He has also always been known as William the Bastard, as well as William the Usurper, and William the Conqueror. When I was in school in the 1960s and 70s, no teacher would have used the term “bastard” in a classroom. In addition, I very much doubt that we learned anything about that era in Britain.
The Bastard’s son William II was known as William Rufus (”the Ruddy”; also had a hot temper, one of his buddies ‘accidentally’ shot him while a group of them were out hunting). The third king of the dynasty was Henry I (long reign), and the fourth and last of the House of Normandy was Stephen, who reign is known as “the anarchy”, a period when the so-called nobility were distracted from their usual activities beating and harassing the commoners and were instead beating and harassing each other.
The death of King Harold was the end of very interesting but now somewhat unfamiliar time, and what followed was the imposition of brutal foreign occupation and rule. Not long after the Norman conquest, Cavanaugh, one of the kings in one of the Irish kingdoms, asked for some Norman help against another Irish kingdom, and that presence went from then through the 20th century — the 21st, if one considers the six counties of Northern Ireland.
Alfred the Great (the only “the Great” among all British kings) did what he did of course, but of the Anglo-Saxon period kings, probably my favorite, fightinest king, was Aethelstan. He beat a lot of foreign asses and was a pretty good ruler, y’know, for an absolute monarch.
I wonder if that could be true. i don't think they had firearms in 1100AD in England.