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Edward the Confessor

"...he was a very proper figure of a man--of outstanding height, and distinguished by his milky white hair and beard, full face and rosy cheeks, thin white hands, and long translucent fingers; in all the rest of his body he was an unblemished royal person. Pleasant, but always dignified, he walked with eyes downcast, most graciously affable to one and all. If some cause aroused his temper, he seemed as terrible as a lion, but he never revealed his anger by railing."

Vita Ædwardi Regis

The first panel of the Bayeux Tapestry shows Edward the Confessor seated on his throne in his palace at Westminster. He is commanding Harold Godwin, Earl of Wessex, to travel to Normandy, where, say the Norman chronicles, he is to renew the king's promise that William, Duke of Normandy, be his successor. The Anglos-Saxon Chronicle does not mention such a visit, but it probably was in 1064.

It is this claim that William sought to assert on Edward's death.

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