Book Review: "King Rufus: The Life and Murder of William II of England" by Emma Mason

I've already explained to you my reading of one book about every monarch's life after Edward the Confessor. And I have already told you about the really boring time I had with a biography about Harold Godwinson. The other two have been great though - both the biographies on Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror have really made me far more interested in how they ruled and who they were. Swiftly though, I move on to the next monarch - the son of William the Conqueror: William Rufus (William II).

This book on William II was absolutely brilliant, I was enthralled from beginning to end. Learning how William II changed England from his father's rule was really quite interesting. First of all, he changed England from being a war state to being something of a more peaceful one - trying to divert war away from the country. This is probably because, in the book though he is presented as a good soldier, he proves he is practically useless at war politics and being able to see the signs of an oncoming battle. In my view, I think he was desperately trying to improve the image of England in order to be accepted by the English who were already in the country before his father took over.

The one part I did like was the mention of the important of the king-making ritual which appears somewhere in Chapter 3. He seems to use the treasury first and foremost to carry out the deathbed rights of his father before doing anything else with it. I feel like this was also to make him look like a peaceful and respectful king as of course, he would have to bury his father properly before he could rule completely. He does this 'show' of peacefulness again in 1088 when he grants his brother, Henry, their mother's lands in Normandy even though there is some already known tension between the brothers.

Behind closed doors though, it is clear that bribery is a huge part of William II's court. This is not actually William II himself, but the people who are around him the majority of the time. This was explained really well because apart from just stating the fact, we are made to see how well it was hidden from not just England, but a lot of the time from William II as well.

I have to say though the biggest mystery about William II has always been how he died. The author goes through each and every report of it and explores in detail what could have happened. One of the foremost theories is that peasants picked up his body and put it on the back of a carriage attached to a horse and pulled it back to London with blood still dripping from the body. If blood was still dripping from the body that would meant that William II was still alive at the time the peasants picked him up. The question is whether it was the known Walter Tirel that was the one who fired the arrow that killed the King of England.

I loved this book so much because even though I didn't know much about William II, it was all very interesting to learn. The secrets of the court to the wars between the brothers and so much more was explained and explored by the author, including every single death theory of him. There is a ton of stuff that I have learned about William II and all of it is going to come into great use soon. Mostly though, what I enjoyed was learning about the death of the King and being confused as to why nobody recorded what actually happened though there were other people there.