A curious fact about William the conqueror. He brought French to England (Funny, it took less than 100 years for Vikings in Normandy to switch to French - that is what superior culture does to barbarian conquerers. Compare with Lombardians in Italy, or visigoths in Spain, or mongols in China - barbarian conquerers dissolved in superior culture and within a few generations adopted the culture and the language of the conquered). But returning to William - the subsequent English kings spoke French for 300 hundred years (!) until Henry IV, the first king for whom English was his first language.
A curious fact about William the conqueror. He brought French to England (Funny, it took less than 100 years for Vikings in Normandy to switch to French - that is what superior culture does to barbarian conquerers. Compare with Lombardians in Italy, or visigoths in Spain, or mongols in China - barbarian conquerers dissolved in superior culture and within a few generations adopted the culture and the language of the conquered). But returning to William - the subsequent English kings spoke French for 300 hundred years (!) until Henry IV, the first king for whom English was his first language.