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chap ter three
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HEIR TO THE THRONE
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or matilda, the return to Normandy must have been something of a shock. Her first problem was the very basic one of language: she was a German-speaking woman in a court in which the AngloNorman dialect of French was the lingua franca, and she would need to adapt. She had, of course, spent her very early youth in the self-same court and would therefore have a residual memory of the language, but fifteen years of studying German and using it day in, day out as her first language meant that she would have forgotten or lost much of her knowledge of her mother tongue; she must have had numerous frustrating communication problems until she reacquired some fluency. A second issue, and one that was to influence the chroniclers’ depictions of Matilda both now and later, was court etiquette. The bluff informality of King Henry’s household was in marked contrast to the stiff decorum and ritual Matilda was used to at the imperial court, to say nothing of the fact that she had for many years been accustomed to the deference accorded to her as empress. Managing her expectations as to the reception she could expect in her new home, with a new status – and all the while coping with a profound bereavement and trying to communicate in a forgotten language – must have represented something of a challenge. The mentions in various chronicles of Matilda’s so-called haughtiness and arrogance begin from around this date, but given the combination of culture shock and linguistic issues, it is probably not surprising that Matilda did not immediately slot back into her allotted
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