Odo of Bayeux was a bishop by his brother's gift and a soldier by temperament. William the Conqueror — his half-brother through their mother Herleva — made him Bishop of Bayeux around 1049, while Odo was still a teenager. In 1066 Odo supplied a hundred ships for the invasion of England and rode at Hastings himself; the Bayeux Tapestry, which he very likely commissioned, shows him in armour swinging a club to rally the wavering Norman boys. Rewarded with the earldom of Kent, he grew into the second most powerful man in England — then overreached, was jailed by William in 1082, rebelled against William Rufus in 1088, and died in 1097 on his way to the First Crusade.

King & Country give him a commander's presence: mounted in mail and a crested great helm, a red shield on his arm marked with a cross and the crossed keys of Saint Peter, his horse armoured in red-and-white lamellar barding. He belongs to 1066, a generation before the Crusades, which makes him the bridge between two of this range's worlds — set him against a Saxon shield-wall defender for the fight at Hastings, or beside the Fighting Priest as two churchmen who took up arms. The longer story of how men in holy orders ended up on the battlefield is in this piece on whether medieval priests fought. In a diorama he anchors a Norman command stand behind the cavalry, club raised, exactly as the tapestry remembers him.

Model: MK249 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set