The first Norman king of England met an untimely and turbulent death, although, to be fair, the situation really ‘exploded’ after his death. William the Conqueror, sometimes known as William the Bastard, and, of course, William I, reigned from 1066 until his death in 1087 while leading a campaign in northern France. It would be fair to say that William ‘the Conqueror’ enjoyed the fruits of his conquests, quite literally. He grew immensely fat, and he died with the pommel of his saddle literally driven into his intestines.

This is not the end of his miserable tale, unfortunately. William the Conqueror died after six weeks of intestinal torture, as the medicine of the time could not help him at all. A man with a fierce temper and no friends, his corpse lay in a surgical facility in Rouen for a few days, before being brought out to be embalmed by a dutiful knight performing his vassalage. Prior to this, the very room where his body lay had been looted inch by inch, including taking away the late king’s clothes and leaving him naked.

“The lesser attendants, seeing that their superiors had absconded, seized the arms, vessels, clothing, linen, and all the royal furnishings, and hurried away leaving the king’s body almost naked on the floor of the house,” one of the accounts wrote. They left him, “as if he had been a barbarian.”

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The butchered and decomposed body of William the Conqueror was then sent to Caen, the familial seat. There, a fire broke out in the city, further delaying the funereal process, followed by a land ownership dispute by a man who claimed that the church was built on his ancestral land. The one who had granted the church this land? William the Conqueror himself! Meanwhile, the king’s obese decomposing body, wrapped in funeral sheets, kept bloating up.

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