You will be redirected to OpenEdition Search. The duchy of Normandy was conquered three times in just over a century: from England , from Anjou and from France The common factor in success was winning the support of the Norman nobility by allegiance, coercion or outright bribery.
Their supposedly troublesome and treacherous nature has been exaggerated by modern historians following the biases of contemporary chroniclers. They were often faced with dilemmas of conflicting lordships. In this period, the personality of a ruler was crucial; but a matrix of legal, social, financial and technological factors also influenced the outcome.
Above all, it is important to understand that ties of loyalty were largely conceived in personal terms rather than territorial ones, let alone anachronistic attributions of nationalism. In my view there is still a significant misunderstanding of the politics of submission, not helped by the clumsy nationalist interpretations of a historiography reaching back in the 19 th century.
Furthermore, the modern assumption is that centralisation under royal power was the natural state of affairs in medieval polities; but this was far from true. Baronial families, whose estates lay on the fault lines between the spheres of influence of the kings of England and France, or French regional authorities such as the dukes and counts of the kingdom, played a crucial role in defining those borders.
Indeed, the concept of a Marcher lord, perhaps best expressed in the British Isles but visible elsewhere across Europe, was one with clearly expressed rights to independent action. Vassals such as these could become a two-edged sword — both the militant agents of expansion and a threat to central authority at the periphery.
