It shows named individuals: Harold of England, William of Normandy, Odo of Bayeux who may have commissioned it.

It shows the famous scene of Harold’s death, struck by an arrow according to the traditional interpretation, though modern scholars debate this reading.

What the Bayeux Tapestry does not show is anyone like Conquest Man.

The tapestry was designed to tell a story about the political and military elite, the kings and lords and bishops whose decisions and conflicts determined the course of events.

The ordinary people of England in 1066, the farmers and merchants and craftsmen and their families, appear only as background figures, moving on the margins of a history that was being made by others.