Robert the Frisian spent much of his reign in open defiance of the French crown, having defeated King Philip I at the Battle of Cassel in 1071 — the year before this coinage begins. His alliance with the Danish king Sweyn II and later cultivation of Byzantine connections gave Flanders an unusually independent foreign policy for a nominally French vassal, and his deniers reflect a county operating very much on its own terms.
Robert the Frisian spent much of his reign in open defiance of the French crown, having defeated King Philip I at the Battle of Cassel in 1071 — the year before this coinage begins. His alliance with the Danish king Sweyn II and later cultivation of Byzantine connections gave Flanders an unusually independent foreign policy for a nominally French vassal, and his deniers reflect a county operating very much on its own terms.