Different ending to the Battle of Hastings

"So my question is . . . or a Saxon victory over the Normans, how would England develop in comparison to our timeline?"

An Old-English victory at Old Hastings could mean either the English taking Normandy or leaving for the French Crown to re-take.
There's no reason for an invasion of Normandy by the Old English just as Edmund Ironside would not have invaded Denmark following a complete defeat of Cnut the Great.
 
There isn't a French crown in the 6th CE. There is a Frankish one.
LSCatilina was talking about taking Normandy in the XIth century.The French crown was there,unless you are going by how the Kings of France were technically King of the Franks until Philip Augustus.
 

Artaxerxes

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I'm rolling eyes so hard that all I could see for a moment were the bloody parts inside my skull.

No, virtually no country, region, place or nation in being or long disappeared was spared the horrors of cultural influence, domination or [shivers] change.
While it's true that Norman conquest did put an end to the inner dynamics of late Anglo-Saxon England, it was more or less the same that Anglo-Saxon settlements did to the inner dynamics of sub-Roman Britain. Or the English influence on inner Scotland dynamics, etc.

Nations don't exists in a vaacum, and conflicting influences makes the quest for a "pure" national culture moot at best, laughably wrong at worst. Norman influence on England wasn't as much shameful than Germanic influence on Britain (and certainly much less of a game changer), as much Slavic influence on Byzantine Greece isn't.
That's how nations are born and continuously change : I'd suggest, if you're interested, a quick look at Myth of Nations, by Patrick J. Geary, who put it far better than I could.

<3

There is general assumption on this board that England would have been more focused on North Sea than Channel and Atlantic : while not totally untrue, it tends to be exagerated a lot.
Late Anglo-Saxon politics really had interest on Channel shores since the Xth and Æthelstan's reign. It was more or less eclipsed by the events in England, but the relation of the Wessex kings and pretendents with Normandy (you had Normans in England decades before William's conquest) but as well the campaign of Harold in Flanders does highlight real relations with the continent that didn't existed as such with Scandinavia.


Links between the South East and the continent, the French channel and the North Sea both, are woefully under-acknowledged a lot of the time, links going right back to the Neolithic.
 
How would the French crown react to this?
I think that, except a significant benefit for them, that Capetians would tend to be attentist in the case of a nobiliar Saxon takeover, then play their usual political strategy (as in joining and swithing different alliances to prevent the appearance of an hegemon that wouldn't be theirs), sometimes siding with Saxons, sometimes with Angevins, etc. In the end, it might favour the establishement of a french Saxon dynasty in modern Normandy, altough weaker IMO than IOTL Normands.

If it's a royal takeover, oth the other hand, things would make an agreement with Capetians harder that never really liked someone else to meddle with what they considered their playground, and while possibly siding with Saxons if Angevins and Flemish goes too strong out of this, I wouldn't expect a warm welcome.

That said, the point is a bit moot for this thread, as while I could see this happening in the early XIth while Normandy is still a principalty in formation, I couldn't in the latter part of the XIth where it's firmly established.
 
I think that, except a significant benefit for them, that Capetians would tend to be attentist in the case of a nobiliar Saxon takeover, then play their usual political strategy (as in joining and swithing different alliances to prevent the appearance of an hegemon that wouldn't be theirs), sometimes siding with Saxons, sometimes with Angevins, etc. In the end, it might favour the establishement of a french Saxon dynasty in modern Normandy, altough weaker IMO than IOTL Normands.

If it's a royal takeover, oth the other hand, things would make an agreement with Capetians harder that never really liked someone else to meddle with what they considered their playground, and while possibly siding with Saxons if Angevins and Flemish goes too strong out of this, I wouldn't expect a warm welcome.

That said, the point is a bit moot for this thread, as while I could see this happening in the early XIth while Normandy is still a principalty in formation, I couldn't in the latter part of the XIth where it's firmly established.
Will the king of England bother with paying obeisance to the King of France for Normandy in this circumstance?
 
Will the king of England bother with paying obeisance to the King of France for Normandy in this circumstance?
I don't know, why did Aragonese kings ended up being vassals of Capetians for several places? Maybe because they felt they had a claim on them.
Heck, we could wonder why Rollo ever felt that being vassal of the king was too much to ask for settling up.
Note, furthermore, that feudality as it was present politically in France did downplayed the effective hommage (while holding its symbolic presence in high regard), and the general obedience features, due to a particularily important defragmentation of power.

I described how an English king could end up with such claim in the first link, that I propose to read for (small) details if you didn't. Basically instead of an important Saxon house inheriting the title somehow from Richard III in exile (maybe trough matrimonial union with Normans), you have a member of the royal house doing it, and claiming Normandy as duke.

Would it last? Would the ducal title be tied up to the royal title? I don't think it's really likely for both questions, altough there's more chance as I said that a weaker Normandy might come out of this, possibly ruled by a French dynasty with Saxon origins.

Again, I simply don't see this happening after the middle of the XIth century, and after the IOTL conquest of England.

(A detail, but you seem to often quote entiere posts just to ask a short question? For readability reasons, you could just replace the quoted post with -snip- or just quote the part you want do discuss).
 
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One thing that could lead to big changes long term is the Saxon empathis on the vernacular. Since Alfred, Saxon culture had empathized records in the vernacular which in turn led to a high level of literacy among the Saxon-Danes (probably the most proper term for the English of 1066). This helped spread spread Norse tech (mostly farming and shipbuilding) among the Saxons which in turn made England one of the more prosperous nations but also made it a target (Hence 1016 and 1066).

In fact, one of the tragedies of the otl was that the Normans could not read the Saxon records and just started over in Latin. The vernacular became the language of the lower classes, and the literary tradition was destroyed.

But a vernacular remaining dominant could mean a slow but steady tech advantage as more brains were brought into the conversation without the entry point of a church education and ideas spread more quickly.
 
In fact, one of the tragedies of the otl was that the Normans could not read the Saxon records and just started over in Latin. The vernacular became the language of the lower classes, and the literary tradition was destroyed.
It seems, tough, that the Saxon used in charts in the XIth, was a more or less formalized and fixed written Wessex Saxon, possibly not really intelligible by most.

Furthermore, you did have a period (until Henry II) where Saxon charts and legal documents did survived and continued to be produced after the conquest : I entierly agree, tough, that it was at a really reduced state, especially compared to the first part of the XIth century.

Another development that what @Kerney mentions, would be that ITTL, the possible influence that English charting using vernacular language, might not be mirrored in Normandy and, eventually, France if this influence played (as theorized) historically : we might see a longer use of latin in official documents on the continent altough I do think giving the large interaction between Saxon England and France IOTL, this influence would still play ITTL.
 
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