brother Olaf, who warned of the disaster that awaited him. Yet he continued, for what would be the last ever great Viking adventure.
After landing in Northumbria, Harald’s army crushed a small English force led by young Edwin and Morcar, now the earls of Northumbria and Mercia but still barely men. But Hardrada had woefully underestimated his enemy, for King Harold’s army was already marching north at rapid speed. At the battle that followed at Stamford Bridge, Hardrada and Tostig were killed; King Harold, mercifully, allowed the surviving Scandinavians to go home, among them Hardrada’s two sons, who many years later would return this act of mercy by giving sanctuary to one of Harold Godwinson’s sons. Of more than three hundred Nordic ships that sailed across the ocean only twenty returned, and a chronicler writing sixty years later observed that there was still a mountain of bones by the site, now bleached by the sun and lying in a very different country. The Viking age was over.
Although Harold did not yet know it, the Normans had already set out into the sea, now that the wind had finally changed, along with mercenaries from across France and western Europe. Just as with the Dothraki, bringing horses across the water had been the major problem facing them, since the animals tended to panic in boats and cause them to capsize, but this they found an answer to. While in Sicily the Normans had picked up a technology used by the Byzantines, a sling-harness for carrying horses at sea—and now on their journey across this stormy water they brought three thousand with them.
The Normans arrived in Sussex, the Godwinson home, plundering the land and burning villages. Harold could have stayed in London and let the invaders run out of food, but he was tempted out, for as lord he could not stand by while the people of Sussex were mistreated. This was a foolish decision, but good lords could not allow their vassals to be violated with impunity, and so it was a common way of drawing them into fights.*
The climactic struggle of October 14 comprised between
seven thousand and eight thousand on each side. It was unusual, since in medieval Europe rulers tried to avoid pitched battle as it was too risky, since everything could be lost in a couple of hours. The English had grabbed the higher ground, and so William choose to charge uphill, which would to some extent neutralize the advantage of cavalry. This was fraught with danger, and yet time was against him, as more men would surely flock to Harold’s cause, the Normans were in a hostile land, and the longer the wait the greater the risk of disease breaking out (until the reforms of Florence Nightingale in the Victorian era, disease almost always killed more soldiers than battle).
There are only three recorded accounts of the battle, highly stylized, but it most likely began at 9 a.m. and went on for most of the day. The invaders were in three formations, with Bretons on the left, French on the right, and Normans in the middle. William, according to one account, had three horses killed beneath him and, at one point, panic ran through the ranks as rumor spread that he was dead. The duke lifted his helmet so that his troops might see him, shouting at his men that if they panicked and fled they would all die. All day the Normans launched attacks while the English stood rooted to the spot, and with nightfall approaching the men would have been exhausted.
Harold had three thousand housecarls, battle-hardened soldiers whose two-handed axes were wielded with enormous force, but the Normans had the advantage of cavalry. The deadlock was broken by a ruse, the fake retreat, another innovation borrowed from the Byzantines. On the left the Bretons began to flee and, when the English followed them down the hill—most enemy casualties were taken during the rout when their backs were turned—their formation was broken. The Norman cavalry charged uphill with devastating effect and destroyed the English line.
The Normans also had an advantage in archery—the defenders only had a small number of bowmen—and this soon began to tell as increasing numbers of English soldiers were fatally hit, their lifeless bodies often still stuck in the close-packed shield wall. Harold’s brothers Gyrth and Leofwine were killed and, at some point, the king himself was as well, either through a random arrow or cut down by a death squad of four knights. (He may also have been emasculated.) Afterward, the Normans went from town to town laying waste until London surrendered, supposedly after a traitor let the invaders through the Lud Gate, where the old gods had been worshipped a millennium before. William was crowned on Christmas Day at Westminster Abbey.
When his wife Matilda of Flanders was enthroned as Queen of England the following year, attendees would have been met by the sight of a champion arriving in the cathedral, a “great hulk of a man” called Marmion. This terrifying giant rode his horse into the middle of the hall, heavily armed, and shouted that “if any person denies that our most gracious sovereign, lord William, and his spouse Matilda, are not king and queen of England, he is a false-hearted traitor and a liar; and here I, as champion, do challenge him to single combat.”7 Surprisingly, no one took him up on the offer.
The Norman Conquest helped bring England closer to the mainstream of Europe, which was increasingly dominated by northern France. English names such as Ethelred, Athelstan, Tostig, or Leofwine were replaced by Carolignian ones, so called because they are associated with the Franks under Charles (Carolus) the Great. These were the names popular with the northern French aristocracy—the Frankish William, Henry, Robert, Richard, and Geoffrey, along with biblical or Greek names like John, James, Catherine, Margaret, and Thomas. And so, to give Westeros a medieval feel it features such names as Robert, Jon, Catelyn, Margaery, Joffrey, Willem, Tommen, Rickard, and Rickon (Dickon was a common nickname for Richard at the time).
In fact, across Europe from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, local names and local religious cults were replaced by a Europe-wide culture, one in particular dominated by the Franks. Some native traditions and naming patterns survived, and in England the only surviving English names were Edmund and Edward, which remained in fashion because of the cults attached to Edward the Confessor and St Edmund (Alfred would later have a revival after the popularity of Alfred the Great rose in the sixteenth century). Bran or Brandon, by contrast, is an Irish name meaning raven or crow, appropriately.
Indeed, numerous characters in Westeros have names with real life parallels in England. There is a knight in Westeros called Blount, from House Blount of the Crownlands, who owe their loyalty to the Baratheons; this archaic-sounding name is borrowed from a real warrior family who rose to prominence in the twelfth century and who feature throughout the medieval period. Robert Le Blount had sailed over with the Conqueror while a John Blount accepted Edward II’s surrender and Walter Blount was killed in the War of the Roses in 1471, at the Battle of Barnet. The most famous Blount, however, is the singer-songwriter James, who simplified it to Blunt—and like his forefathers, he spent time in the military before becoming a professional musician.*
Tyrell, spelt Tirel, was the name of an aristocratic family who played a significant part in Anglo-Norman history, one of their number accidentally killing William’s successor. Drogo, the name of the Dothraki leader, was also the name of one of Charles Martel’s grandsons and various other figures in northern France.
William the Conqueror spent the twenty years following his invasion fighting rebels and rivals, and falling out with almost everyone around him, including his eldest son Robert, his wife Matilda, and his half-brother Odo.
Although a cleric, Odo had probably taken part at Hastings, waving a club, as churchmen were not allowed to shed blood. This we know because the entire story is immortalized in a famous embroidery made soon afterwards, known as the Bayeux Tapestry and rediscovered in the eighteenth century. It was most likely commissioned by Odo, or at least it is believed so because the Tapestry, unlike the written records, paints him in a heroic light. It was also made in Kent, the large county which had been given over in its entirety to the grasping churchman, who had become grotesquely rich under William, owning properties in over twenty counties.
Strangely the tapestry contains one of the few visual images of dwarves in the pre-modern period, a man called “Turold” who is seen in the court of Ponthieu, standing next to a Norman ambassador telling Ponthieu’s Count Guy to hand over Harold Godwinson. Turold is one of only fifteen people named in the tapestry, although who he was and what his role was in the events remain a mystery. The first mention of dwarves is found in ancient Egypt, at the court of Khufu, who died in 2566BC, on a tomb close to the Great Pyramid belonging to a dwarf called Perniankhu. His job “was to entertain the king and members of the royal family, perhaps by dancing and singing: the ancient Egyptian equivalent of a medieval court jester.”8 Dwarves were also recorded in ancient Rome, and in the early medieval period they were often employed in courts: in the 1060s Bishop Gunter of Bamberg, now Regensberg in Bavaria, is known to have been accompanied by a dwarf called Askericus, while the twelfth century Count Henry II of Champagne, king of Jerusalem, had a dwarf called Scarlett “who, in a bizarre accident, perished with him as he tried to save his lord and master from falling absent-mindedly out of a window.”9
In 1087 the Conqueror was back at war and attacked Mantes, in the rival duchy of Maine, besieged it and set it on fire, but the embers frightened his horse and, when it fell, William’s fat stomach was ripped open, leaving him to spend five weeks dying in agony.
RED KEEP, WHITE TOWER
Soon after Christmas 1066, the conquerors began work on building their first castles. There had been such structures in England before the Normans, but only a dozen or so, mostly wooden and small—now they built hundreds, not just to protect themselves from the natives but from each other, becoming “the bones of the kingdom.”10 The most famous was the White Tower to the east of London, known as the Tower of London and the inspiration for the Red Keep.
Castles were another form of technology brought from the east. The old Germanic feasting halls where the likes of Beowulf were told around the hearth could be surrounded and set on fire, and while Alfred the
Great had built burghs (fortresses for safety against Viking raids), these new brick-built constructions were far harder to attack. Early forms of castles were pioneered by the Byzantines in their sixth century campaigns in north Africa, featuring thick walls and high towers, one of which was designed to be the last refugee, a feature that would become the keep in later European models. The Muslims adopted Byzantine masonry fortification in Spain in the eighth and ninth centuries, and the Christians there later copied it.
But no area had more castles than western France, in particular the Loire Valley to the south of Normandy, where in 863 France’s Charles the Bald first ordered that they be built against Scandinavian invaders; later they would be used in the struggles between the rival Normans, Angevins, and Poitievins.
In the typical high medieval castle, a keep was closely encircled by a high wall, called a chemise, with an entry gateway from where one climbed a revolving outside staircase up to the roof, from where one could walk across a platform toward the keep. They also featured drawbridges, usually raised by chain and so vertically facing the gate—or portcullis—adding an additional barrier for any invaders. And so any attacking enemy, were they able to penetrate this barrier, would then have to force their way up stairs and then walk across the bridge to reach the keep—at all times under fire.11
Castles came with slits called arrow loops or meurtrieres—murderesses—out of which crossbowmen would fire at the attackers, the holes splayed so that the archer could shoot at an angle while presenting enemy snipers with only a tiny target.12 Boiling liquids or quicklime might also be poured out of these murder holes at the attacking army.
In the thirteenth century, castles were increasingly built on the sides of hills, with the inner bailey backed up against the higher ground to make it extra secure. Despite the best efforts of the master builders, all castles had vulnerable spots, the most obvious of which was the latrine, or gardebrobe, which required holes for disposing of waste. In Season Seven of the show the Unsullied take Casterely Rock through the toilets but such a thing did actually happen in 1204 when Philippe of France seized the prestigious Chateau Gaillard in Normandy from the English by sending his troops through the latrines.
