The Conqueror
Heinemann, 1931
Setting: France and England
Time: 1028 – 1066
I WAS RIGHT that this one was in the vein of The Great Roxhythe, in that it feels like a return to the court intrigue stylings of that less successful novel, except The Conqueror enjoys some key differences which, I think, have kept it in the general readership, if not (as far as I can discern) ranked it among Heyer’s most beloved works.
One difference is the battles, which are furious and exhilarating. Heyer knows her way around a broadsword and medieval military strategy, as she demonstrated to winningly in Simon the Coldheart, and the final thrust of the narrative, in which William the Conqueror actually gets to conquering, is first rate.
The Great Roxhythe really suffered from a lack of long bow men, it turns out.
The other main difference between the two, though, is that presumably fictional character of the devoted servant of the king (at first, Duke) here, on Raoul de Harcourt, is given a tender, if bittersweet, romance with the intrepid Elfrida, which Roxhythe really only got to have with his secretary, Christopher.
Our story commences with a prophecy dream – okay – given to a pregnant woman named Herleva, mistress to the Duke of Normandy’s son. (Ah, more mistresses. Good.) The baby is born shortly thereafter, and in a way reminiscent of the Three Wise Men at the manger of Jesus, the child is immediately proclaimed a future king.
“William the King!”
Right. Okay.
A quick jump forward to 1047, and William is nineteen, but before we meet him we get to know Raoul, a youngster with a passion for justice and an aversion to rape. We like Raoul already. He wants nothing more than to help tame the lawless Norman land he calls home, so he sets out to join the Duke’s service – that’s our William – and the two become fast friends pretty quick, due to Raoul’s decision to guard his much beleaguered liege lord with eagle eyes and save “the Bastard Duke” from more than one assassination plot, even though no one actively asked him to.
A self-starter, Raoul.
The two spend most of the proceeding several hundred pages together, and through the devotion of Raoul we come to love this stolid, deceptively clever military strategist as he does, indeed, conquer again and again and again, and is nothing if not ruthless about it.
There is a lot in this book that is admirable and engaging, and it truly does bring history to life, to employ a very overused phrase. Indeed, there is much about it that encourages me even further to believe that this genre of historical fiction is far worthier a pursuit of both study and leisure than I had previously believed. After all, events are not always understood as they are happening, but only in retrospect, and it is evident here, as indeed it was in Roxhythe, that the various doings of assorted monarchs would not have been known by the general populace, and therefore could not have been written about as they happened.
But the problem with bringing history to life is that history was pretty dark and depressing at times, and the scene where William whips – yes, with an actual leather horsewhip – Princess Matilda of Flanders and then forces her to marry him, for political expediency, is just upsetting and infuriating and makes you hate him. The fact that they later fall into a twisted kind of love is as much a foreshadowing of the explosion of S&M sub/dom fetish lifestyle as it is an example of how powerless and pawn-like women of the era were, perhaps most especially those born to the higher ranks.
I’m not saying that S&M sub/dom is twisted, by the way. I’m just saying that Matilda was basically Christian Greyed into it, but with a whip in her own home instead of a contract and the promise of luxury air travel.
So that aspect of the story, I have to assume, is relatively true, because why else put in that kind of brutality and unpleasantness from your so-called hero? Well, Raoul is really the hero of the novel, but William is his hero, so that is close enough. It’s enough that the man conquered England. Surely we didn’t have to witness him literally conquer a woman – with physical abuse – as well?
Of course, as I am constantly reminded, different times, different norms. And freedom from violence, especially domestic violence, continues to elude women the world over. But nowadays that kind of thing is either written from a survivor’s perspective, or as a cautionary tale, or very firmly by the villain of the piece. It is definitely a Bad Thing. Here, William’s vicious treatment of Mathilda is presented as some kind of… romantic seduction technique.
It’s very hard to forgive the book for that. Even despite history, and context, and historical context, I’m really just not sure I can.
FAVORITE NEW WORD: “Seax.” It means knife. Who knew?
HISTORY LEARNED: ALL of the history. Before reading this book, I had no idea William the Conqueror was illegitimate, for a start. I also, even more unsurprisingly, knew next to nothing about 11th-century geopolitics. And the thing with that savage beating of Matilda – yes, it is held to be true by even the most respected of historians. Awful. (Sadly Raoul and Elfrida, the best parts of the book, are fictional.)
BUY HEYER FOR BEGINNERS HERE!
Maura Tan was born in Zanzibar, grew up in Morocco and lives in Singapore, where she is currently studying for her third degree in Contemporary Literature.
