The first thing I recall about Matilda is the story, told I think in J.R. Unstead’s book, about the girl who turned her nose up at the prospect of marrying an illegitimate Duke of Normandy. A stand up fight followed, at which point Matilda decided she did want to marry William. It does make a good story! It’s perhaps not surprising that Joanna Courtney’s novel The Conqueror’s Queen contains a summary of this tale in its blurb. It also develops the narrative about Matilda’s romance with an Anglo-Saxon thegn. The difference between history and historical fiction being that tales and rumours can be embroidered in the latter but not the former. Although this didn’t seem to unduly bother the writer of the Chronicle of Tours, written some two hundred years after Matilda’s life. It was this document that provided all those tall stories about William’s diminutive wife..and that was a later story.

In reality, little is known about the historical figure of Matilda. Information about women often has to be picked out from a narrative that is more interested in warfare than family politics. William of Poitiers described Matilda’s arrival at Rouen and clearly William respected his bride – she acted as his regent. He also ensured that she spent almost all the early years of her married life giving birth to their children. What we don’t know is how involved she was in the duke’s politicking, or whether Edward the Confessor promised the growing family a kingdom – Courtney weaves a well thought out tale using Norman sources as her guide. Tracey Norman, whose autobiography of Matilda, is a must read, is required to be more nuanced.

During the 1070s problems for Matilda and William arose because their son, Robert, rebelled against his overbearing father. It seems that Matilda, who was something of a model wife, chose her son who was described in the Orderic Vitalis as being decadent, spendthrift and …er…all those other unwise things that rebelling sons get described as. Tensions between father and son boiled over in 1077/1078. Robert took himself off to Flanders but Matilda continued to correspond with him, and sent him money. When William found out, he gave orders for the queen’s messenger, a man named Samson, to be arrested and blinded. The Orderic Vitalis concludes the tale with the information that Matilda was able to find the man refuge in a monastery. The best indication of William’s wrath, however, lies in the fact that Matilda never acted as regent in her own right again. The rift was patched up but historians cannot say much more unless it’s couched in terms of ‘ifs, whats and maybes’ – a novel writer has much more to play with.

What is certain about the queen’s life is that a papal dispensation was required for consanguinity before the pair could marry; that Matilda governed Normandy of William’s behalf before the 1077 revolt; looked to the interests of Flanders and educated her brood of children. To all intents and purposes she was a model wife. Her support for William extended to the purchase and outfitting of the Mora, William’s flagship at the invasion of 1066. When Matilda died in 1083, William was at his wife’s bedside. She was buried in Caen.

Generally speaking, it is thought that William was never unfaithful to her and after she died it is said that he quit hunting, something of a passion with the Norman kings of England. During the four years that were left to him, before his own death, William was described as something of a tyrant. The Orderic Vitalis, described a ‘storm of troubles.’ Borman suggests that without Matilda to influence her husband’s decision making, William became more acquisitive and less concerned about creating harmony between invader and invaded. Almost inevitably, the patched up family relationship between father and son came unravelled. When he died, the funeral was a lacklustre affair with William’s second son, William Rufus hurrying off to claim England before his father was even interred. Only William and Matilda’s youngest son, Henry, attended the funeral at Caen.

When the casket containing Matilda’s incomplete skeleton was opened during the twentieth century she was found to be 5ft tall – which was about average at the time. An earlier measurement taken in 1819 reported that she was about 4ft 2ins tall – a likely miscaluclation but typical of the lack of reliable information about England’s first post-conquest queen .

Joanna Courtney – The Conqueror’s Queen (well researched, effective use of dialogue to create character and build narrative.)

Tracey Borman – Matilda, Queen of the Conqueror. The auto-biography creates a picture of a resolute and intelligent consort