(no subject)

Died on this day in 1066 aged 63 King Edward the Confessor(my toy,wikipedia), he had no children so at this point the succession was somewhat confused. His half-brother Edmund Ironside had previous been defeated by Cnut (who, incidentally married Edward's mother to cement his control of the country) had a son who fled to Hungary as a child, his son Edgar Aetheling was a young man in 1066 with few connections. Harold Godwinson was the brother of the Queen (Edith) (he had *two* wives called Edith, I guess that makes it easy to get the right name ;-p) (I just read a novel about the first one, it was good, it is called "the Handfasted Wife"). Harald Hardrada was King of Norway, apparent there was some agreement involving Harthacnut (son of Cnut, previously King of England also King of Dunmark) and the previous king of Norway (Magnus) from whom Harald had taken Norway (this is all likely barking, really what Harald had was An Army). William, Duke of Normandy, claimed that Edward had promised him the crown after some previous something (also barking, although apparently Harold admitted that this was the case). The succession was solved with FIGHTING rather than blood ties, and Harold got to be King (Edgar gave in easily), defeated Harald at Stamford Bridge, and then lost to William at Hastings. It is nearly 1000 years since Hastings. That is a lot of history. Please, next time you write "1000 years ago" in your fantasy novel remember that *almost everything you know about English history happened in 1000 years* and that "nothing much happened, the same families had the same land and used it in the same way" does not generally hold true for 100 years let alone 1000. Edward was a very pious King but probably not a very *good* King (a good thing but a bad king?).

Born on this day in 1605 to King Christian IV of Denmark and Anne of Brandenburg, Sophie(my toy,wikipedia). Sophie died later the same year (this is distressingly common in previous eras - many many children, even royal children, did not make it to a year let alone adulthood; there was very little that could be done for a wide range of common illnesses even with the riches of a monarch), her aunt married King James I and VI - the English/British and Danish and Norwegian (often they had the same King) royal families have married each other several times (on my TODO list - discover how many daughters/sisters of Danish Kings married English Kings and vice versa; that sounds interesting). Cnut and Emma may have started a trend... (hopefully later marriages had less to do with "I just stole your country" and more to do with at least "you are quite nice and a suitable match" if not "I wuv you a lot") (I've got those two down as "not related" but I reckon they probably are, and I'm missing bits).