1066 is a date that is generally considered to be the start of something. That something being the age of the Normans and the Conquest of England. In September 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, triumphed at the Battle of Hastings against Harold Godwinson, whose death marked the end of the Anglo-Saxon era and the regional powers of Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria.

The lead-up to the Battle of Hastings, the battle and its aftermath are riddled with drama, so it is natural that at some point it would be given the Hollywood (ish) treatment. The point of the eight-part BBC TV series King and Conqueror is to tell the story up to the Battle of Hastings about how these two would-be kings of England crossed paths – shared baths – and appeared to be remarkably similar: ambitious, handsome and demonstrating natural leadership skills. The glue that binds the two men and their destinies is the English throne, or more accurately the man who sat on it, Edward the Confessor – Saint Edward the Confessor.

Medieval kings from the 12th century on were fascinated by The Confessor. He founded Westminster Abbey and was subsequently buried there. Henry III rebuilt Westminster Abbey in his memory. He is one of the three saints portrayed beside Richard II in the Wilton Diptych, allowed the same gravitas as Saint John the Baptist and Saint Edmund the Martyr. He became, over a relatively short period of time, a patron saint of England. His shrine at Westminster Abbey survives, ensconced by a series of Plantagenet kings and queens that followed him, from Henry I to Edward III. Henry I’s queen — Edward’s great niece — the Empress Matilda was so fascinated by the sanctity of her great-uncle that she had him exhumed in 1098. Bishop Gundulf, presiding over the exhumation, took the opportunity to snatch a hair from his beard.

So it is an obscure choice, then, to portray Edward the Confessor as a snivelling mad man who could barely hold his own fork let alone rule the country. That responsibility — according to the series — fell to dowager Queen Emma, his mother and widow of the legendary Canute. In the series, Queen Emma plays a formidable and terrifying matriarch, pulling all the strings of leadership with the earls dancing to her tune. Emma, in truth, had little to no authority over her son’s crown. She certainly was not battered to death with it, as in the series. The writing is following a series of tropes; that if a king is pious and godly then he must be weak and a little bit mad. Certainly not interested in sex with his attractive young queen, in Edward’s case, Earl Godwin’s daughter, (Edith in the record). This is incorrect. Most, in fact all, medieval kings — like most medieval people — lived by their faith. Edward I was a notorious ‘warrior’ king, but he was still pious. Henry V was zealous in his religion, but was the victor of Agincourt. Henry III was more pious, but his piety did not make him a pacifist.

The writing of this series makes the same mistake in the handling of medieval women. Queen Emma is the power behind the throne, but this renders her cruel and calculating. Equally Matilda, the wife of William the Conqueror, oversees torture to extract intelligence. The suggestion is that medieval women had to be cruel to have power and agency. This was not the case. The role of women in this period was as an intercessor, a political aid and confidante to the king. It was normal for her to sit on his council and be involved in decision making. This was what we would call today ‘soft power’. Queens did not have to cut off fingers to be respected. Edith, known to mythology as Edith Swan Neck for her beauty, was Harold’s long-term partner and mother to his children. Edith’s role was most accurately played. She was a mother and a diplomat. She was a valued member of the Godwin family, but never had a Christian marriage with Harold. However, she was never captured by Mercia and held captive in a chicken shed. Where she gave birth… on her own. That did not happen, mostly because there was no blood feud between Mercia and Wessex in the second part of the 11th century.

Another trope can be applied to the character of Sweyn, the bad-boy elder brother of Harold Godwinson, who became so much of a thorn in Harold’s side he had him assassinated — in the show, not in history. Sweyn is introduced as having taken ‘a lord’s privilege’ — the virginity of a local girl on her wedding night. This was fabricated in Braveheart and fabricated again in King and Conqueror. There is not actually any evidence that primae noctis was practised in the Middle Ages. This is supposedly to demonstrate that Sweyn was a complicated and crude individual, which may have been much better and more dramatically evidenced by sticking to the history and dramatising the time he kidnapped an abbess named Eadgifu and likely raped her, or just intended to forcibly marry her for her wealth, until stopped by the king. According to the Anglo-Saxon chronicle Sweyn, ‘went into Wales, and … the northern king with him, and hostages were given them. When he was on his way homeward, he had fetched to him the Abbess of Leominster, and kept her while it pleased him’.

This show is a series of tropes and the history is constantly skewed. This is forgivable and no historian should worry too much about artistic license, as long as it is done well. However, one way to truly irk a medieval historian is to portray people living in the medieval period as dirty. Especially those as wealthy as the Godwins and the Duke of Normandy. Reader, they had soap… and water. You do not need to be a medieval historian to guess that if you are attending the coronation of a king you would wash your face. This was not only inaccurate, but annoying to watch. In the same vein, the Middle Ages was not bland, beige and boring. It was colourful and wealth was visible. The recent re-development of Norwich Castle as it would have looked in the 11th century offers an expertly curated example of what kind of environment these royal folk lived in. It was full of colour: blues, greens and reds. Tapestries and glass. Not a washed out, dreary looking environment devoid of colour or culture.

What I am not is a film critic, but I can say that this lacked the drama it should have had. Harold felt villainous and grabbing and William came across as the one who had been poorly treated — tell that to northern England. The climax of the Battle of Hastings, which was an eye-watering almost ten-hour long slog, was not given nearly the attention it deserved. Nor was the Battle of Stamford Bridge, in which Harold fought his own brother, Tostig. It is one of history’s greatest stories but King and Conqueror did little justice to 1066 (And All That). As for the arrow in the eye? I have never seen a hedging of bets like it.