A review by wahistorian
The White Ship: Conquest, Anarchy and the Wrecking of Henry I's Dream by Charles Spencer

3.0

In this book, Charles Spencer tells the fraught story of the rise of William the Conqueror’s son Henry I to the British throne and his desperate attempt to stay there. Henry inaugurated a period of relative calm in England and Normandy, destroyed by the death of his likely heirs in the sinking of the ‘White Ship’ in a winter storm in 1120. The book is an interesting case study of “what might have been,” without going as far as counterfactualism. Spencer describes the misery and abuse suffered by ordinary people as various would-be kings, counts, earls, and bishops going about consolidating their power and holding territory, without norms or laws to temper their strategies. He also explores the illegitimacy of female monarchs in this period, as Henry’s daughter Matilda, rightful heir to the throne, lost out to his bastard son Stephen of Blois. A bloodthirsty tale of the middle—not to say “dark”—ages.