The Weekly Defrost #15

I have recently been reading The Story of Britain (1996), and I got to wondering -

Why do we still teach 1066 in any history class in the world?

I can think of three criteria to assess potential topics for history classes: 

1. The subject is directly relevant to lives today: you can still see its consequences reflected around you. Learning this subject helps you to understand your day-to-day life and circumstances.

2. The subject teaches themes or skills indirectly applicable to lives today: universal or modern truths persist across different circumstances, so the above is still fulfilled.

3. The subject is really interesting or fun, and serves as a gateway to get students interested in history.

A subject should surely fulfil at least one of these, and ideally all three. I’d nominate as good examples of each criteria from my time in history classes:

1. 9/11: the subject is directly relevant today in that modern terrorism remains an ongoing issue, as does the response from society and from governments.

2. Causes of World War Two: though the Nazi government, and most participants in the war, are long dead and buried, studying the 30s from this perspective is helpful to get everything from the lure of the far-right (see: Europe today), to the relationship between the economy and the public (one very relevant given the recent cost of living crisis), to how the drawing of old borders for arbitrary reasons still matters today, to how governments respond to warmongers like Putin.

3. Ancient Egypt: okay, I don’t think primary school coverage counts as history class, but this is an era that occurred so incredibly long ago and has such weak links to most of the world today, and yet is just plain super cool with a lot of easily packaged content.

Now let’s consider the major historical events of the year 1066 in England:

1. King Edward the Confessor dies 

2. King Harold fends off a Viking invasion

3. King Harold is killed by Normans and his army loses

4. William the Conqueror crowns himself king, and consequently reshapes the English realm, introducing a new elite, administration, and culture (including greater Romance influence to an Anglo-Saxon population)

Three of these are easy to dismiss. Who cares about Edward? He didn't shape the key institutions of post-Roman or post-Viking England. History has a bajillion battles and there’s nothing exceptional about Stamford Bridge or Hastings; although some kids (almost exclusively boys) are interested in military history, there are way more compelling instances to point to. The romantic idea of “what if Harold doesn’t take an arrow to the eye by chance” doesn’t really go anywhere the way some historical divergences do. 

A much better example I also learnt was the Crusades. The subject features meaningful wartime decisions about the treatment of prisoners vis a vis attitudes towards honour and toleration. You can also discuss lots of big questions about what might have played out differently if the Crusades fell anywhere else along the spectrum of “never got going” to “Outremer becomes permanent”. They’re a Eurocentric sideshow of history, and they’re still a much better idea to teach than 1066.

The last has more of a case for being taught. Whether you’re in England or an Anglosphere former colony, the historical shaping of English institutions is obviously important to understanding life today: for instance, we are governed by a Westminster Parliament and handed-down and iterated upon British laws. Yet I never really saw what, specifically, makes the Norman conquest such a strong influence today. 

There are a couple neat facts - how we owe a lot of our French loanwords in English to the Normans, how the Domesday Book serves as a valuable historical resource - but there is no one thing today about how our society operates that I can point to and say “wow, I understand that better now that I know William the Conqueror sailed from Normandy”. (We don’t even learn by far the most interesting fact - that the Normans arose from Viking settlers who spread as far as Russia, Sicily and Turkey!)

1066 seems to be one of the most prominent cases of various educational topics persisting through inertia, because they occupy such a hallowed place in our narrative of ourselves, without really carrying their own weight. This is epitomised by how 1066 fits into the narrative the British nation has historically enjoyed telling itself: that 1066 was the only time that all England was ever conquered. 

That’s a meaningless distinction without teaching the other half of that statement: that the border of the English Channel created unique divergences across the British Isles from mainland Europe, like the maritime empire and the emphasis on the balance of power. That is mighty uncharitable to the influence of both the Romans and the Vikings, who did their damndest to do a conquest and leave their mark on the land. 

That’s also just not true! William of Orange conquered Britain in 1688. There’s no reason why the lack of bloodshed should make any difference regarding a man who summoned an army, set sail with the intent of challenging a ruling monarch’s claim, and forced him into exile while imposing a new government and religious policy. 

If you’re going to teach the importance of English history, why not start with the upheaval of the 1600s that defined the role of everything from Parliament to church in our lives? If you want lessons applicable for all time, how about how a government lost its base of support and was couped by outside forces? If you’re hunting for a neat fact, how about the fact that in just over a century, a Scotsman, a Dutchman and a German all came to take England’s throne? 

I’m not saying we have to teach William of Orange in schools. I’m just saying it’s hard to think, amongst all the topics regularly taught, of a worse claimant to time and resources than 1066.

I finished the new House of the Dragon season. Should you watch it? Sure…just maybe not for a couple of years.

[General structural spoilers ahead, but nothing specific.]

Look.

I enjoyed HotD Season Two. 

I wasn’t bored. 

But outside of Yellowstone (which is unspeakably pointless past its own Season Two), never in my life have I seen such a “nothing ever happens” season of television.

HotD’s first season is really compelling, but you’re also absolutely watching ten episodes of setup work. Feuds deepen and trust frays as the seeds are planted for future conflict. You get to the end of the season and, having taken the journey with them to do a bunch of time skips and see a lot of characters get into place without getting to actually do much yet, you trust that bloodshed is coming. HotD isn’t trying to be a GoT clone, but there’s the same sense as GoT’s first season of a realm marching towards civil war.

The second season is…more of the same. A few battles are fought, a of seismic developments occur, but by and large, characters spend the season striding around rooms alone or in the presence of generally unhelpful lieutenants, brooding. I really respect the confidence that the audience will stick with them through a lot of gorgeously shot and acted scenes - Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke are doing a fantastic job - without needing to see the kind of “dragons, daggers and diddling” crowdpleasing that GoT so constantly fell back on. Unexpectedly delaying the onset of full-on, no-holds-barred war as some characters actively strive to avert that outcome raises a lot of interesting themes and decisions for characters to face.

Yet it’s also kind of unbelievable how many times we see the same scenes done over again where advisors undermine their monarch, are chastised, and nothing happens. A lot of the side characters, particularly from the younger generation, don’t receive compelling development to flesh out the cast. A surprising number of major characters, from Ser Cristan to Matt Smith’s Daemon, remain frustratingly static and even opaque. 

It’s not clear what was going on in the writer’s room that froze the show in amber so, and it’s a bit of an embarrassment that nobody thought to give characters not yet engaged in war the most basic of active tasks to pursue. (Is there a single scene in this season where anybody drills troops or trains their skills? Surely that’s the most blindingly obvious place to start in the buildup to war?)

HotD’s a good show that justifies its existence and does not fall prey to the prequel or spinoff curse of simply creating more products for its cinematic universe. (Indeed, it’s kind of funny how its main connection is continuing the buildup that GoT did for its infamously botched endgame.) I trust that the third season will release all this tension and pop off in the process, so long as the war looks nothing like the shockingly stupidly scripted battle from S1E3. 

Yet, particularly for viewers from the start who have been waiting for new episodes for two years already, there’s not enough here yet for fans of “excitement” and “developments” to sink their teeth into. So, if you haven’t started watching, I recommend forgetting all about it until Season Three rolls around. That way, you can watch the first eighteen episodes knowing they actually go towards something.

Also the main theme (at least that’s what I assume it is, I couldn’t track it down online) is so good - Ramin Djawadi continues to kill it - Aemond is my favourite character but I’m rooting for the Blacks, and the best episode by a country mile is S1E8. Paddy Considine really set the bar high.