Much like WWI, or any other giant historical event, things didn't just happen and resolve themselves neatly. The Norman Conquest of 1066 was messy, unresolved and a transition across the North Sea world. Parker's choice to focus on the generation that felt the consequences of the invasion, rather than those who had agency in it is a really insightful one, as well as a vehicle for seeing how, historiographically, these figures have been repurposed over the next millennia--as vaunted ancestors to blend royal families, to give upstart new landowners ties to the past, to help abbeys jockey for prestige and land, to sooth feelings of cultural insult from new overlords, to stoke nationalism or to demonstrate the shift of Scandinavia from interest in England to interest in the Baltic and Volga river kingdoms. Each is a poignant portrait (Hereward, St. Margaret, Waltheof, the Godwinson grandchildren, Eadmer) from a society that is both unfamiliar and, on a human level, completely relatable.