A hairstyle change could mark a man as betraying his race in eleventh-century England

Evidence

Early in the eleventh century, an otherwise unknown Anglo-Saxon named Edward took to cutting his hair in the Norman fashion. He shaved the back half of his head and let dirty, long hair cover his face. His brother, thoroughly disgusted with Edward’s new hairstyle, wrote him an angry letter, which has been preserved, “You despise your race and your ancestors,” he seethed, “since in insult to them you dress [your hair] in Danish fashion with bared neck and blinded eyes… . He will be accursed who follows heathen practices in life and dishonours his own race.” — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 88

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing article on crusades-era beard styles and moral panics over dress. This is a complementary case — hair as ethnic boundary marker predating the crusades.
• CANDY: A brother writing an enraged letter over his sibling’s Norman haircut, accusing him of race betrayal — wonderfully tweetable medieval anecdote.