White knights and black Saxons

The history of multicultural realism

I’m a difficult person to watch historical drama with; some might say insufferable. Perhaps because I have a below average capacity to suspend disbelief, I find deliberate historical mistakes jarring - and the more I know about an era of history, the more I grunt and sigh and feel compelled to point out inaccuracies. On holiday in Scotland a couple of years back I made my children watch Braveheart while I went through all its falsehoods until, unusually, they decided to go to bed early.

While I have a broad interest in history, the Norman Conquest is to me perhaps the most fascinating subjects of all time: it permanently Francified English society, bringing us into the orbit of our larger and more sophisticated neighbour, turned our language into a Germanic-Latinate hybrid, and created an almost ethnic dimension to our class system.

It’s also because the year of three battles itself is like a HBO script, a clash of kings featuring the Godwin clan, the remnants of the House of Wessex, the ferociously competent Norman Duke William and the charismatic Viking maniac Harald Hardrada - so packed with drama, plot twists and gruesome deaths. If there’s a perfect backdrop for a show to reach Game of Thrones god-tier status in the medieval genre, above your Last Kingdoms and Vikings, this is it.

The BBC’s King and Conqueror is not that show, and watching it was a frustrating experience. I don’t know why they took so many liberties with the timeline, when the real story was more compelling. All the plot points from the first three episodes – William attending Edward’s coronation, his meeting with Harold in England, the murder of is father by the French king, the civil war between Mercia and Wessex – are made up.

Broader historical inaccuracies also jar. It’s highly unlikely that Harold’s elder brother Sweyn deflowered a bride, ‘as is my right as a lord’, because the droit du seigneur is almost certainly a myth. For some reason, the BBC has William with a moustache and Harold without, when one of the first things you learn about 1066 is that the Saxons had long droopy moustaches and the Normans were clean-shaven – as is clear from the Bayeux Tapestry.