We tend to think of Edward the Confessor as the quintessential Anglo-Saxon king. In fact, he was almost as Norman as William the Conqueror. After all, his mother Emma was a Norman and he'd lived here in Normandy for 30 years, ever since she'd brought him as a child refugee from the wars between the Saxons and the Danes. But Normandy was not just an asylum for Edward, it was the place which formed him politically and culturally. His mother tongue was Norman French. And his virtual godfathers were the formidable Dukes of Normandy. The Normans were descendants of Viking raiders, but had long since traded in their longboats for powerful war-horses. And the Duchy of Normandy was in no sense just a piece of France. Though the Dukes did formal homage to the kings of France, in every other way, they were fiercely independent, possessed of castles, patrons of churches.


我们倾向于把忏悔者爱德华看作一个典型的盎格鲁撒克逊国王，事实上，他几乎与征服者威廉一样是个诺曼人，他的母亲爱玛是诺曼人。在撒克逊与丹麦战争的硝烟中，把他扮作难民童带出，逃亡至诺曼底。自那以后，他便在此生活了三十年。但诺曼底不仅仅是爱德华的避难所，还培养了他在政治和文化方面的才能。他的母语是诺曼法语，他真正的教父是那些令人敬畏的诺曼底公爵，诺曼人是维京海盗的后裔，但在很久以前就把战船换成了强大的战马，诺曼底公国绝非仅为法国的一部分。尽管公爵在正式礼仪上效忠法国国王，但在其它方面他们是完全独立的，拥有自己的城堡与自己资助的教堂。