This thesis examines the depiction of kingship in Geffrei Gaimar's twelfthcentury Old French history, the Estoire des Engleis, exploring the poet's construction of positive and negative models for rulers, and examining the ways in which these models are reworked and recontextualised in successive reigns. The Estoire has not previously been the subject of a systematic study of this nature, which aims to reveal the parallels between its episodes that are developed by Gaimar into a work comprised of interlocking levels of meaning. Gaimar's history diverges from its main source, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, to incorporate a number of interpolations and expansions that draw upon Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae and other, unknown sources. The first of these, an account of the career of the exiled heir to Denmark, Haveloc, is the starting point for my analysis. Along with the complex prophetic dream experienced by Haveloc's wife, the displaced British heiress Argentille, these images will form the basis for my study of the work as a whole. Gaimar constructs a history in which each episode is dense with allusions that point to other works and to previous sections of the Estoire itself. The relative freedom afforded the poet by the distance in time between his own era and the earliest episodes in his work allows him to offer direct criticism and commentary upon figures whose political significance has faded. By the later stages of the Estoire, the accumulated parallels and allusions at Gaimar's disposal permit him to covertly attack figures associated with sensitive political situations by deploying images that echo previous, similar models. The poet's treatment of William Rufus, the last king discussed in the Estoire, is the culmination of the techniques used by Gaimar, and my methodology allows me to revise previous interpretations of this episode.