welcome back to this series of videos looking at the norman conquest in this series of videos we're looking at invasion the second mini unit and in the last video you looked at we looked at normandy in 1065 so what was normandy like before invasion in this video i'd like to then focus back now on england i'd like to talk about the succession crisis of 1066 who had a right to the throne and what happens next so in this video we're going to look at really this question here which is how strong was williams claim to the throne of england and this is quite a complicated story so you probably are going to want to pause this at separate points to make notes or to understand it properly now this story starts in january of 1066 and in january of 1066 edward a confessor is dying and you can see edward the confessor here in that green shawlin on lying in his bed with a beard and at the foot of his bed his wife edith wipes away a tear and also present with his servant robert archbishop stigand who we've come across before and importantly harold godwinson and according to the chronicles at a time with his dying breath he praised edith and he reached our hand to harold and said i commend this woman and all of the kingdom to your protection in other words saying harold goblinson i want you to now be king but this is complicated and it's complicated because although harold threw that statement there had a claim to the throne he is not the only one who has got a right to take over the king of england and in order to understand this we need to understand a family tree and it is complicated so let's begin now we need to understand that this starts with the anglo-saxons and it starts with a king called ethel red the unready and ethel read the unready married a lady called emma of normandy and they had children one of them was called edmund and one of them was called edward the confessor who is the king who has just been dying in 1066. now edmund first of all is king and he's king only for a year in 1016. and edmund has children and he has a son called ed with the exile now this is where the story gets more complicated because in 1016 if you remember back to one of those first videos in this series the vikings invade and this viking impenticular knute of denmark invades england and in 1016 he takes the king the throne he takes the crown of england and in 1016 to 1035 knut is king and knut marries emma of normandy and together they have some children harold harefoot is one of his children and half a canute is his second son and harold hereford another viking that's why we're there in green is king from 10 35 to 10 40. and then half the knute is king from 10 40 to 10 42. this is where it gets more complicated because in 1042 the vikings are pushed out and the anglo-saxons are pushed back in and really by 1045 edward the confessor has now taken the throne and he rules until he dies in 1066. oops i've gone the wrong way now edward the exile meanwhile who is edmund's son has a son called edgar atheline and edgar the athelink was born in 1051. so edgar has a right to the throne because he is a direct bloodline to ethel red the unready he is english and has a right to the throne edward the confessor on his deathbed also says that somebody else has a right to the throne and that is earl howard godwinson the vikings also claim that they have a right to the throne and hatha knut arguably passes a promise to harold hardrada another viking that he also has a right to the english throne because half the canoe were rudely pushed out of england and actually he's happy that howard hardrada has a right to the throne so far quite complicated let's make it even more so and to make it more complicated we need to understand who emma of normandy is related to now emma was the sister of richard duke of normandy richard was the leader of normandy richard had a son robert duke of normandy and robert had another son william duke of normandy and william technically as a result of being related to emma also has a claim to the throne so we've now got four people who've got claims to the throne edgar atheling really importantly he's only 15 in 1066 but he's english and is a direct bloodline to the previous king earl godwin is also english but does not have a direct bloodline to the king but was told by the previous king edward the confessor that he had a right to the throne harold harjrada is a viking and has been promised the throne by previous kings viking kings in particular arthur knut and the final claimant to the throne is william duke of normandy and william has a claim to the throne because through his grandad and the sister of his grandad emma of normandy he also is directly linked to england so there are four claimants to the throne now as we started this video off edward dying promises the throne to godwinson so that's what happens and pretty much immediately as soon as edward the confessor has died harold godwinson and you can see him sitting on the throne here in an image from the bio tapestry takes the throne and he is pronounced as king of england by stigand archbishop stigand the corrupt one who you can also see here and it says stick and here and you can see that the people in england were happy now funnily enough there are three other claimants to the throne and their reactions are quite fascinating edgar deathling isn't that bothered he's english he's told what to do by the witan the anglo-saxon government and he's told to support harold and he does harald hardrada is not happy but he's far away in scandinavia william is particularly not happy and william's not happy for some bigger reasons because and this is where we need to go back in the story and it gets even more according to william and again this is a scene from the bio tapestry harold godwinson had visited william in normandy and god winston at an earlier date promises putting his hand over the relics of some saints that he would support william in william's claim to the throne and actually god winston was saying in this scene that william had the right to the throne as a result of this william of normandy is incredibly angry harold godwin has gone back on a promise that he made to him and has now stolen the throne from him william needs to do something about it and what he does is prepare for invasion and the normans in the first half of 1066 are fast preparing for invasion cutting trees down and building boats ready to cross the english tunnel and attack and that invasion is where the story begins in the next video