This new book I got is generating tons of post fodder so far & I'm not half thru with it yet LOL This section on the Norman invasion addressed the common notion that Harold was killed in battle by taking an arrow in his eye OUCH that's gotta hurt. Raise your hand if that's how you think Harold demised.
Well, mayhap not
....that Bayeux Tapestry IS nigh on 1,000 years old, you know. I got 2 words for ya....cloth rots. Therefore tis suspected repairs may have been made, altering the original tale it tells somewhat.
Back in 1729, when the BT was already like 600 yrs old, a French artist did a full-scale tracing of the entire length of it to serve as the basis for a series of engravings to be sold in France. In 1819 an English artist was dispatched by the Society of Antiquities to do the same. Finally, in 1872, the Victoria & Albert sent a peep to take actual photographs of the BT in its entirety.
So there's 3 points of comparison pre-established here. When putting the 3 together & carefully having a squizz, no less than 379 differences were discovered from just those 150 years or so alone The camera doesn't lie, so perhaps the tracing peeps had tired hands or developed carpal tunnel & messed up, or just maybe it was repaired a whole lot over the years.
Differences include a griffin what turned into an angel, swords & stirrups disappearing, mares turning into stallions 
, fish turning into seals, freckles or zits or pox scars appearing on a Norman shipbuilder's face....bad continuity all around.
Yeah I'm getting to Harold LOL In 1729 he appears to be grasping at the shaft of a spear embedded in his forehead OUCH again. In 1819 the shaft has sprouted feathers & now it looks like he caught an arrow in his forehead. In 1872 the angle of the shaft has shifted downward, pointing directly at Harold's right eye (which isn't seen because tis hidden by the nose-piece of his helm). So apparently French seamstresses were a wee bit careless in fixing their main tourist attraction.
The author goes on to comment that there's a little ditty called Song of the Battle of Hastings composed by Guy, Bishop of Amiens, in 1067, a mere year after the fact. Guy says when the Normans finally broke through the Saxons' shield wall toward the close of a truly epically long battle, William the Conqueror (or the Bastard as he was known for a few more min anyway) dispatched a 4-man "hit squad" to zero in on Harold & take him out. Apparently William had rethunk that whole mano a mano single combat challenge after such a grueling day LOL
The 1st Norman knight struck Harold in the chest, the 2nd lopped off his head, the 3rd lanced him thru the bowels, & the 4th, as Guy delicately put it, cut off his "leg".
The authors says the standard battlefield mutilation at the time was not to cut off a leg, but the family jewels & perhaps Guy was lessening the gruesome factor when he failed to mention twas Harold's "3rd leg" that was detached. He cites the tales that the only way Harold's corpse could be ID'd after was to have his longtime squeeze Edith Swan-neck have a look for an allegedly IDing mark only a wife or GF would've seen. William was supposedly appalled at this mutilation & that it would reflect badly on him.
So it could be that history was "re-embroidered" to a more "romantic" version of events 
O & didja know the Nazis had their grubby mitts on the BT in WWII? Since that was the last successful invasion of Britain, they wanted to see if they could "learn" from it 
(since Hitler learned naught from Napoleon's invasion of Russia, I reckon that was a waste of time).
I heart books like this with all their interesting lil trivial factoids 
This is sort of along the line of the Cherished Myths of American History book I read a while back & I shall definitely keep an eye out for volumes 2 & 3 of this saga as I'm betting the middle one is full of juicy Tudory tidbits 
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