ABSTRACT
The crisis of Norman power that occurred in Stephen’s reign was not the product of a
bungling king’s mistakes, still less of self-generating anarchic forces; rather, the root
causes were the external pressures that committed Stephen to a war of succession the like
of which the Anglo-Norman state had never previously experienced. Thus the swift
return to normality once the dynastic feud had finally been settled in 1153 is not as
inexplicable as it sometimes appears to be.
