Comments by "Ronin Dave" (@RoninDave) on "Timeline - World History Documentaries" channel.

  1. 1066 is odd in that it is so well known and yet not so well known for that very reason being hammered into the skull of most english-speaking school children that everyone just assumes they know the story. Then it's compounded by national historians of the recent past who tried to un-frenchify the frenchness of the next several centuries calling people like Henri I-III as Henry passing over the fact that french was the language of the royal court for 3 centuries. Considering many of the upper class are descended from William's (Guillaume's) followers it's no small surprise. Harold really should be studied more and admired for his achievements and mourned for being cut down low before he could accomplish more.
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  2. Richard and John been done to death by Robin Hood and the Magna Carta. It's nice to see the overlooked bits shown light again instead of the same dead horse beaten again. It's like with Rome documentaries that focus mainly on Hannibal, Julius Caesar and some of his immediate successors, Attila, and the fall of Rome ignoring the vast epochs of time between those times.
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  3. It's easy to dedicate most of your society to being warriors when your state runs on slave labor.
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  4. +Ie Beast what you're suggesting is like calling a Texan Irish because his great-grandfather was Irish. William or Guillaume was for all intents and purposes French or rather Norman French not a Viking which is a term badly misused anyway. Many of dukes married french women such as the first duke Rollo/Rolf so his successor was half Scandinavian and half Frankish. By the time of Guillaume his Norse blood and culture was pretty much bred out of him.
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  5. Technically in the 12th Century no one spoke English as we think of it today. What is called "old english" is the language of the angles, saxons, with latter mixing of norse and danish from the 9th century onwards. What we speak today is more of a mix of norman french and the earlier mixed language of anglo-saxons and vikings. Anyway, I like that this series doesn't have Henry or Henri II speaking Shakespearian English since such language didn't exist then and Henry was a product of Normandy and Anjou anyway. We have had a long period of Anglicization of history making past kings more English than they ever were to the point where people still think Richard I was a "good English king."
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  6. The "everything you know about such-n-such is wrong" is a popular eye-catching gimmick and while it's good to keep an open mind, there's too much of wanting to overthrow previous schools of thought for the sake of overthrowing them rather than an actual quest of truth. Here, there seems to be a massive effort to downplay a long established narrative. Making Bede a diabolical manipulator of English identity is rather laughable. His book disappeared in England and was more popular on the continent after the Norman Conquest so its impact on English identity was much later. Pryor ignores 6th Century Celtic refugees to "Brittany" as well as the Welsh chronicles that detail battles with the Anglo-Saxons. For Pryor's theory of a gradual peaceful assimilation (and inexplicably) over another language culture (which did not happen on this level when Rome actually conquered them and crushed rebellions like Boudica) it require a coordination on a massive level involving Bede, Welsh chroniclers like Nennius, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, and finally Geoffery of Monmouth to create this fabrication of invasion.
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  7. were you expecting modern french? lol!
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