Harold Godwinson dies on the battlefield in Hastings and a Norman rules England. How does it get to that end? This episode, we talk about Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror, and Harold, and how you can’t really have one without the other.

400 years before Edward VI’s succession concerns, England faced the question of female rule for the first time, and the ultimate answer was very different. Matilda set a precedent for female power to be wielded in a less direct way, through male heirs or husbands, but her precedent was set through 20 years of civil war.

---

Sources:

She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth, Helen Castor