Invasion and conquest...
author_by_night was discussing a writing prompt (Which historical event, person, or time period should become the next big television drama?) and my response was that the Norman Conquest would make an amazing TV series. And once I started thinking about it, ugh, it really really would.
I mean, imagine it. You'd have a lot of the iconography of shows like The Vikings and Game of Thrones - the dark age/early medieval look to it, swords and furs and weaponry and castles and brutal clashes of armies. And the action scenes! You'd have the Battle of Hastings, the Siege of Exeter, the Harrying of the North, the Revolt of the Earls...
It could be such a complex show politically, with so much potential for modern parallels - all the issues involved in a new regime imposing itself on a native population, enforcing a different language, culture, legal system. You'd have land reallocations, the choice between collaboration or extermination on the part of the native Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, the guerilla-style rebellion of Hereward the Wake.
And there's family drama too - William and his feisty queen Matilda of Flanders, regent in Normandy in his absence; the conflict between the three brothers, Robert Curthose, William Rufus and Henry I; Robert imprisoned by his brother for nearly twenty years; the mysterious death of William Rufus in the New Forest...
Dammit, I really want this now. Someone needs to get on it.
I mean, imagine it. You'd have a lot of the iconography of shows like The Vikings and Game of Thrones - the dark age/early medieval look to it, swords and furs and weaponry and castles and brutal clashes of armies. And the action scenes! You'd have the Battle of Hastings, the Siege of Exeter, the Harrying of the North, the Revolt of the Earls...
It could be such a complex show politically, with so much potential for modern parallels - all the issues involved in a new regime imposing itself on a native population, enforcing a different language, culture, legal system. You'd have land reallocations, the choice between collaboration or extermination on the part of the native Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, the guerilla-style rebellion of Hereward the Wake.
And there's family drama too - William and his feisty queen Matilda of Flanders, regent in Normandy in his absence; the conflict between the three brothers, Robert Curthose, William Rufus and Henry I; Robert imprisoned by his brother for nearly twenty years; the mysterious death of William Rufus in the New Forest...
Dammit, I really want this now. Someone needs to get on it.