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Malahulc

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Malahulc was claimed as ancestor by the 11th-century Norman noble family of Tosny, who said he was an uncle of Rollo of Normandy, the 10th-century founder and first ruler of the principality now known as Normandy. They are said by the chronicler Orderic Vitalis to have raised this claim to contrast this legitimate descent with the illegitimate birth of William the Conqueror.[1] William of Jumièges describes Roger de Tosny as "de stirpe Malahulcii, qui Rollonis patruus fuerat, et cum eo Francos atterens, Normanniam fortiter acquisierat," that is, he was of the stock of Malahulc, Rollo's uncle, and fought the French bravely in the conquest of Normandy.[2] The nature of the claimed descent is unknown, and it may have been a total fabrication intended to disguise the Tosny family's French origin,[3] or their ecclesiastical origin.[4]

By the 19th century, Malahulc had been assigned multiple children, ancestors of other Norman families.[5]

References

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  1. ^ Emily Albu, The Normans in Their Histories: Propaganda, Myth and Subversion (2001), Boydell & Brewer, p. 183.
  2. ^ Niels Lukman, ""Ragnar loðbrók, Sigifrid, and the saints of Flanders", Medieval Scandinavia, 9:7-50 (1976) at p. 43
  3. ^ David Crouch, The Normans: The History of a Dynasty (2002), Hambledon and London, p. 30
  4. ^ Andrew Wareham, "Two Models of Marriage: Kinship and the Social Order in England and Normandy", in Negotiating Secular and Ecclesiastical Power: Western Europe in the Central Middle Ages (1999), Brepols Publishers, pp. 107–132 at p. 121
  5. ^ e.g. John Alexander Neale, Charters and Records of Neales of Berkeley, Yate and Corsham (1906), p. 149