Besides linguistics (there might still be some continental influence there however, though obviously not nearly to OTL's extent), anybody know how the old English state was run? Because for starters their version of the feudal system would still be in place and they'd still have the Witenagemot. In technology they'd probably follow the same patterns as OTL given that they aren't really removed much from the continent, though there'd probably be fewer castles I'd imagine since the Normans had a bit of a mania about them. And I'd imagine Wales would have better chances, or at least last a bit longer.
I suppose we all realize there was never really any such thing as "the" feudal system; insofar as we have an idealized notion of how the definitive "feudal system" was supposed to work it would be derived from the Norman and other western French dynasties, which have just been severely butterflied by Harold's victory--all manner of shenanigans still going on in western France, but they don't have England as a plaything. (And by the way, what happens back in Normandy now that William's bold venture has led to him and most of his cronies being killed off or disgraced? Does Normandy hold reasonably stable under the regency of William's Duchess and in the name of the IIRC already born William Rufus--is Rufus in fact past his minority already? Or does it disintegrate into chaos? If so, does it reconstitute as Normandy under some other dynasty, or does it get partitioned by neighboring powers?)
Anyway--England could be said to be "feudal," but it was significantly more centralized than the "typical" continental western French regions. And William, when he took over OTL, adopted a great many English precedents because they suited his ambitions to control England strongly--he didn't just want loot and an addition to his lands, he wanted to be a king, one who could challenge the authority of his nominal lord, the King of France. So, while I daresay that unconquered England would be quite different than Norman England (no massacres for instance) we can very reasonably foresee the Anglo-Saxon kingdom evolving in a rough parallelism with OTL, except that things would have more Saxon names and few or no French ones, and the nature of ties to the Continent would be quite different--weaker on the whole and more optional.
The Witanegemot for instance--yep, something like that existed. One should not assume though that was a representative body comparable to the kind of Parliament England had centuries later OTL. And the Normans OTL had their own councils of the powerful--because that is what the Witan had evolved into, whatever its origins, and I gather it was always that. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, which went on centuries after the Conquest OTL, called the Norman high councils "Witanagemots."
England, though doubtless subject to periods of trouble and chaos due to weak or crazy monarchs or especially vigorous scheming of powerful lords as per OTL, would probably evolve to have remarkably effective central government, develop legal bureaucracy where written documents, including something like "writs" to document royal actions, become ever more important and there would be some concept that even the king himself is bound by law.
We'd all be speaking Anglo-Saxon instead of modern English, because without a Norman victory, there wouldn't be nearly as many French and Latin words entering the language, changing it from Anglo-Saxon to English. In short, it would be a much more Germanic and far less Latin language than OTL.
Well, it wouldn't be "Anglo-Saxon" aka "Old English" any more than modern OTL English is, or not much more anyway. I daresay a modern English person would have considerable trouble understanding what Beowulf was saying without heavy glosses.
Assuming France, or anyway French successor states, remain powerful and important I suppose the combination of cultural influence and proximity will lead to a fair number of French loan words, and Latin's influence of course comes from the clerics and scholars, so naming things in Latin (or Greek) might still have the prestige needed to carry words into the vernacular.
The real question is, would the character of the evolution of English be drastically different due to the avoidance of the trauma of being suppressed for centuries? To what degree is modern English a grammatically simplified, or anyway flexible, language because it was driven out of the centers of power for a while, and came back from below as it were, ingratiating itself to the dominant classes while serving the needs of the dominated? Is OTL modern English in fact a sort of Creole language? From what I've read of linguistic theory, Creole tongues evolve from the children of drastically subjugated peoples--the children grow up hearing two different languages in use, with a power gradient between them, and infer their own notions of grammar that tend to bridge both in a fashion that is sort of intelligible to both but strictly follows neither. Give such a hybrid language a few generations to establish itself and one has a whole new language. I'm speculating here that a characteristic of modern English, its propensity to simply appropriate foreign words without apology, might not have been so characteristic of an unconquered England. So we might indeed have fewer loan words from any source, due to the perceived awkwardness of incorporating foreign words, and instead have Saxon-based constructions. It might then wind up sounding more like German in that respect, with lots of long compound words based mainly on Saxon root words.
So maybe the gap between moderns and Beowulf might not be as big as I would guess. But I imagine that even so, words would be worn down, pronunciations would shift drastically, grammar would change, and the modern language would be significantly different.
The Englaland would be soldiering on orobably until the modern day, the immediate concern is preparing in case the Danish try to also make true on their claim to the throne but something tells me that they will fail or not even go for it. Harold would have proven himself one of the greatest military minds of his generation through his defense of the kingdom (going from two crushing victories within days of eachother the second one after a forced march is gonna be seen as impressive by military historians) and even if that record doesn't dissuade Svend I don't see why he couldn't be stopped in the same way Hadrada was. From there long term Harold Godwinsons family is in my opinion very likely to retain the throne for the next few generations to come barring his sons being spectacularly bad kings (which given how little we know about him there is a possibility of). In the future they may get heavily involved in mainland politics but in a very different way from OTL, I expect them to be equally involved in German and French politics because those are the areas that concern them most. Even if they are culturally most similar to scandinavia, scandinavia itself just isn't powerful enough for them to really be impactful on England barring something big like a Scottish Norwegian personal union.
England's survival is a roll of the dice, but I'd agree the odds favor it.
Wasn't England the richest most stable country in Western Europe at this time? The riches bit is why William the Bastard wanted England. Nobody would touch England until Harold Godwinson died as he would be regarded as the foremost militay genius of the day. Then as mentioned before it depends on how able his successors are in governing the country.
It is quite possible that the Capetian Kings of France would covet the even richer land in the north (as we have butterflied away everything including the Matilda/Steven civil war UNLESS the analogue happens which is always possible).Or are they butterflied away as well?
I would think that given the severe aggression one of the Capetian's vassals just committed--if the English held the French king in any way responsible that would be one thing, but in context that would probably be silly. They'd recognize that the Normans were acting on their own hook, and with aggression against the nominal overlord in Paris quite implicit--if William could make himself a King in his own right and use English wealth to finance his actions on the Continent, presumably he would be making more trouble for the French king.
So the English kingdom and the French monarchy would tend, for a while anyway, as long as the western vassals were as unruly and independent-minded anyway, to be allies of convenience, both concerned to bring the western duchies to heel. The English would be in an ambivalent position because they might prefer to consider the prospect of grabbing some of those western lands for themselves. I think already national identity, especially in England (another fashion in which England was a bit "ahead" of the Continent, a greater sense of nationality as "English" people) might give them some pause--how exactly would they hold on to territories filled with people who were in no way English, nor close to it, but ethnically tied to the neighboring peoples they'd always have to be fighting off? So if the English don't succumb to that kind of temptation, I daresay their interests and Paris's will run on parallel lines for a long time to come.
Once a powerful French dynasty manages to more or less centralize France though it might suddenly become a different story--especially if in the interim the English kings have picked up some Continental possessions here or there, especially if these are carved from France.
England can still get involved on the continent when one of Harold Godwinsons successors marries an ATL Eleanor of Aquitaine analogue.
Oh yes, royal marriages can lead to all kinds of wackiness I guess. Such as perhaps discarding a policy of helping the French king try to bring the western duchies to heel and instead forming a personal union and attempting to bust say the southwest corner of France completely out of the French kingdom and set it up as tied to London. My, that opens up doors for all manner of bloodshed!
-----
A couple things of my own:
I daresay that if William fails to conquer England, the whole matter of Arthurian legend will be stillborn. OTL that was mainly a product of the Norman/Angevian period.
I wonder if there is any chance that instead, King Alfred the Great will absorb elements of Arthurian myth that might have had some prior existence. But I doubt it, his historical status would be too solid and clear to drift into the patina of legend. Still, Alfred might in some more general sense sit in Arthur's place.
Then there is the matter of the Crusades. I would think that even given the failure of the Norman invasion, the calling of the first Crusade would still be on the Church's agenda a generation later. But although the first and subsequent Crusades did draw in knights from the Holy Roman Empire as well, the demographics of the First Crusade especially make it very strongly a French thing. The closest allies and companions the French had would be the contingent from Flanders, who indeed wound up supplying the monarch for the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
OTL the English were more or less automatically included as part of the French contingent.
One might argue that there would be no Crusades at all, because they were a very contingent event. I believe there were underlying factors--mainly the Church trying to manage unruly French feudal lords, and hitting on the solution of sending some of them east, to die or to conquer in the name of Christ, the Popes didn't much care which really. The point was to drain the land--France in particular--of an excess of quarrelsome knights. So on one pretext or another, sooner or later, there would be a French pope (not uncommon in these days) who would call for something like a Crusade, and it would mainly be a movement of French knights and some closely associated peoples, with the Empire's Germans coming along for the ride mainly to keep an eye on the French ambitions.
The English, I think, would sit this one out. Their monarchy would have more of a lid on the problem of restless lords, and they would not be invited to a French party nor be inclined to crash it.
If there is a First Crusade more or less parallel to OTL, I don't know how to predict the probability that its outcome could be anything like OTL, It is such a wacky tale it's hard to believe the outcome is anything but a roll of the dice, and yet the success of conquering Palestine and a number of other territories was so sweeping I hesitate to argue it was all just luck. If the first Crusade ended in dire failure, that might be the end of the whole thing right there, but I guess the odds are it wouldn't; there would be some success. Would the English then feel shamed into joining subsequent campaigns? Significantly, there was no Second Crusade OTL until one of the established Crusader principalities fell; after that, Crusades started taking on a life of their own that had little to do with a momentum of success (which was rare and limited). Perhaps in the course of that later sense, some English lords might organize one of their own. But on the whole, I'd think the English would be sidetracked from the whole thing.
Indeed--a point that perhaps should have been brought up much earlier instead of at the end--what about the Pope's blessing of William's invasion and condemnation of Harold's reign?
In the long run, I am not suggesting anything like the English forming a separatist church and turning against the Catholic Church as such. Such a move would be both extreme and suicidal and the powers of England would all understand that. But in the course of trying and failing to steal England, William the Bastard had, from the English point of view anyway, suborned and corrupted the Papacy itself to make a false proclamation. (Obviously false, or William would have won!) For a while anyway, at least until the Pope of 1066 dies, and possibly after that if the new Pope is of the same pro-Norman faction (less likely I suppose if Normandy is in disarray and disgrace) relations between Rome and Canterbury/London will be frosty. It doesn't pay the English king and high clergy to make too much of a fuss about it, but they are not friends. This may help Harold and his immediate successor consolidate royal power over the archbishoprics of the kingdom, as the English clergy reflect they don't owe the pro-Norman Pope any favors either.
I would foresee then that the English remain (at least until the middle of the millennium) loyal Catholics, with a self-image of relative sincerity compared to the corruptions found around the Papal Curia, but outsiders to Curial power. There would not be any English popes, as there was one OTL--that was an Anglo-Norman. The English will be at a bit of a disadvantage in Continental politics due to lack of connections to the Papacy, but on the other hand the Pope won't have as strong a hand in English affairs as he might in Continental ones. English clerics will still be heard at councils; the English will conform to Catholic norms.
I don't want to suggest that all this due merely to pique at William's maneuver against Harold--that would become water under the bridge. I just suggest that the Normans were able to denounce Harold in the first place because of their stronger ties to the Papacy, and in general England will suffer from being a second cousin to the central Catholic system, which is more Italian, German, and French.