18 min listen
Episode 14 - William the Bad
FromNorman Centuries | A Norman History Podcast by Lars Brownworth
ratings:
Length:
21 minutes
Released:
Jun 2, 2012
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
If Roger II had been the 'baptized Sultan', his son William forgot the water. Despised by his legendary father and never intended for the throne, William the Bad dedicated his life to the comforts of the palace, stirring only to lead his armies on the battlefield, the one area in which he excelled. Though he could at times be energetic and even brilliant as a general, his reign was stained by internal rebellions and the loss of international prestige. But however much his reputation was blackened by subsequent historians, William I was hardly the failure that he was made out to be. Join Lars Brownworth as he looks at the life of William the Bad, the Norman Kingdom's most maligned king.
Released:
Jun 2, 2012
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (20)
Episode 1 - Rollo and the Viking Age: They were the great success story of the Middle Ages, a footloose band of individual adventurers who appeared out of nowhere to blaze across the face of Dark Age Europe. In the course of two centuries the Normans launched a series of extraordinary conquests, transforming Anglo-Saxon England into Great Britain, setting up a powerful Crusader state in Antioch, and turning Palermo into the dazzling cultural and economic capital of the western Mediterranean. Their story, however, begins rather humbly in the fierce Viking Age, when a group of Scandinavian raiders came crashing into Charlemagne's empire. Join Lars Brownworth as he follows the ferocious warrior Rollo, the first Norman, who began life as a simple raider and ended it as a great lord of the West. by Norman Centuries | A Norman History Podcast by Lars Brownworth