Stepping Back into Saxon England: What If? by Helen Hollick

 

Stepping Back into Saxon England

What If?

By Helen Hollick

WHAT IF...? by Helen Hollick

1066 Turned Upside Down, is a short  story collection of alternative stories for the events of that year – the year of King Harold II’s coronation, the year of the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest of England.

Written by nine different authors – including myself and co-blog-tourist Annie Whitehead – these stories explore what might have happened if William the Conqueror had been beaten at Hastings, if Harald Hardrada had won at Stamford Bridge or if Edward the Confessor had died with an heir ready to take his crown. 1066 Turned Upside Down explores a variety of ways in which that momentous year could have played out very differently.

But what if things had been different before 1066? How far back do we go to alter the course of history to erase the Norman Conquest? What if history was different after 1066?

Where to start!

Things might have been different if Boudica had beaten Rome during her great rebellion in AD 60 or 61, although I suspect that Rome would have come back in greater force. What if there had not been the Anglo-Saxon migration in the early sixth century? (Contrary to ‘old fashioned’ thinking, these Germanic tribes did not come in hoards to rape, pillage and drive the local Brits into Wales... settlement took several generations of mostly peaceful integration between the two populations.) What if they ‘went south’ instead? To what is now France and Spain? (Much better weather than England!) Again, though, it is probable that they would have still come, maybe 100 years or so later, and perhaps already converted to Christianity.

Ah, there’s another one! What if the Romans/Britons/ Saxons/Vikings had not converted to Christianity? What if the Faith hadn’t spread, had fizzled out before it even got started? Apart from a lot of hungry lions, we would not have our grand cathedrals – nor our Western way of life (no divorce entanglements for Henry VIII!) Would the dominant religion now be Pagan, Jewish, Muslim, Hindi...? No Christianity = no Crusades. No glory for Richard the Lionheart ... ah, but if there had not been a Norman Conquest, there would have been no Plantagenets anyway.

Tomb of Richard I

What if the Vikings had not happened, or they had not thought this little, often very wet Isle, worth bothering with? If there had been no Christianity, and no churches, this is entirely feasible. The Vikings came for the plunder. The gold and riches in our churches. (Although, perhaps alternative faiths still had the riches – so they might still have come.)

What if - assuming, so far that history had not changed and Duke William had seized England for himself - what if Mathilda, daughter of Henry I had been crowned as Queen? No civil war between her and Stephen. But then Henry II, her son, would still have become King.

the spread of the Black Death

What if there had been no Black Death in 1348/49? (The term ‘Black Death’ was not used until the late 17th century.) As Wikipedia states: "The most immediate consequence was a halt to the campaigns of the Hundred Years' War. In the long term, the decrease in population caused a shortage of labour, with subsequent rise in wages, resisted by the landowners, which caused deep resentment among the lower classes. The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 was largely a result of this resentment, and even though the rebellion was suppressed, in the long term serfdom was ended in England. The Black Death also affected artistic and cultural efforts, and may have helped advance the use of the vernacular." 

So thus ended the consequence of the Norman Conquest, and the rise of English used instead of French and Latin among the higher classes, government and the church. But there probably would have been another plague... (as we well know 2020 - Covid 19!)

No Wars of the Roses maybe? Richard III won at Bosworth, so no Tudors – one main result being England would have remained Catholic. Or Katherine of Aragon had borne a healthy son? Meaning no reign of Mary Tudor or  Elizabeth I. (A lot of people would have stayed alive with no burnings and beheadings of Catholics or Protestants.) Spain might have triumphed with their Armada, so no Stuarts on the English throne. I reckon the Protestants wouldn’t have fared so well, though.

In turn, no English Civil Wars. Charles I reigned to a ripe old age, no Oliver Cromwell (although his ideas didn’t survive anyway, so maybe we can discount that era of history). Charles II might have had a son, so exit William and Mary. (I was talking to a young friend, also called William, about these two. We decided that as William was William of Orange, Mary must have been Mary of Marmalade.)

Or perhaps the Duke of Monmouth would have won at Sedgemoor in 1685. If any one of Queen Anne’s children had survived – no George of Hanover.

James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth

Ah, no George III! No war of Independence with those Colonials across the Atlantic! Maybe Britain and the United States would still be conjoined? America's monarch would be Elizabeth II? There again, slavery would still have happened because of tobacco, sugar, cotton... the Industrial revolution continued to roll... but maybe no Queen Victoria? No Albert... no Albert Hall in London. Would we still have Christmas trees?

"That pretty German toy, a Christmas tree" (1848),
The Illustrated London News

I’ll stop there, but I find it interesting that we would probably still have Queen Elizabeth II as our monarch. Let’s assume Edward VIII had not abdicated in 1936, had still married Wallis Simpson.

In ‘real’ life they had no children, so when he died in 1972 his successor would have been ... Elizabeth II.

 What other 'what if's' - feel free to leave a comment and share your ideas!

Buy the book
from Amazon
now also available in paperback

(images from Wikipedia)

About Helen:

Helen Hollick and her family moved from north-east London in January 2013 after finding an eighteenth-century North Devon farm house through being a ‘victim’ on BBC TV’s popular Escape To The Country show. The thirteen-acre property was the first one she was shown – and it was love at first sight. She enjoys her new rural life, and has a variety of animals on the farm, including Exmoor ponies and her daughter’s string of show jumpers.

First accepted for publication by William Heinemann in 1993 – a week after her fortieth birthday – Helen then became a USA Today Bestseller with her historical novel, The Forever Queen (titled A Hollow Crown in the UK) with the sequel, Harold the King (US: I Am The Chosen King) being novels that explore the events that led to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Her Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy is a fifth-century version of the Arthurian legend, and she also writes a pirate-based nautical adventure/fantasy series, The Sea Witch Voyages. Despite being impaired by the visual disorder of Glaucoma, she is also branching out into the quick read novella, 'Cosy Mystery' genre with the Jan Christopher Mysteries, set in the 1970s, with the first in the series, A Mirror Murder incorporating her, often hilarious, memories of working for thirteen years as a library assistant.

Her non-fiction books are Pirates: Truth and Tales and Life of A Smuggler. She also runs Discovering Diamonds, a review blog for historical fiction, a news and events blog for her village and the Community Shop, assists as ‘secretary for the day’ at her daughter’s regular showjumping shows – and occasionally gets time to write... 

Website: https://helenhollick.net/

Amazon Author Page: https://viewauthor.at/HelenHollick 

Blog: https://ofhistoryandkings.blogspot.com/

Twitter: @HelenHollick

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Review & Giveaway: Silk and the Sword by Sharon Bennett Connolly

What an ingenious concept: to examine the lives of and the roles played by the women related to the more familiar, male, characters involved in the events immediately before and after the Norman Conquest.

Silk and the Sword sensibly begins with events which far preceded those of 1066, giving the reader an introduction to the main families involved, and some background information which shows that we cannot take the events of 1066 in isolation.

This earlier history - of the powerful families of Mercia, Lady Godiva, the Godwines, and Queen Emma and both her husbands - is very familiar to me and if I'm honest there were times when I knew that there was more behind certain parts of the story, but that's me, that's not most folk. I have just had a history of Mercia published, so all my research is still very fresh in my mind. For those who are new to this period, or even those who aren't, there is plenty of meat on the bones of the story. 

Harald's wife Elisiv of Kiev,
daughter of Yaroslav the Wise

Does this mean though that there were no surprises in the book for me and nothing new to learn? Far from it. All the well-known women are here, as one would expect - Emma, Edith of Wessex, Edith 'Swanneck' - but so too are the wives of Harald Hardrada. I knew nothing about these women and I thoroughly enjoyed being whisked across the sea to learn about those close to the man described here as 'the wild card in the events of 1066'. It's easy to forget, because of his ultimate defeat, that he was a powerful ruler whose success in England, had it come, would have seen England absorbed into a Scandinavian empire. I had little idea about his royal pedigree (stretching back through his mother's line to the first king of Norway) nor, indeed, that Harald was married to two women at the same time! 

With the inclusion of Matilda of Flanders even the most ardently pro-Saxon reader will be forced to look at things from a different perspective and Gundrada de Warenne, someone I've not read about more than in passing, is given a chapter of her own and the stories behind her alleged parentage fully explored.

What I do know, because of the book that I'm currently writing, is that it is very difficult to format a book like this. Great care has been taken to skilfully extract these women from the general narrative and talk about them in isolation, whilst keeping the facts of their lives in context. 

Inevitably there is crossover, but rather than repeating herself, the author simply signposts where we are, and that we've been here before, but now we're with a different woman and we're looking at things from a different woman's perspective.

The author is keen for us to share her knowledge and interest in all the women, although I suspect she might have her favourites. Whilst she gives sympathetic and even-handed treatment to them all, I felt that there was added affection when it came to the poignancy of Edith Swanneck's tale and of Gytha, mother of the Godwine brood.

This was an ambitious project, beautifully executed and yes, as I've said, much of it very familiar to me. But the genius touch was to incorporate the stories of women from other countries because actually, it's completely logical. If you're telling the story of the women of 1066 then of course we need to know about the wives of Harald Hardrada and William of Normandy. This is where I was on less familiar ground and fascinating it was, too.

This book is a light, easy read, but it's also full of depth. Whether you are reading about these events for the first time or with a working knowledge of them, the lead-up to and the aftermath of the Conquest, with chapters entitled, for example, 'Grief and Sufferings', give an altogether different viewpoint on proceedings.

I was privileged to receive a pre-publication copy of Silk and the Sword but one lucky winner can also receive a free copy. Sharon is giving away a hardback copy of the book to readers worldwide. Simply leave a comment below - Please don't forget to leave your contact details! - and one name will be chosen at random at 7pm GMT Wednesday 21st November 2018