William II of England, called William Rufus

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    In the ninth day of the ninth month in the Year of the Lord 1087, the mighty King of England, William who was known as the Conqueror closed his eyes for the final time.

    He left his Kingdom in unrest for he had decided long before he parted from his life, that his oldest Son Robert should not follow him as King of England but was only to be named as Duke of the Normandy, the birth lands of King William.

    Robert had too often waged war against his father and thus the Conqueror decided that his second living son, who had the same name as his royal father, should be his successor on the English throne.

    And thus William, son of King William the Conqueror was crowned in the twenty-eigth year of his life in Westminster Abbey, seventeen days after the death of his father.
    .......
    'History of William II of England, King for 15000 days'
    Written 1787, by Benjamin Incledon     ​
     
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    • 2. The Uncles
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    Chronicles of the rebellion against King William in the Year of the Lord 1088......

    ..............and so when after many weeks of bitter siege, the King stormed Pevensey Castle at the head of his loyal troops, he was hit hard about the sight of the beaten men, men that he had known since the days of his childhood.
    These men had once been companions of his father and after they were gifted and became enriched through the generosity of the Conqueror, they had grewn greedy and thus in their arrogance had decided to rebel against their true King and follow a wrong one.
    But King William proved himself to be a true son of his father and was generous in his forgiveness.
    He ordered that his Uncle Robert of Mortain would be sent to the usurper Robert, Duke of Normandy. Lord of Mortain was blinded and castrated though before he was allowed to leave England.

    The son William of Mortain had already received the justice that God gave traitors, for he came down with a gruesome dysentery a day before the Castle yielded and he survived for only a day more as prisoner of the King.

    The other Uncle of King William, Odo of Bayeux who had rebelled now for the umpteenth time against the King, mostly his brother but his nephew too, had been non the less pardoned by King William.

    Odo was only castrated and blinded but then brought into an Abbey to live a prayerful life.

    The King naturally confiscated all belongings of his both his Uncles ......

    'The Siege of Pevensey Castle, Chapter three of the Chronicles of the Rebellion'
    By Becca Gableston    ​
     
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    • 3. Mowbray and Eu
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    ......and sadly we have no more mentions of the House of Eu and the House of de Lacy after the Year 1088, which certainly fired up the tales that had been spun about their fate.

    The most likely source of information that is said to be true, is the simple notice of Auboval, the chaplain of Lord Robert of Mowbray.

    Lord Robert confessed to me in the Year of the Lord 1090, that he felt guilty about the lightness of the punishment that he received by the hands of King William.
    He spoke that he had hoped for the same to be given to his friends William of Eu and Roger de Lacy but that he had to accept that King William was in God given rights to punish each House of rebels differently as he saw it fit.
    ​

    This short notice in the prayer book of House Mowbray, led us today to the believe that both Houses were extinguished in the male line and all their lands and assets had been taken over by William II Rufus......

    ........ .
    Chapter five of the 'Chronicles of the Rebellion' by Becca Gableston
     
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    • 4.Henry Earl of Mercia
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    ...Henry Beauclerc though was valued certainly much higher by his brother King William Rufus, not only because they both despised their oldest brother Robert Duke of Normandy but also because William knew that his younger sibling had already fathered a bastard.

    For William Rufus who was not married when he became King at the age of twenty-seven and who had not even be seen till then to be interested in any Women at all, his younger brothers carnal interests were a welcomed gift.

    Before the year 1089 ended, Henry was ordered to marry by his older brother. The Bride-to-be was the Anglo-Saxon Lady Godiva whose family had been the former powerful Earls of Mercia before the Norman Conquest. The Lady was was born 1070 to her father Edwin, the last Anglo-Saxon Earl of Mercia, who died a good year later.

    At the will of the Conqueror she had been married 1085 to one of his many lesser known Norman Knights who had received some good but not large lands in Mercia and had given him a daughter, Willa and a son, Ranulph in the three years of their marriage.

    The Knight had been one of the many rebels against William Rufus in the Year 1088 and died, either in the many battles of shortly afterwards.

    The young widow, as said to be quite beautiful too, was still deemed innocent in the shenanigans of her late husband and found valuable enough by King William II to be married to his brother, even though William normally disliked the Anglo-Saxons. Non the less, he could see the good opportunity to tie the old English nobility from before the Conquest closer to his own family and thus Godiva, named after her great-Grandmother and Henry Beauclerc married 1090. The Bride was twenty years old and the bridegroom twenty-two.

    As wedding gift and to reward his brother for his loyalty, King William reinstated the since 1071 disbanded Earldom of Mercia and Henry became the Earl of Mercia in the Year 1091. Since his wife was the daughter of the last Anglo-Saxon Earl of Mercia and only known surviving Child, it was seen everywhere as a quite good and legal succession.

    In the nine years of their marriage, Godiva gave birth to seven children before she died 1099 from complications in the birthing bed alongside with her last babe, a daughter.

    Of these seven children, four survived, the 1092 born son William Adelin, the daughter Godiva born 1093, the son Henry born 1095 and his twin sister Matilda.

    During these nine years of marriage, Henry Beauclerc sired also at least three bastard children though for not much is known about them other that they all were daughters and became nuns.

    Less than a year after the death of Countess Godiva, her children Willa and Ranulph from her first short marriage both died of a fever at the ages of fourteen and twelve. They were buried by their mother's side in Coventry.

    .............




    Son of a King, brother of a King, father of a King.
    The Life of Henry Beauclerc by Marc Antony Bennett, published 1997    ​
     
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    • VVD0D95

    Banned
    kaiidth said:
    Well, Henry married his Scottish wife just after he became King in 1100 in OTL.

    He is widower here but not King by 1100, so who knows?
    Click to expand...

    it would
    Probably make less sense this time to do it though no? Given that he’s got heirs.
     
    5.Robert of Normandy
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    ....Robert II Duke of Normandy, remembered as Robert Curthose and Robert the Luckless was kept with his army away from Englands coast at the start of the rebellion because of the bad weather for many a days and when finally all arrived and the soldiers had landed, he had found himself with way less support among the English nobles and clergy than he had hoped for.

    He was brought to fall by betrayal of one of his own Knights, who was later enriched by King William II for that welcomed service.

    The Duke was forced to give up the true rulership of his dukedom to his royal brother and stayed as Duke in name only and was forced into captivity by his brother. He lived as a prisoner at the Court of William Rufus till he uttered the wish in the Year 1095 to join the First Crusade to have a chance to be freed of all his mortal sins by fighting against the enemys of Christ.

    He was granted this right by his rather amused royal brother William Rufus and was also given the means for bringing thousands of men in good equipment with him after finally giving up the last shred of his power and declaring his royal brother as new Duke of Normandy but not only in deeds anymore but also now in name.

    Robert turned out to be a brilliant field Commander but a terrible strategist on this First crusade and what gains he had made by his successful battles he lost later to other and more broader thinking Crusaders.

    As he was a rather spendthrift man whenever he had the meanings to be so, he sadly had also become known as Robert the Coinless and thus had less money than he would have needed to make his way back home and find a way to regain his dukedom.

    This was stated as the main reason by all sources that mentioned the later live of Robert Curthose after the Year 1099, the year that he entered the service of the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos as a princely Soldier-General and with two thousand well equipped but badly paid men at arms.

    The soldiers were paid the coins owed to them by Robert now from the Byzantine Emperor and the former Duke of Normandy was given a wife from one of the mid tier noble Houses of the Byzantine Empire. He fathered five children in his marriage and an unknown number of bastards with various lower standing women.

    Of the legal children there were three daughters, all be married to other high standing military Commanders of the Byzantine Empire and two sons. The older one died before his fifth birthday of unmentioned reasons and the second one as a young officer without issue in one of the many battles that the Empire fought against the many invading enemies.....





    'History of William II of England, King for 15000 days'
    Written 1787, by Benjamin Incledon
     
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    • Brita

    Brita

    VVD0D95 said:
    Oh interesting so no Scottish marriage for Henry, that changes a lot
    Click to expand...

    kaiidth said:
    Well, Henry married his Scottish wife just after he became King in 1100 in OTL.

    He is widower here but not King by 1100, so who knows?
    Click to expand...

    In 1093, Edith/Matilda of Scotland had been betrothed to Alan Rufus, Lord of Richmond, who was on good terms with William Rufus OTL. Maybe the wedding's possible here.
     
    kaiidth

    kaiidth

    Brita said:
    In 1093, Edith/Matilda of Scotland had been betrothed to Alan Rufus, Lord of Richmond, who was on good terms with William Rufus OTL. Maybe the wedding's possible here.
    Click to expand...
    Alan Rufus died 1093 though, in the 53rd year of his life.

    Oh, you mean for Edith/Matilde and Henry, yes of course it might be possible.
     
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    Brita

    Brita

    Yes, since Henry's still William's heir, I think his second marriage - if he remarries - will be to a royalty.
     
    kaiidth

    kaiidth

    Brita said:
    Yes, since Henry's still William's heir, I think his second marriage - if he remarries - will be to someone important.
    Click to expand...
    Technically his first marriage in TTL gave him the legal blood claim for the Earldom of Mercia and was thus not unimportant.
     
    6. Alan of Brittany
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    In the same year 1090 in which King William's brother Henry married Godiva, the daughter of Edwin of Mercia, the brothers had also lost their sister Constance, married to the Duke of Brittany Alan IV by order of William the Conqueror since 1087.

    Constance died without issue in the third year of her marriage and with the rather open knowledge that her husband did have her poisoned by her servants.

    Alan IV of Brittany had been forced into submission by the Conqueror after William I had invaded the Brittany in 1086 and then was married against his will to the Conquerors daughter. Constance was already in her late twenties and yet before had remained unmarried.

    She was said to be a severe woman and though she was a quite able administrator, there was no warm feelings between her husband and her.

    This beside, William II of England was not willing to ignore the rather loud rumors that his brother-in-law was behind his sister's death and neither was the younger brother Henry.

    A good two years after the death of Constance, Henry Earl of Mercia invaded the Brittany in the name of his brother William II of England and regent of the Duchy of Normandy.

    Beside him, as second of command was Stephen Count of Blois, married to Adela another sister of William Rufus and Henry and thus also a brother-in-law.

    Alan IV was beaten again and for the second time in less than ten years, he was forced into submission and into another marriage against his will. This time it was with the widowed Adela of Flanders, widow of King Canute IV of Denmark since 1086 and because she was a niece to Matilda of Flanders, a direct Cousin to King William Rufus and Henry of Mercia.

    Adela of Flanders had been married to King Canute from 1080 till his death through assassination in 1086.

    She gave birth to Charles in 1084 and the twindaughters Cecilia and Ingegerd in the last week of 1085.

    When her husband was killed in 1086, she fled with her son to Flanders but left her babydaughters behind in Denmark. Charles Canuteson grew up at the Court of his mothers father Robert I of Flanders with his mother by his side till 1092, when Adela then married the man that her Cousin Henry had just defeated.

    Adela became the second wife of Alan of Brittany in the last few months of 1092.
    To make sure that there would not be another dead wife soon, Adela's younger brother Phillip of Loo stayed with two hundred men at arms near her.

    To the surprise of everyone though, Alan actually grew to like his second wife and in the eleven years of their marriage she gave birth to six children, five of those survived their Childhood, among them the heir Conan and another son...



    "History of William II of England, King for 15000 days"
    Written 1787, by Benjamin Incledon
     
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