In December of 1135, Henry the First of England died in Normandy, and the man best positioned to take his throne had already sworn twice not to. Henry had made every baron in his kingdom kneel and lay a hand on a chest of saints' bones, promising to crown his daughter Matilda after him. One chronicler says Stephen of Blois pushed to reach the relics first.

Stephen took a ship instead.

He was crowned at Westminster three weeks later, and England spent the next 19 winters tearing itself apart. A monk at Peterborough wrote that Christ and his saints slept. Out of that wreckage, Matilda's son built the writs, the traveling judges, and the 12 sworn neighbors that England, the United States, and most of the Commonwealth still run their courts on.

What if he'd kept his word?

This week we hit CTRL+Z on December 22nd, 1135, and follow the ripple to today:a woman crowned at Westminster 4 centuries before Mary the First, a warlord who dies old in his bed instead of excommunicated in the Fens, a child named William Marshal who never gets handed to a king as security for his father's promise, a northern border that stays where Henry the First left it, and an ordinary man with a stolen field who waits two generations for a court that will hear him. England came within one kept promise of its first queen, and the broken one is where the common law came from.