William the Bastard: 1038 to 1047
You manage to get to the coast and take a ship across the Channel in the night. Cousin Edward is glad to receive you at the English court, and for a short spell you form a center of novelty. But after Edward becomes king (upon the premature death of Harthacnut from overeating), he cannot feel the necessity of using military force to place you on your ducal throne: Normandy is in anarchy and no one there seems to remember your claims. The time to reclaim your patrimony has passed while you have stayed safely in England. You languish in obscurity, an unimportant pensioner. And you can forget about ever being known to history at all, much less as the Conqueror.
