 Fantosme was in fact a partisan of Henry II, though his work has been noted for its impartiality and admired for its detail and vigour.Nonetheless, it has been criticised frequently in the past, because of its unusual metre, as a deterioration of the continental French style, but more recent analysis by R. C. Johnston has led to the conclusion that in fact Fantosme's chronicle represents a conscious insular style of French verse.This hypothesis rests in part on the assumption that Fantosme integrated some characteristics of Occitan verse (perhaps "coblas" by the troubadour Jaufre Rudel) he encountered during a stay in Poitiers in the 1140s, where he probably studied under Gilbert de la Porrée.