Writing History for the King

This book examines two linked Old French texts, Wace’s unfinished Roman de Rou and Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s Chronique des ducs de Normandie. Henry II of England initially commissioned Wace to produce a history of the dukes of Normandy; around 1174, however, Henry relieved Wace of this duty and eventually handed the job to Benoît, who wrote an entirely new version in the same vernacular. Charity Urbanski situates her book around this transfer of authorial duties. Her deceptively simple question, ‘Why were these histories written?’, then spirals into a host of related questions, including the reasons for the hiring and firing of Wace, the intended audience of the story, the preference for Old French instead of Latin, and the influence of Henry in the writing process. Urbanski begins with the reasonable assertion that the king reassigned the job because of his displeasure with Wace’s work (pp. 2–3); her reasoning as to why he was displeased in the first place is only partially convincing

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