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  • Writing History for the King: Henry II and the Politics of Vernacular Historiography by Charity Urbanski
  • Thomas Lecaque
Charity Urbanski, Writing History for the King: Henry II and the Politics of Vernacular Historiography (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press 2013) 252 pp.

In a novel and detailed analysis of the Roman de Rou of Wace (ca. 1160–1174) and the Chronique des ducs de Normandie of Benoît de Sainte-Maure (ca. 1174–1189), Charity Urbanski reevaluates Henry II’s control of his domains in England and Normandy, arguing that not only was his reign more tenuous than is popularly believed, but that his role as a literary patron was necessitated as a means of providing legitimacy for his heirs. These histories became forums for debating the actions of the Anglo-Norman and Angevin kings and arguing for the legitimacy of a strong kingship over the powers of local lords. For any reader interested in Anglo-Norman historiography, the reign of Henry II, or, on a broader scale, the political use of history in the High Middle Ages, Writing History for the King is an absolute must-read.

Wace and Benoit de Sainte-Maure were both popular, continental, vernacular writers before the projects which form Urbanski’s core sources; indeed, it [End Page 340] was because of their popularity that they were chosen by Henry to be write a history of his ancestors. As Urbanski writes, while this seems fairly predictable, it “marked the first time that a medieval European monarch had ever commissioned a dynastic history in Old French” (2). Over the course of Writing History for the King, Urbanski carefully unpacks a historical narrative surrounding the writing of these two texts, as well as performing a detailed and nuanced examination of both the texts themselves and the political subtexts that underlie them.

In chapter 1, “Situating the Roman de Rou and Chronique des ducs de Normandie,” Urbanski reexamines the historiography of the Roman de Rou and the Chronique des ducs de Normandie, as well as the context surrounding the development of Anglo-Norman historiography in England. Traditional historiography has had a dim view of both texts, neglecting them as historical documents and treating them instead as being of minor value. Urbanski situates these two texts in the greater context of vernacular historiography n the Anglo-Norman realm, placing them in context especially with Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis and the legacy of the indigenous Anglo-Saxon, and possibly Welsh, vernacular texts. In a discussion of Gaimar’s Estoire and Wace’s earlier work, the Roman de Brut, she emphasizes that those texts, while not directly engaging Norman history, politicize the Briton and Anglo-Saxon past, with Wace especially promoting “the virtues of political unity at a time when England was emerging from two decades of civil war” (36).

Chapter 2, entitled “Henry II,” looks at the reign of Henry II to provide an explanation for his need of justificatory history. Urbanski focuses on the challenges experienced by Henry in reestablishing royal power over post-civil war England, despite his almost universal acknowledgment as heir in 1154. Henry’s problems started with his lineage, for while it provided his claim to the realm, it also made him the son of the count of Anjou, and had kept him, until his ascension, as an outsider. Wace was commissioned in 1160, in Henry’s early reign, to write a dynastic history that would legitimize his rule, one of several efforts that included petitioning for the canonization of Edward the Confessor, translating the bodies of Dukes Richard I and II of Normandy, and trying to repair the public memory of his grandfather, Henry I. While Urbanski’s discussion of the liturgical machinations Henry II engaged in to legitimize his reign, tying it into the commissioning of Wace’s history, is an excellent example of the strengths of this book, it is a shame that her discussion does not expand to Wace’s own vernacular hagiographies, three of which remain extant, or with the implications of the liturgy and hagiography on Wace’s other writings.

In chapter 3, having contextualized Henry’s commissioning of the history, Urbanski focuses on the actual...

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