A BLOODY AND MOMENTOUS YEAR, 1066!

“By the grace of God I shall yet prove the victor!”

The year 1066 saw Haley’s Comet blaze across the night sky. To the people of England it was a harbinger of invasion and war. Three ambitious men vied for the vacant thrown: Harold Godwinson, the land’s most powerful warlord; William the Bastard, iron-willed Duke of Normandy; and Harald Hardrada, the most feared warrior in northern Europe and king of Norway. Only one could be king, only one would survive. Their struggle for the thrown of England would lead to one of the greatest and most decisive battles in the sanguine history of the British Isles: The Battle of Hastings.

The struggle for the English throne in 1066 was the culmination of years of dynastic intrigue concerning the would-be successor to King Edward the Confessor, a monarch known for his piety but who had failed in his duty to…