From medieval conqueror to Renaissance autocrat to Victorian Empress to modern melodrama, Royal Panoply is the story of some of the most fascinating people in world history. With her trademark blend of probing scholarship, lively prose, and psychological insight, Carolly Erickson focuses on each monarch's entire life---from the puny, socially awkward Charles I, to the choleric, violent William the Conqueror, to the well-meaning, deeply affectionate Queen Anne, who was so heavy she had to be carried to her coronation. Royal Panoply recaptures the event-filled, often dangerous, always engaging lives of England's kings and queens, set against the backdrop of a thousand years of Britain's past. “From William of Normandy, who seized the English throne in 1066 and became the formidably galvanizing William I, to the remote Elizabeth II, Erickson covers centuries of British monarchy in knowledgeable . . . biographies. [A]n accessible source for readers who can't get enough of kings and queens.” ― Kirkus Reviews “An entertaining history of English rulers from William the Conqueror to Elizabeth II that proves why this rather old-fashioned genre is still popular. Erickson devotes about ten pages to each monarch---as much to Queen Anne as to Queen Victoria . . . fascinating.” ― Publishers Weekly “Carolly Erickson brings [an] immediacy and easy intimacy to her study.” ― Los Angeles Times Book Review on To the Scaffold “Carolly Erickson tells [this story] with all the flair it deserves. . . . Exquisite writing.” ― Houston Chronicle on Josephine Distinguished historian Carolly Erickson is the author of Rival to the Queen , The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots , The First Elizabeth , The Hidden Life of Josephine , The Last Wife of Henry VIII , and many other prize-winning works of fiction and nonfiction. Her novel The Tsarina’s Daughter won the Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award for Best Historical Fiction. She lives in Hawaii. Royal Panoply Brief Lives of the English Monarchs By Carolly Erickson St. Martin's Griffin Copyright © 2007 Carolly Erickson All right reserved. ISBN: 9780312316440 Chapter One   William I   (1066–1087)   “He was a very stern and violent man, so that no one dared to do anything contrary to his will.”   —Anglo-Saxon chronicle   It was a miracle that William survived his childhood. Born in 1028, the natural son of Robert, Duke of Normandy, young William was left fatherless at age seven when Robert died while on pilgrimage to the Holy Land.   Eleventh-century Normandy was a savagely turbulent society, in which aggressive and unruly landowners struggled endlessly for preeminence, under the overlordship of the duke. At the best of times, these feuding magnates were held in check by the greater power of a strong overlord, as well as by the force of custom and feudal law; at the worst of times, there was little or nothing to restrain their instinct to combat one another in treacherous, frequently brutal warfare.   Before he left for his pilgrimage, Robert had made young William heir to the duchy—and heir to its political turmoil. Protected by his uncle Walter, his mother’s brother, who slept in William’s room and was his bodyguard, the child duke spent many watchful nights alert for the sound of hoofbeats, listening for marauders and would-be kidnappers intent on capturing and controlling him so that the lands and wealth of Normandy could become theirs.   Year after year, with the Norman countryside in near anarchy, Walter continued to keep the young duke safe, snatching him up when danger threatened and taking him out of the castle and into a nearby village, to some anonymous peasant hut, where they could stay hidden. Meanwhile the great magnates fought among themselves, each one a petty warlord in his castle stronghold, from which he went out from time to time to attack his enemies.   By the time he grew out of childhood, William must have been wary in the extreme, habituated to violence for it was occurring all around him. He lived in the midst of private wars, accustomed to hearing news of assassinations and casual murders. Of his five official guardians, one was murdered while out riding, another poisoned, two others, including William’s tutor, assassinated after being violently attacked in William’s own bedchamber.   Amid this vortex of mayhem, William grew to young manhood, and at the age of fifteen or sixteen, established his independent court at Valognes. Toughened by his years of exposure to merciless bloodshed and calculated injury, William was becoming a formidable fighter himself, physically strong, skilled with the sword and bow, an expert rider and possessed of uncommon courage and strength of purpose.   He needed no mentor to teach him the tactics of warfare; he had learned them by observation. He knew that territory was captured, and control over it consolidated, by castle-building. That allies had to be won by gifts and benefits conferred, and