William the Conquerer’s ‘Explosive’ Royal Death
VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty ImagesWilliam the Conqueror’s death wasn’t that strange — but his funeral was.
William the Conqueror’s death was apt for someone with his nickname, as he died after a battle in 1087. But it was the aftermath of William’s demise that made his death especially bizarre.
There are basically two accounts of the events that led to William the Conqueror’s death. The first states that William, the first Norman king of England, suffered from something akin to heatstroke while fighting in a battle. The second suggests that the then-portly king was impaled by the wooden pummel of his saddle, which ruptured his intestines.
Though the king survived the battle, he died from his wounds on Sept. 9, 1087. And his funeral would ensure that no one ever forgot his royal death.
Public DomainA depiction of William the Conqueror’s final moments from 1842.
According to an account written by the Benedictine monk and chronicler Orderic Vitalis, mourners gathered in Abbaye-aux-Hommes in present-day Caen, France, to say goodbye to the king. But as William the Conqueror’s bloated corpse was forced into a too-small sarcophagus, his body exploded.
“[T]he swollen bowels burst, and an intolerable stench assailed the nostrils of the by-standers and the whole crowd,” Orderic wrote.
As mourners fled, the priests tried to conduct the rest of William’s funeral as quickly as possible. But nothing could mask the stench.
