genealogical table and maps. $115.Robert Curthose, oldest son of William the Conqueror, has long remained in relative scholarly obscurity. An active duke of Normandy (1087-1106) and hero of the First Crusade, he has still been relegated to the sidelines because he never became king. Although his father considered the duchy of Normandy, his by heredity, the most appropriate territory for his firstborn son, scholars have concentrated instead on Robert's younger brothers, William II and Henry I, successively kings of England. Even Robert's younger sister Adela, countess of Blois, was the subject of a modern, full-length study before he was (Adela of Blois by Kimberly A. LoPrete, 2007). Here William M. Aird sets out to restore Robert to what he considers the duke's proper place in Anglo-Norman history.The book follows Robert chronologically from his birth a decade and a half before the events of 1066 to his death in captivity, when he was over eighty years old but still considered dangerous. Seven chapters treat in turn the different stages and events of Robert's life. The seventh covers the longest period, the nearly thirty years that Henry I kept his brother imprisoned in Britain. There has not been a biography of Robert since 1920, and much of Aird's work is straightforward political history, but he also attempts to use the events of the duke's life to illuminate aspects of medieval lordship and aristocratic behavior. His primary sources have been for the most part printed: a wide variety of chronicles (most notably those of Orderic Vitalis) and a selection of cartularies and registers.In some ways this is biography in a rather old-fashioned mode, following events in order, with more interest in what actually happened than in what the chroniclers thought about the events they described, but in other ways it reflects many of the most recent developments in medieval studies. Although, quite rightly, Aird makes no attempt to psychoanalyze Duke Robert, he does put the events of his early life and training in the contexts of modern understandings of the importance of children to medieval parents and of the emerging field of the history of emotion. The aristocrats in this book are not crude illiterates, and the women (such as Robert's mother and sisters) are not silent, marginalized beings.Although Aird never makes the point explicitly, Robert's history is an example of how fast people were expected to grow up in the Middle Ages. Robert acted as duke of Normandy in his own right when he was still only fifteen or sixteen, while his father was off conquering England-even though William later insisted that Normandy would remain his alone while he lived. The account of Robert on crusade is also a clear example of how dangerous and expensive was an expedition that, not very long ago, scholars still described as a hunt for booty. To pay for the crusade, Robert had to raise ten thousand marks of silver from his brother, William Rufus, by pledging the duchy of Normandy to him. Robert's history is also an important reminder that...
