TWO royals, William and Harry – who were once close – now hate each other and are headed for a showdown.
Harry is married to a determined woman and lives abroad in exile. William is devoted to his beautiful, clever wife.
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Meanwhile, the French are being blamed for allowing their coast to be used to launch boats full of men destined for Dover to get their hands on England’s hard-earned money.
Fake news is everywhere.
No one knows who to trust for information about what is really going on in the world.
It sounds like Britain in 2025 — but this is not the story of the feuding dukes of Sussex and Cambridge.
This is life in England nearly a thousand years ago.
A new eight-part BBC drama King & Conqueror, which started last night and continues tonight, plunges viewers into the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
James Norton plays English King Harold while Danish actor Nikolaj Coster- Waldau — Jaime Lannister from Game Of Thrones — is William, Duke of Normandy, whose victory ushered the birth of our modern monarchy.
William the Conqueror — the 26th great-grandfather to King Charles III — transformed England, and the effects of his reign are still seen everywhere to this day.
But makers of the drama, which was shot in Iceland, admit some events have been fictionalised.
Historian John Gillingham says: “Almost the only thing about the Norman conquest that isn’t controversial is the fact that the Normans won the Battle of Hastings.”
Here we reveal the facts and fiction in this story of love, greed, hate and ambition.
- King & Conqueror is on BBC One tonight at 9.30pm and all episodes are on iPlayer.
The wives
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What happens on TV: William and Harold were both happily married to strong women.
William is married to Matilda, played by Clemence Poesy.
Harold married Edith Swanneck – aka Edith the Fair – in a Viking ceremony which was not recognised by the church. They were together for 20 years.
Edith, played by Emily Beecham, is captured by Harold’s deadly rival Earl Morcar of Mercia on Lady Emma’s orders as Harold heads to Flanders to escape the wrath of the King and his scheming mother.
What really happened: Harold fled to in Ireland in 1051 with Edith. By the time of the Battle of Hastings, he had married again, this time to Edith of Mercia.
Scheming Queen Emma
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What happens on TV: Edward’s powerful mother, Emma of Normandy, played by Juliet Stevenson, manipulates her son King Edward the Confessor.
The daughter of King Richard I of Normandy, Emma married three kings to become Queen of England, Denmark and Norway.
One of her husbands was English monarch King Canute, who famously tried to hold back the sea.
What really happened: Emma and Edward were not close because he had grown up without his mother and was suspicious of her.
She did hate Harold’s family. Her younger son Aelfred Aetheling was murdered with a red-hot poker on the orders of Harold’s father, Godwin.
Moustaches and mullets
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What happens on TV: James Norton as Harold is clean-shaven while Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s William has a rather dodgy ’tache.
What really happened: It was the other way round. Harold and the English were known for their lip-fungus, while the Normans were famous for being clean-shaven.
The 230-foot-long Bayeux Tapestry, which is coming to the British Museum in London next year, was made within ten years of the battle.
In it, the Normans had an extreme hairstyle, almost shaven completely off at the back of the head and left to grow out at the front, which William does not have.
Time shifts
What happens on TV: William returns from the Coronation to find Normandy has been invaded by French King Henry I.
William and his family are forced to flee for their lives to what is now Belgium and stay with his father-in-law, Baldwin V, Count of Flanders.
What really happened: The Coronation was in 1043 but French king Henry I did not go to war with William until 11 years later.
Also, in the series, Harold looks younger than William but he was six years older. William was 38 at the Battle of Hastings.
The battle of Stamford Bridge
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What happens on TV: King Harold’s younger brother Tostig, played by Luther Ford, is a sensitive soul.
His mother Gytha blames King Harold for allowing Tostig to die in battle against Vikings who invaded Yorkshire.
What really happened: Tostig became the Earl of Northumbria and was a ruthless butcher who was so unpopular that in 1065 the North rebelled and Harold took their side.
Treacherous Tostig never forgave his brother.
On January 4, 1066, King Edward the Confessor died without an undisputed heir, setting off a succession struggle between three contenders: Harold, Earl of Wessex, Norwegian King Harald Hardrada and William of Normandy.
Two days later, Harold is crowned king – but the other contenders do not recognise his right to the throne.
So Tostig persuaded King Harald III to sail from Norway and invade England.
But on September 25, 1066, at the Battle of Stamford Bridge near York, Harold won a sensational victory, in which Tostig and the Norwegian King were slaughtered.
Did Harold save William’s life?
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What happens on TV: For years the English had been in dispute with the French because Normandy allowed Viking raiders to use their ports for attacks across the Channel on England.
Despite animosity towards France, in King & Conqueror William travels from Normandy after being invited to the Coronation of England’s new King Edward the Confessor, played by Eddie Marsan.
On the way to London, William is attacked by brigands, and Harold Godwinson – the son of Earl of Wessex – comes to his rescue.
The two men meet later at the Coronation in London.
Edward also marries Gunhild – Harold’s sister.
What really happened: Edward was crowned in Winchester – not London – in 1043.
Two years later, he married Harold’s other sister, Edith of Wessex – not Gunhild.
Unlike most queens of the time, Edith was crowned straight after her wedding with a coronet costing £16.
There is no evidence that William of Normandy attended either ceremony or that Harold saved him.
The battle of Hastings
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What happens on TV: The Norman Invasion begins. Just before sunset, William sets off across the storm-lashed Channel from Saint-Valery-Sur-Somme with his fleet.
At about 9am, William and his fleet arrive in Pevensey Bay before marching to Hastings, where he decides the only way to secure the crown of England is to kill King Harold in battle.
Harold races his exhausted troops to Hastings where on October 14, 1066, William and Harry are locked in a fight to the death.
The English wait on Senlac Hill for Morcar of Mercia, played by Elander Moore, to bring his troops to the battle after Harold’s wife Edith begs him to help.
Instead, Morcar and his men wait as the Normans fake William’s death to lure the English into a pitched battle.
What really happened: Morcar’s troops stayed away. There were 2,000 Normans killed and wounded while Harold’s men, who chased the French down the hill and into a trap, lost 5,000 troops.
Was Harold killed by an arrow in his eye?
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What happens on TV: After the all-day battle, James Norton’s King Harold is killed by an arrow in the eye.
What really happened: Experts reckon this is fake news and the Bayeux Tapestry was ‘doctored’ perhaps hundreds of years later to show Harold with an arrow in the eye to authenticate the made-up tale.
A song about the Battle of Hastings, written six months after Harold’s death, does not mention the bizarre death, and nor do other reports.
The tune, known as the Carmen Widonis, describes how William and three henchmen hacked Harold to death in hand-to-hand fighting.
It describes the king being lanced through the chest by four Norman soldiers, beheaded, disembowelled and having his leg cut off. His body was left in a mangled heap of corpses.
The man with the arrow in his eye in the Tapestry was probably an ordinary spear carrier, while the man nearby who appears left-handed being attacked by a Norman cavalryman is most likely to be Harold.
But the arrow in the eye story may have spread because it was a more honourable way to kill a king than by hacking him to death as he lay defenceless on the ground.
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