Robert was born well before his father’s conquest of England, perhaps around 1052. By one account he was left in nominal control of Normandy when William sailed for Sussex in 1066, although real power rested with his mother and a council of senior magnates. Relations between himself and his father were to be a matter of some importance in the subsequent years. Although they are regarded as having usually been at loggerheads, it is much more likely that tension between father and son - however passionate - was episodic, late and brief. Robert grew into a remarkably easy-going man for a medieval prince, and the idea of him sustaining burning resentment against his father is difficult to square with what we know of his behaviour once he was duke of Normandy. If Robert did indeed maintain a grudge against the Conqueror for as long as the chroniclers suggest, he must have had more provocation than they tell us about; either that or there were unknown men stoking his anger behind the scenes. There are only a few glimpses of the young Robert in the chronicles. Since they are mediated through the hostile prose of the writers of Henry Ts reign, we cannot entirely trust them. Orderic Vitalis made much of the poor relationship between father and son, and he takes the Conqueror’s side because he blamed Robert for the damage his abbey had sustained in the period before 1106. It is from these writers that we learn that Robert’s nicknames of ‘Gambaron’ or ‘Curthose’ (‘Little Fat Legs’ or ‘Little Breeches’) were bestowed on him by his father when he was a child and stuck. The rough affection of a caring father might well have given rise to such a name, so it can hardly be the basis of a lasting hatred based on childhood humiliation that some have suggested. If there is evidence of childhood tension it is to be found between Robert and his lively, arrogant and highly intelligent younger brothers. We know from the account of their violent quarrel at Laigle in 1077 that they were as unpleasant as brothers can sometimes be when together.
The roots of the major quarrel that divided King William from his son lay in Robert’s concerns about what it was he was in the end to inherit and where he stood in the meantime. The king recognised early on that something had to be done to exalt his eldest son above the counts and magnates of his realm. His solution was to give Robert the title of count of Maine, the border principality that William had first invaded in 1062 when he was dominant in northern France after the deaths of King Henry and Count Geoffrey of Anjou. William had been able to intimidate the then count of Maine into betrothing his sister to Robert, then only around ten. The marriage had not taken place, but William maintained his ascendancy in the county by military force for most of his subsequent reign and Robert is credited with the title of count of Maine as early as 1063 (he continued to use it till at least 1096). Robert stayed in Normandy during the entire period of the Conquest, as far as can be told, and the expedition gave his father the opportunity to nominate him formally as his heir as duke. William did so before he left for England in 1066. The nomination was given some real weight when Robert was left as regent of Normandy when his mother went to England in 1068, by which time he was probably considered as being of age.
If there were any problems between the king and Robert in the years from 1068 to 1077 we have no word of it, other than in the work of chroniclers of the next generation. According to Orderic, Robert began agitating for his father to give up the rule of Normandy and Maine even before he was of age. This is not entirely convincing, as it was more than any reasonable child would have dared demand from his father at the time. It is just as likely that the problem that erupted in 1077 was of recent origin, and related more to Robert’s brothers than his father. The problem may not have been that Robert was anxious to rule some part of his inheritance before his father died, but that he wanted to be sure that the full inheritance would be his. As a younger son with no automatic right to inherit anything, William Rufus, abetted by Henry, was by this time devoting all his considerable talents to wheedling some sort of promise of a future inheritance out of his father. The younger element in the royal court may have polarised around the rival brothers, and the father was caught in 1077 in the middle of an ugly family feud. Robert’s anger led him to demand the impossible: direct rule of the duchy. If he had that, none of his brothers could expect any share of their patrimony. By Orderic’s account King William tried to reason and conciliate but simply worsened things, and Robert stormed out of the court. Since Robert apparently then tried to seize Rouen, it would seem that he was intent on furthering the demand that he be given Normandy.
On his failure, all that was left to him and his companions was to ride to the frontiers at Chateauneuf-en-Thimerais and into exile.
After a while, needing support, Robert headed for the court of Count Robert of Flanders, his mother’s brother. He was received in friendly fashion and, for Queen Mathilda’s sake (and perhaps with her financial aid), was handsomely treated. When he travelled further afield, to the western regions of the empire and across northern France, he was met with some enthusiasm, nowhere more so than at the court of King Philip of France, to whom Robert Curthose’s secession from his father’s realm was a considerable opportunity. Philip had been working hard to secure what he could of the French half of the county of the Vexin since Count Simon of Amiens, Valois and the Vexin had retired. By the end of 1078 Robert had been enlisted in King Philip’s campaign against Norman influence in the Vexin. It was a very ill-judged thing to do. It brought Robert into direct conflict with his father and disrupted the political fabric of his homeland as with him in France were some of the more distinguished of the heirs to the great Norman baronies. Understandable or not, it was a warning of the poverty of Robert’s political judgement. King Philip allowed Robert to take up quarters in the French castle of Gerberoy, opposite the Norman fortress of Gournay. When early in January 1079 his father led an army to beseige Gerberoy, Robert compounded his misjudgement not simply by attacking his father’s force outside the castle walls but by soundly defeating it. He nearly succeeded in killing his father before he recognised William’s voice shouting for aid.
This Oedipan act of folly led in the end to negotiation, and in the winter of 1079-80 King William received his son back, solemnly repeating his investiture with the duchy of Normandy. There were consequences, however. The father could not forgive the son for the humiliation he had inflicted on him. Success in war had been the source of William’s reputation and strength. Robert had undermined his father’s reputation in as personal and as drastic a way as could have been arranged, and after 1079 the Anglo-Norman realm was the more insecure as a result. It may well be that Robert realised the consequences of what he had done. Difficulties with his father continued after 1080; but, although Robert went into exile again in the last year or two of his father’s reign, there is no convincing evidence that he allied with his father’s external enemies this time. As far as can be told, Robert simply travelled expensively and ceaselessly with his entourage of free spirits. In the course of his travels in France he formed at least one protracted sexual liaison and by iioo had two adult sons and a daughter. This profligacy had a long-term and unfortunate effect on him; he found that he enjoyed the life of a wealthy vagabond and prince without responsibilities. The customs of the time allowed him plenty of scope for an expensive and itinerant life. There was no shortage of French and imperial princes who were all too happy to entertain a young man of such celebrity. The late eleventh-century ‘cult of youth’ laid no expectations on him that he should be better and more usefully employed. FFe could visit notable places of pilgrimage whenever he felt like travelling respectably, and he could also attend the growing number of informal gatherings of knights in northern France for mock fighting and military games.
The cause of Robert’s final abandonment of his father’s realm was most likely the death of his mother in November 1083. She was close to her eldest son and it was well known that she had defied her husband when he caught her sending abroad money and sympathetic messages to Robert in 1079. It is a fair assumption that she had kept the peace between William and Robert in the aftermath of the reconciliation of 1080. It was not easy to do, as King William could not resist insulting his son in public when they were together, and Robert treated him with indifference as a result. It is difficult to say precisely when the final breakdown occurred. Orderic gives two different accounts of its timing, saying in one place it happened soon after the reconciliation of 1080 and in another that Robert had left Normandy just before his father’s death in 1087. In exile, Robert is said to have associated with his father’s enemies, notably King Philip of France, and most modern accounts of this period - including that of David Douglas - characterise him as ‘in revolt’. Orderic in fact only states that Robert went off to the king of France before his father’s death; it is William of Malmesbury who says that he was at war with his native country in 1087. These are, however, hostile accounts written in the next generation by men who ran together the events of 1079-80 and 1087. Contemporary chroniclers are silent on the subject. The only other writer who has anything to say is Robert de Torigny who states that Robert and his troublesome and expensive
The Tomb of William Clito.
Following of young nobles was housed at Abbeville in the county of Ponthieu when his father was on his deathbed, a place which was far from the war zone of the Vexin and well outside the effective realm of King Philip.
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