FAO: Miriam
From a book written in 1918:
"The Saxons were slow and difficult to move [...] did not mind fighting, if their crops were in and they had nothing else to do, and it was difficult to keep them together as an army, unless the call for their services was very urgent. They did not trouble very much about their Church, or church-buildingm thought very little about Art, or Literature, and, so long as their neighbours left them alone, showed little interest in other people's doings. The Saxons lacked the art of combination, and it was because of this that they failed against the Normans.
"[The Normans] were interested in everything, and determined to get on in the world.
"William the Conqueror is one of the world's great men; he was very strong, and a fine soldier, and though to our idea he may seem barbarous, at heart he was a fair man and played the game."
See how it avoided things like the harrying of the North and that "William the Bastard" was an apt name for the man. The irony that for all the 'ethnically Anglo-Saxon' (read: Classic British Mongrels) went on to oppress so much of the rest of the world, they have tended to get a raw deal in their own history. This idea that sod all happened before the Normans, when a bunch of Vikings took the country from a different bunch of Vikings. Basically there is this big bit of the culture of Britain that gets handwaved away, including how Harold Godwinson wasn't in the best position to win after scurrying down from beating off Tostig beforehand. Wasn't there like... a rich tradition of Anglo-Saxan literature and religion? Did we imagine all those monasteries that the Vikings raided? Damn, I'm not even English and I think William killed off much of the indigenous way of life.
"The Saxons were slow and difficult to move [...] did not mind fighting, if their crops were in and they had nothing else to do, and it was difficult to keep them together as an army, unless the call for their services was very urgent. They did not trouble very much about their Church, or church-buildingm thought very little about Art, or Literature, and, so long as their neighbours left them alone, showed little interest in other people's doings. The Saxons lacked the art of combination, and it was because of this that they failed against the Normans.
"[The Normans] were interested in everything, and determined to get on in the world.
"William the Conqueror is one of the world's great men; he was very strong, and a fine soldier, and though to our idea he may seem barbarous, at heart he was a fair man and played the game."
See how it avoided things like the harrying of the North and that "William the Bastard" was an apt name for the man. The irony that for all the 'ethnically Anglo-Saxon' (read: Classic British Mongrels) went on to oppress so much of the rest of the world, they have tended to get a raw deal in their own history. This idea that sod all happened before the Normans, when a bunch of Vikings took the country from a different bunch of Vikings. Basically there is this big bit of the culture of Britain that gets handwaved away, including how Harold Godwinson wasn't in the best position to win after scurrying down from beating off Tostig beforehand. Wasn't there like... a rich tradition of Anglo-Saxan literature and religion? Did we imagine all those monasteries that the Vikings raided? Damn, I'm not even English and I think William killed off much of the indigenous way of life.