NickNames:
The Conqueror

Titles:
Duke of Normandy (1035 - 1087)
King of England (1066 - 1087)

King William was styled as, "Willielmus Rex Anglorum."

According to some sources, William was born in 1024.

The childhood household of young Duke William was so dangerous--his steward was killed in William's bedroom--that his mother's brother often rescued him and took him to local cottages to sleep.

William used a spiked club to kill King Harold's younger brother Gyrth at the battle of Hastings.

He was Crowned King of England by Ealdred, Archbishop of York.

According to some historians, William hated the name "The Conqueror," maintaining that he was rightful king and that he had lead the Conquest only to claim that right.

Late in William's life, he was so stout that the King of France supposedly said that it was obvious the reason William was in bed with an illness was that he was pregnant.

William died after a riding accident and is supposed to have said, as he lay dying, "I am stained with the rivers of blood I have shed."

William's funeral ended very quickly, because his body didn't fit his coffin which burst when clergy tried to stuff it in.

William was the founder of the Abbey of St. Stephen, where he was buried.