In her quest to better understand England’s green and pleasant land, our Canadian correspondent Qov has requested that I blog about the Norman Conquest. I agreed willingly, undeterred by the fact that I know nothing about it. Google is my friend.

It all started, it seems, in 1016, when the King of Denmark, Cnut, seized the English throne by killing King Ethelred the Unready, demonstrating neatly that they both lived up to their name. The murdered king’s widow Emma hastily married Cnut - whether this is because she had a monarch fetish or because she didn’t want her head chopped off, the history books don’t say.

Ethelred’s son, Edward the Not Quite So Unready But Frankly a Bit of a Wuss, fled to France, where he lived on a diet of onions and frog’s legs until 1042. By this time Cnut and his sons were dead, so Edward decided it was probably safe to come home. He returned to Blighty and they let him play at being king for a bit. But they also made him marry some bird named Edith, who looked like the back end of a constipated rottweiler, so it’s no surprise that he never had any heirs.

When Edward snuffed it in 1066, no one was quite sure whose turn it was to be king next. At that point things get a bit chaotic. Harold eventually gets the gig, but William seems to think it’s rightfully his, and decides to illustrate his view by means of several thousand men waving pointy things.

The battle doesn’t come off as smoothly as it might. Harold has an unfortunate incident with an arrow, while William’s attempt to orchestrate a carefully rehearsed attack formation ends in utter confusion on account of everyone in his army being called Norman.

To cut a long story short, William won. He was crowned on Christmas day, just in time to slip into a frock and do the Queen’s Speech on the telly.