In the year 1066, Britain was invaded and successfully conquered by the Normans (from Normandy, which is in the North of modern France).

It is the Normans who brought with them to Britain the idea of building huge castles out of stone - before that most defensive strongholds built by the Saxons were in the 'Motte and Bailey' form: a ditch surrounding a hill on which a wooden fort stood.

As Hogwarts castle is in the style of the Norman castles, and as it was founded in the time around 1066 (the sorting hat said around 1000 years ago in 1992), could it be logical to assume that the Hogwarts founders were French?

Tell me what you think!

Personally, I think that if Harry Potter were real, then yes, this is likely. However, I doubt that JKR has thought of this, so in the canon universe I would say that it's doubtful.

EDIT: I've just thought of something else: the Black's motto is in french and in many fanfics they are depicted as coming from France - is it possible that the Blacks came over with the Hogwarts founders and the Norman invasion?

EDIT 2: This also raises another interesting question: when a muggle nation conquers another, what happens to the respective Ministries of Magic?

 

Still, even without the dates, the fact is that castle making did not come to Britain until after 1066...methinks this is yet another mistake on JKR's part...

Edit: I've just realised that in another song the sorting hat talks about the origins of the founders (from fen, marsh, glen etc.) so they can't be french...but I still think there will have to have been some french input somewhere along the line, as they came up with the idea of castles...

Still, the question of what happens to Ministries of Magic when muggle nations fight remains.

 

About the style- one of the founders could travel to there sometime and see the designs and style the French used.
I think the founders weren't French but Blacks and Malfoys were.

 

There are a few names that come from the French like Malfoy translates to "Bad Faith" I believe. And among the founders of course, I've seen fanfics utilizing "Gryffindor" to mean "Gryffin d'or" or "golden gryffin".

And just because castle-making didn't come to the muggles until 1066, says nothing of the wizards.

 

I don't really know, but I think Hogwarts was one of the first magical schools. In the time before Hogwarts the wizards went into an apprenticeship of another. So it's likely that the founders traveled around Europe to learn new things from other wizards. So they saw the French built castles. And as nonjon said: It's possible that wizards made already castles in the 8th or so century.

 

it would explain why the headmaster is such an utter coward regarding tracking down DEs and killing them, he's head of a school made by the french, heh

 

I don't think anything would happen to the ministry of magic is it was a muggle invasion, because in the harry potter canon the worlds are kept different. In HBP it seems that the prime-minister is equal to the minister of magic and should have no control over him. I say a muggle invasion would have little to no effect on the magical world, certainly not on how it was controlled anyway. A magical invasion, however, could probably be quite similar to how voldemort is trying to take over the magical world.

 

and what about Salazar having his entrance to his lair on a modern sink and he lived a 1000 years ago "how strange?"

 

I have been bothered by that too and I think its been discussed somewhere else. Hows this for an idea. The entrance was just in the bathroom for girls. When they added modern aminities (piped water etc) they just built over the wall without knowing that it was a secret entrence. It was Tom Riddle that reopened the door and changed it slightly to accomodate the sink and pipes.

 

It's quite possible that Hogwarts castle was built with pipes and sinks: after all, the Romans used pipes and plumbing hundreds of years before Hogwarts was built.

 

The pipes that we use today so similar to the Romans that the only difference is that the Romans used lead. Just because the muggles forgot what the Romans did doesn't mean that the wizards did.

 

Well for one of them I know he is not, Salazar Slytherin is spanish, at least to all appearences, the name Salazar came from a region in spain of the same name if i'm not mistaken

 

Actually, she gave him the name of a portuguese dictator that she learned about back when she lived in Portugal.

Actually, some names have some significance in french, but the Black motto always bothered me; Black is, I believe, a traditional Anglo-Saxon name, used to describe people with dark hair, so why is it written in french?

As for the castle, maybe wizards were more advanced back then, instead of the backwards society they display nowadays (they're what, two/three centuries behind?).

For that matter: why build a castle at all, if they don't adopt muggle means of deffense? It made sense only if they planned on deffending themselves in a siege or something with bows and arrows, and that's if they were ever assaulted the muggle way, so why a castle?

Dumbledore, for example, seems to place all of his confidence in the wards, not the architectural defenses.