A further video critique of “King and Conqueror”

After I last about this series and linked to the Welsh Viking’s well informed criticisms I came upon two from History Revealed which offers many of the same criticisms, and also addresses the matter of “colour blind” casting in a somewhat different way. The presenter sets out his basic case in an extremely short video which can be seen at Were there Black Anglo Saxons soldiers? 

His much fuller criticisms on that subject and many others can be seen at The BBC Tries to Recreate the Battle of Hastings | Fails Miserably! 

He does not draw attention to the fact that at King Edward’s coronation the Archbishop is wearing vestments of the fourteenth of fifteenth centuries, not the eleventh.

He likes the oath scene from 1064, but given that the Bayeux Tapeastry shows two caskets containing the relics why not show that scene instead of having a few bones on a cushion?

Another critique of “King and Conqueror”

When I first posted about the series “King and Conqueror“ several months before it appeared on television, and again after it did become available, I linked to a video by the Welsh Viking which offered a devastating critique of the costuming and armour in the series. This can be watched at The Costuming in "King and Conqueror" Looks Terrible. Like, Really Terrible.

The same presenter has now produced another video which further deconstructs what is offered to the viewer and makes many searching and informed criticisms of this production.

His video can be seen at We Need To Talk About King and Conqueror 

The one point where I would raise a question or two is in respect of ‘colour blind’ casting. As the Welsh Viking’ demonstrates we do have evidence of some people from Africa, or of African descent, both from north of the Sahara and also from sub-Saharan Africa, in Anglo-Saxon England. The questions about this need to include numbers and percentages, and also at what times, as well as their social status. That people of such ancestry or origins were present in trading communities there could not perhaps surprise us, but their presence in elite society or on the battlefield may be seen as doubtful. 

I will return to this topic in coming days with another video that does not stint in its criticisms on this and many other aspects of this lamentable series.

A very short back and sides Norman style

The announcement by M. Macron that the Bayeux Tapestry will be lent for a year to the British Museum, whilst its normal home in Bayeux is reconstructed, was one of the highlights of his State Visit last week. As the loan will extend into 2027 it will also celebrate the millennium of the birth of King William I.

Coincidentally I came across a relevant article on the often irritating, but also frequently informative website, Quora. This directly related to the Tapestry as it concerned the hair styles affected by the Norman men in it - a fringe at the front but with the area above the ears and from the nape of the neck almost to the crown of the head shaved. It makes King Henry V and his contemporaries look positively long haired.

The comments quoted from Aelfric of Eynsham, writing about 1000, can be compared with those of Alcuin of York, writing from the continent in the wake of the Viking raid on Lindisfarne in 793, which he appears to blame, in part at least, on what he had presumably observed on a recent visit to his homeland, the fashion for long hair amongst the Northumbrian elite - such seeming effeminacy was clearly responsible ….

The article, with the comments - less interesting or relevant - can be seen at 

Why did the Normans, even by today’s liberal standards, have such odd haircuts?

The Coronation of King Harold II

Today is the 950th anniversary of the coronation of  Harold Godwinson as King Harold II in Westminster Abbey.

His predecessor King Edward the Confessor had died only the day before, apparently nominating the Earl when on his deathbed. The fact that the new King was crowned the very next day is often commented upon as  being a sign of haste  - which it doubtless was - but it was also the Epiphany, a very suitable day for a king to have his coronation, and medieval coronations were usually on a feast day. Thus King Edgar was crowned on Whitsunday, and King John on Ascension Day, whilst Charlemagne had been crowned Emperor on Christmas Day

The crown is offered to Earl Harold and he is crowned as King Harold II

Bayeux Tapestry

Image:angelfire.com

The scene of the coronation of King Harold II in the Bayeux Tapestry appears to be the earliest surviving depiction of a specific English coronation, even if it has been questioned whether he was in fact crowned by Archbishop Stigand of Canterbury, who was under censure as a pluralist, and not by Archbishop Ealdred of York.

The enthroned King, with crown orb and sceptre, flanked by the Archbishop and the officers of state holding the sword is an image that thas been repeated down the centuries.

The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II

Image: telegraph.co.uk

For King Harold II however it was not to be a long reign.

The Death of St Edward the Confessor

It was on this day 950 years ago in 1066 that King Edward the Confessor died.

 

King Edward on his deathbed and being prepared for burial

The Bayeux Tapestry

Image;englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.com

On his deathbed the King apparently nominated his brother-in-law Harold Godwinson as his heir, thus excluding both his closest blood relative Edgar the Atheling, grandson of his elder half-brother King Edmund II, and also the man who appeared to have been his chosen heir, Duke William II of Normandy. This was to cause problems...

He was buried in his newly consecrated abbey at Westminster

The King's body is carried to Westminster Abbey

Image: Wikimedia 

In the rebuilt abbey his shrine still survives in its place of honour behind the High Altar, surrounded by the tombs of later monarchs.

The Shrine of St Edward

The base is from King Henry III's rebuilding in 1269, the upper part a restoration by Queen Mary I

Image:volokh.com

Prof Frank Barlow's biography of the King unpicks the complexities of the reign for modern readers.

Whatever he achieved as King is ultimately less important than the facts that by design or accident he brought about the rule of the Norman Kings and all that was to entail and that he was to be revered  by later monarchs as an ideal exemplar of kingship, one whose laws were seen as fundamental to good government, whose regalia sanctified the wearer, one whose prayers they earnestly solicited.

The cult of St Edward

St Edward, between St Edmund and St John the Baptist, presenting King Richard Ii to the Virgin and Child

The Wilton Diptych c.1397

Image Wikimedia

St Edward the Confessor

Today is the feast of St Edward the Confessor. The anniversary is not that of his death, January 5th, but rather that of the translation of his relics to a new shrine in Westminster Abbey in 1163. I wonder if the date, a day before the anniversary of the battle of Hastings, was chosen deliberately for that reason - a hermeneutic of continuity perhaps.

St Edward was born at Islip, near Oxford, so he can be accounted as a local as well as a national saint.

The Oxford DNB life by Frank Barlow, who has written the standard biography of the King, and who stresses that St Edward was much more than the possibly rather colourless figure he often appears to be presented as, can be read here.

Last year I posted St Edward and St Edward's Crown to mark this feast, and I think it is worth reading again.

St Edward the Confessor from the Bayeux Tapestry

Image: stedmundsbury.gov.uk

His cult has remained central to the monarchy and hence the survival of his shrine, as well as the designation of the Crown of St Edward, and the centuries-long notion of the good laws of King Edward which were to be upheld by his successors. His cult was promoted by successive monarchs, notably King Henry III who initiated the rebuilding of Westminster abbey and King Richard II. It remained essentially one for the court rather than being a popular devotion, but it underpinned the sacrality of the monarchy.

May St Edward continue to pray for The Queen and the Royal Family, and for the realm.