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Latin models such as Dudon de Saint-Quentin and Guillaume de Jumi?ges largely inspired Beno?t de Sainte-Maure when he fulfilled King Henry II Plantagenet's request to write a history of the dukes of Normandy. Yet he had a different perspective. Benoit added religious and political comments to the tales of military conquests. He showed how the Norman dukes, said to be Henry II's ancestors and descended from the Danes, themselves allegedly descendants of the Trojans, built the foundations of a harmonious civilization by combining their military role and their worldly power under the aegis of the Roman Church. Perhaps the "original" homeland of Troy and its splendid civilization, as evoked by Beno?t in his Roman de Troie, had disappeared, but the history of the Danes, who became dukes of Normandy and kings of England, and which reached its zenith, according to Benoit, with Henry II's reign, illustrates how they were able to retrieve and develop Trojan virtues, guide and rule their people according to the Christian faith, and re-establish Trojan civilization on the borders of the Western world.