For about a thousand years, England has been a nation under occupation by a hostile and alien ruling class: the Normans.
Well... to be clear, this statement is somewhat of an exaggeration! - but it has a solid core of truth, as Tolkien attested, among others.
Evidence can be seen from several of the the Symbols of England - which are as alien (hence spiritually hostile) as those who imposed them.
Most countries symbolic animal, is one which actually lives in that country; but England is stuck with a foreign-dwelling creature: a Lion. At best the Lion is a symbol of Empire, not nation - but Empire was an alien project, and the near death of England... So there you have it.
The Crown - which features all over the place as a symbol, including (alongside the Lion) the sports teams - is of course The symbol par excellence of secular and top-down imposed alien power - of Us under the yoke of Them.
And then there is St George; a pseudo-Saint from the Middle East, wished upon England by the usual Normans in consequence of their usual Norman warrings*, in their usual Norman pursuit of overseas Empire (since Normans prefer almost anywhere else to England, and almost any other people to the English).
The Norman-backed "George" then coercively displaced our home-grown Anglo-Saxon Saint Edmund the martyr.
Of course there are some real - albeit inevitably somewhat Norman-co-opted! - English symbols - oak tree, rose, Stonehenge, the flat cap...
But even the primary English folk hero of medieval times, Robin Hood, was distorted into being an exiled Norman aristocrat, and make to work on behalf of a disastrously-typical Norman monarch:
i.e. Richard I - Crowned King of England, "Lion" hearted, and the originator of St George's cult.
*Normans excelled at two main things: fighting and architecture. However, they had a short-termist psychopathic tendency, so they lacked the capacity for loyalty - even among themselves. Consequently, they spent most of their time fighting each other (and forcing everybody else into it). It was not until after four centuries, when the Barons had exhausted themselves in the War of the Roses, that a monarch with administrative genius (Henry VII) managed to impose himself on the other Normans... But after just a generation (Henry VIII) the Normans were despoiling and killing each other again; only this time it was so one-sided in favour of the Norman King as against the Norman Abbots, Priors, and Heads of Religious Orders; that the process and outcome resembled unbridled rapine and pseudo-legal execution, instead of the usual civil war.
1 comment:
Yes, the Normandy flag is three lions, one above the other on a solid red background. You can see it on your (currently German/Hapsburg) Kings' Arms.
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