Book excerpt: Harold Godwineson was king of England from January 1066 until his death at Hastings in October of that year. For much of the reign of Edward the Confessor, who was married to Harold’s sister Eadgyth, the Godwine family, led by Earl Godwine, had dominated English politics. In The Rise and Fall of the House of Godwine, Emma Mason tells the turbulent story of a remarkable family which, until Harold’s unexpected defeat, looked far more likely than the dukes of Normandy to provide the long-term rulers of England. But for the Norman Conquest, an Anglo-Saxon England ruled by the Godwine dynasty would have developed very differently from that dominated by the Normans.