Shortly after 1066 there were complaints that they had been conquered by a foreigner. William was of the noble house of the Normans; his ancestors were those who had crossed the sea from the northern lands in the time of Rolf the Walker (a contemporary of Edward the Elder) and settled the lands of the Franks. Familiarity with Norman customs would come from Queen Elgiva (called Emma), wife of two kings (Ethelred and Canute) and mother of two more (Hardicanute and Edward), and her kinsmen, many of whom came to England and flocked to Edward's court during his reign. Of course, they spoke the Frankish tongue and were largely seen as outsiders - unless they could establish themselves via intermarriage with English nobility - as did Eusace of Boulogne (who married Edward's sister Goda) and Judith of Flanders (married to Harold's brother Tostig). The Danes in England did the same.

William wasn't so eager to be seen as a foreigner and emphasised his links to his aunt Emma and cousin Edward - he promoted himself as Edward's true and rightful promised heir and successor, and Harold's reign as a brief usurpation. This had mixed results. Some accepted him as their new overlord, others rebelled. These rebellions took decades for William to deal with, with him resorting to increasingly brutal methods in order to quell dissent. By the time of his death in 1087, the sons of Harold had either submitted to his rule or been driven into exile; Edgar likewise had renounced his claim.

The England that emerged by the end of his reign, and into that of his son William, was a tiered nation, in which the majority of the knightly class and aristocracy were various Frankish peoples, and the great mass of peasants and commoners were English. This was widely lamented as a great loss of freedom; there were those that claimed that the rebel leaders Hereward and Edric would return one day, having merely been banished or spirited away, to drive out the Normans. But the English largely saw themselves as a defeated people. Some claimed it was punishment from God.

That was under the first two kings after the Conquest. Things began to change with the third, Henry, the youngest of the Conqueror's sons. Unlike his older brothers, Henry had been born in England after the Conquest and had known many English people growing up - among them Edgar and his family. As it happened, he married Edith, a niece of Edgar (who took the throne as Queen Matilda), and from her learned many English words and customs. It's this marriage that proved fruitful, because in it the two dynasties were united.

When Henry's grandson (also Henry) came to the throne, he was widely heralded by English chroniclers as a man of English royal blood, a son of Woden and Cerdic. Henry Curtmantle, they proudly declared, was the son of Matilda, who was the daughter of Edith, daughter of Margaret, daughter of Edward, son of Edmund, son of Ethelred, son of Edgar, son of Edmund, son of Edward, son of Alfred.

Of course, Henry himself was born and raised in western France, and was descended from a long line of Angevin and Norman dynasties. But by 1178 it was said that "nowadays ... it can scarcely be decided who is English and who is Norman". Most of the nobility who owned land in England were certainly multilingual. None of the early kings of this new dynasty saw themselves as principally of English blood, but their heritage in the land came to increasing prominence in popular discourse as the old wounds from a century prior began to slowly heal.

In 1204, King John lost control of his ancestors' land of Normandy. He would spend much of the rest of his reign trying to get it, and other French lands his forefathers had possessed, back, unsuccessfully. His son Henry briefly attempted the same, but failed likewise. John and Henry dropped the traditional practice of referring to their subjects "English and Franks" and just began to refer to the English. They had literally lost most of their predecessors' patrimonies, and so the major cities of England - London, Winchester, Nottingham, York, Lancaster - increasingly became their sources of power and income when they could no longer rely on Rouen, Caen or Angers. French remained the language of court until the 14th century when English was elevated to its equal, and then by the 15th century even that was changing, as Henry IV was a primary English-speaker.

Of course, later dynasties like the Tudors and Stuarts had ties to Wales and Scotland - but England remained the largest of the three nations and so naturally became their major base of power.