The Death of the Red King

Paul Doherty investigates the death of William II, known as William Rufus, who was killed by an arrow while hunting in the New Forest in 1100. The accepted account treated the death as an accident involving Walter Tirel, but the king’s unpopularity, the rapid accession of his brother Henry and the behaviour of the hunting party have encouraged suspicion of a planned killing.

The book reconstructs the political and religious tensions of William’s reign and tests the surviving narratives against the interests of those who recorded them. It considers accident, assassination and dynastic conspiracy while acknowledging the limits of medieval evidence. The death becomes a route into the unstable succession politics of Anglo-Norman England.