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Son of Edward the Elder and grandson of Alfred the Great, Æthelstan (or Athelstan) was the first West Saxon king to effectively rule over the whole of England, with the whole of Britain coming to acknowledge him as overlord during the course of his reign. Historian Tom Holland describes how the brilliant Anglo-Saxon king managed to forge a new country
Early in the 12th century, a tomb in the abbey of Malmesbury was briefly opened. A monk named William took the chance to inspect the skeleton that lay inside it. The dead man, so he reported, had been of average height and slender build. Not everything in the coffin, though, was bones. Traces of hair were still to be seen – and these too the monk studied attentively. “It had been,” so he recorded later, “blonde in colour, and beautifully twisted into golden braids.” William of Malmesbury had good reason to take an interest in such details. Sent to the abbey as a child, he had grown up with a justifiable pride in its history. More than anyone, he appreciated the significance of the man whose braided hair he had so carefully noted. Æthelstan, a king who over the course of his reign had brought the whole of Britain to acknowledge him as overlord, had been laid to rest in Malmesbury some two centuries before, in AD 939. During his lifetime, he had been a formidably generous patron of the abbey. Of all the many shrines to which he had been devoted, “he had honoured none as more holy than Malmesbury”. It was thanks to his generosity that it could boast a particularly awesome relic: a fragment of the True Cross. The monks’ devotion to their long-dead patron was only to be expected. View Green Video on the source website William’s horizons, though, were far from bound by the limits of his monastery. Fascinated by the past since a child, it was his ambition to write a comprehensive history of England. That one of his parents was actually a Norman did not in any way inhibit him from declaring his motivation to be “love of my country”. The sheer antiquity of the English state, far from being despised by its conquerors, tended instead to be both prized and respected by them – for it added lustre to their rule. A Norman anointed as ‘King of the English’, no matter that his native tongue was French, ruled as the heir of those same kings who had first, long before the slaughter at Hastings, fashioned England and brought it into being. Æthelstan is a major figure in Netflix film Seven Kings Must Die, the final chapter of The Last Kingdom series, which explores the formation of England through lens of conflicted her Uhtred of Bebbanburg. Discover the real history behind the film: Seven Kings Must Die: how close to real history is it? Seven Kings Must Die ending explained: who are the seven kings? The Last Kingdom: what's the real history and how historically accurate is it? The real Uhtred of Bebbanburg: the historical inspirations for The Last Kingdom’s hero Bernard Cornwell on The Last Kingdom’s finale William, whose sophistication as a historian was profound, was in no doubt as to the scale of what they had achieved. It was not only their victories in war that had laid the foundations of the English state but their concern for justice and their sponsorship of learning. Generous a patron of Malmesbury though Æthelstan had been, there were reasons far more telling why William should portray him as the greatest of England’s kings. “The opinion of the English that he governed them with a greater concern for law and for education than anyone else in their history is a valid one.” By the time that William wrote this, ‘Englalonde’ had been a term in common use for a century, and its lineaments as a kingdom had come to be taken widely for granted. It was evident as well that the roots of this precociously unitary state, with its single currency, its common language and its intimidating monarchy, reached back in turn a further century – and that the first man who could legitimately be reckoned its king was Æthelstan. “Through God’s grace he ruled all of England alone which before him many kings held among themselves.” Read more | If King Alfred was great, was Æthelstan even greater? The achievement, though, had not been his alone. The kingdom of the English had been fashioned over the course of three generations and in the teeth of a desperate struggle for survival against the Vikings. Over the course of the ninth century, a succession of English-speaking kingdoms had been first stripped bare and then dismembered: Northumbria, East Anglia, the Midlands realm of Mercia. Only one realm had held out: Wessex. Then, in the winter of AD 878, its king, Alfred the Great, had been ambushed and sent fleeing into a marsh. The entire future of the English as an independent people had been left hanging by a thread. Alfred, though, had re-emerged from the marshes, defeated the Vikings and succeeded in stabilising the frontiers of his kingdom. When he died in 899, both Wessex and the western half of Mercia were securely under his rule. Further conquests were to follow. Edward, Alfred’s eldest son and heir as king, had arrived at a momentous conclusion: that ultimately, faced by enemies as predatory and opportunistic as the Vikings, it was only by forcing all of them to submit permanently that Wessex and Mercia would ever be able to enjoy true security. Accordingly, he dug for victory. A great line of fortresses was erected along his frontier with Viking territory In constructing these ‘burhs’, Edward was helped by a remarkable woman: his sister, Æthelflæd. Devout, learned and martial in her ambitions, she had been married by Alfred to the most powerful man in Mercia and then, after his death in 911, accepted by the Mercians as their ruler. In 917, brother and sister moved in for the kill. As Edward annexed Viking-held East Anglia, so Æthelflæd received the surrender of Derby and Leicester (the latter in 918). By the time she died, on 12 June 918, everywhere south of the Humber had effectively come under Edward’s rule. The launchpad had been built for what would prove, the following decade, to be the final and decisive stage in the fashioning of England: the conquest of Northumbria. Read more | How England rode the Viking storm This was secured in AD 927. Æthelstan, Edward’s eldest son and Æthelflæd’s ward for much of his youth, had been on the throne since 924. He had been crowned as king of both the Saxons of Wessex and the Anglians of Mercia – as king of the Anglo-Saxons. Then, two years later, he marched on the Viking-held city of York and made it his own. Princes in the lands beyond the city, intimidated by the scope of his power, scrabbled to acknowledge his authority. Never before had the grasp of a southern king reached so far. Wessex, Mercia and now Northumbria: all the peoples who spoke the conqueror’s own language, the whole way to the Firth of Forth, acknowledged Æthelstan as their lord. In mark of this, he adopted a fateful new title, that of ‘Rex Anglorum’: ‘King of the English’. Æthelstan’s horizons, though, were wider still. His ambitions were not content with the rule of the English alone. He aspired to be acknowledged as lord of the entire island: by the inhabitants of the various kingdoms of the Welsh; and by the Welsh-speaking Cumbrians of Strathclyde, whose king, Owain, held sway from the Clyde down to Hadrian’s Wall; and by the Scots, who lived beyond the Forth in the Highland realm of Alba. All had duly been obliged to bow their necks to him. In May 934, when Constantin, king of Scotland, briefly attempted defiance, Æthelstan led an army deep into Alba and put its heartlands to the torch. Constantin was quickly brought to heel. Humbly he acknowledged the invader as his overlord. When poets and chroniclers hailed Æthelstan as ‘rex totius Britanniae’ – ‘the king of the whole of Britain’ – they were not indulging in idle flattery but simply stating fact. Why Æthelstan was more than a warrior Conquest was not the limit of Æthelstan’s feats. The greatest warrior of the age did not scorn to moderate martial prowess with compassion. Like his grandfather, Alfred, whose own law code had been prefaced with praise for “the mercy taught by Christ”, Æthelstan believed himself bound to legislate in a way that ranked as authentically Christian. The obligation on him to maintain the order of his kingdom and ensure the security of his subjects did not prevent him from fretting at the human cost. It was the law in Wessex that even a child as young as 10 might be condemned for theft. Yet Æthelstan, in spelling out the details of what precisely was to constitute a capital offence, made sure to spare from execution all those under the age of 13. Nevertheless, Æthelstan’s conscience remained troubled. Even as he attempted to stamp out theft and robbery, legislating against them to an almost obsessive degree, anxiety that he might be betrayed by his own laws into savagery still gnawed at him. Lengthy consultations with his counsellors and his bishops duly persuaded him to ameliorate their strictness. “The king thinks it cruel to have such young people put to death, and for such minor offences, as he has learnt is the common practice elsewhere. Therefore, it is the stated opinion both of the king and of those with whom he has discussed the matter that no one should be put to death who is under 15 years of age.” Clemency such as this was the reverse side of the ferocity with which Æthelstan punished betrayals of his lordship. A Christian king was nothing, in his opinion, if he did not combine greatness with care for the vulnerable. In 932, on Christmas Eve, he duly marked the birth of his Saviour in a stable by issuing a charter that imposed a legal obligation upon its recipient to care for the poor. Æthelstan’s determination that no one living on his own lands be permitted to starve saw him issue a particularly prescriptive ordinance. The officials responsible for his estates were warned by their master that fines would be levied on those who failed in their duty to the needy and the proceeds donated to charity. “My wish it is that you should always provide the destitute with food.” But in the north trouble was brewing. Constantin, determined still to shake off the yoke of Æthelstan’s overlordship, despite his grudging submission in 934; Owain, fearful of what the greatness of the emergent English kingdom on his doorstep might mean for his own much smaller realm; the Vikings, unreconciled to their loss of York: Æthelstan had underestimated them all. By AD 937, their alliance was out in the open. Æthelstan's greatest victory Two centuries later, William of Malmesbury would report that the realisation of his blindness had numbed Æthelstan. Brought the news of the powers ranged against him, he had acted at first as though frozen by the sheer horror of it. As harvests in the north of his kingdom were put to the torch and peasants fled before the onslaught, so the rex totius Britanniae had seemed to shrink from acting. “But at length the cries of complaint stirred the king. He knew it insufferable to be branded with the shame of having submitted meekly to barbarian arms.” And so, with the weariness of a man who had believed his life’s great labour of construction completed, only to find it threatened with utter ruin, he readied himself to fight for the survival of England. “Æðelstan cyning lædde fyrde to Brunanbyrig”: “Æthelstan the king led the levy to Brunanburh.” His victory there was bloody and terrible and would long be enshrined as the most glorious that anyone could remember. It was called the ‘Great War’. Two years later, though, exhausted perhaps by the sheer scale of his labours, Æthelstan was dead, and the Vikings – taking their chance – returned to York. His two brothers, Edmund and Eadred, who succeeded the great king in turn, found it a desperate struggle to reclaim his legacy. Only after several decades of ebb and flow was the integrity of the new kingdom of ‘Englalonde’ enduringly established. In time, it came to seem as though it had always been. Two hundred years on, by the time that William of Malmesbury sat down to write his history, the existence of England appeared the natural state of affairs. Memories had faded of the seismic character of Æthelstan’s reign and of just how momentous its effect had been upon the political configuration of the entire island. Despite William’s own best efforts, Æthelstan’s personal renown began to fade. Today, nothing better illustrates the oblivion that has largely claimed his reputation than the fact that the very site of Brunanburh, his greatest victory, has slipped from memory. The king who founded England has largely been forgotten even by the English. What is Æthelstan's legacy? Yet though the site of Brunanburh may be unrecoverable, the implications of what was forged by Æthelstan and his dynasty more than a millennium ago have lately come to possess a renewed saliency. As the bonds weaken that for the past 300 years have joined England and Scotland in a united kingdom, so inevitably have the English as well as the Scots begun to ponder what defines them as a nation. That a union as long-lasting as that of Great Britain might fray can hardly help but serve as a reminder that the joining of different peoples in a shared sense of identity is not something easily achieved and maintained. Perhaps we can see now, in a way that we could not even a few decades ago, just how astonishing the creation of ‘Englalonde’ actually was. The story of how, over the course of three generations, the royal dynasty of Wessex went from near-oblivion to fashioning a kingdom that still endures today is the most remarkable and momentous in British history. That Æthelstan, let alone Edward and Ætheflæd, are shadowy figures, with inner lives that are as unknowable to us as the site of Brunanburh, does not render their accomplishments any less astonishing. They and Alfred richly merit being commemorated as England’s founding fathers – or, of course, in Æthelflæd’s case, as England’s founding mother. Read more | What did the Anglo-Saxons ever do for us? Some two and a half decades after the death of Æthelstan, a bishop named Æthelwold, surveying “the whole dominion of England”, hailed its existence as a miracle “obtained by God’s grace”. Yet Æthelwold, who had served as one of Æthelstan’s closest advisers before becoming a priest, knew full well that the united kingdom of the English had been obtained by human agency as well as by divine providence. Even as he expressed his astonishment that it should be marked by such prosperity and peace, Æthelwold did not hesitate to give credit to the kings who had wrought so much in the teeth of such terrible odds: “Mature in age and very prudent, and farseeing in wisdom, and hard to overcome in any strife.” Such praise, coming from a man who had grown up by Æthelstan’s side, carries rare conviction. Bishop Æthelwold spoke for all those who, enjoying the order brought to lands that only decades before had been scenes of carnage and devastation, felt due gratitude for what had been achieved by Alfred and his heirs. He, close enough in time to Æthelstan’s reign to have been the great king’s protégé, understood the full scale of his debt. We, at a millennium’s remove, could perhaps remember it better. This article was first published in the July 2016 issue of BBC History Magazine
If King Alfred was great, was Æthelstan even greater?
Alfred the Great's achievements are dwarfed by those of his grandson Æthelstan. So why, asks Sarah Foot, is the former still venerated while the latter is overlooked?
Was King Alfred (reigned 871–99) really the greatest Anglo-Saxon king? Certainly he remains the best-remembered – even if it’s only for burning the cakes. But should it really be his grandson Æthelstan (reigned 924–39) – now largely forgotten – whom we celebrate as the most significant pre-Conquest monarch? Alfred was a highly successful military leader who, in a battle at Edington in AD 878, resoundingly defeated the Danish army that had almost conquered Wessex. In the ensuing period of peace he launched a programme of educational reform that transformed the use of English as both a literary and a governmental language. Yet Alfred only ruled the West Saxon people, and those in the western part of the Midland kingdom of Mercia not under subjection to the Danes. When he died (the sole remaining native king in England), the east Midlands, East Anglia and Northumbria all lay in Danish hands. View Green Video on the source website Who was Æthelstan? Æthelstan, on the other hand, was the first king to rule all England and laid claim to an imperial overlordship over the whole of Britain. His military prowess brought him direct authority over not just Wessex and Mercia, but the Danelaw (the name given to the area of northern England where Vikings settled) and the kingdom north of the Humber. Celtic rulers from elsewhere in the British Isles subsequently submitted to his authority. He crushed a rebellion of the Scots king in AD 934, attacking his realm with a land and sea force and ravaging as far north as Caithness. When Æthelstan defeated a combined Norse-Scots-Northumbrian force at the battle of Brunanburh in AD 937, a contemporary poem entered into the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recalled: "Never yet in this island before this was a greater slaughter of a host made by the edge of the sword since the Angles and Saxons came hither from the east, overcame the Britons and won a country." Read more | Why can't we find the battlefield of Brunanburh? Foreigners also recognised Æthelstan’s status. He played a significant role on a European stage, forging alliances with royal and ducal houses across the territories of the former Carolingian empire through marriage and fostering arrangements. Scholars from Britain and abroad flocked to his court, bringing books, precious gifts and the relics of the saints (to which Æthelstan showed particular devotion). Alfred founded a dynasty. Æthelstan (who died childless) paved the way for that royal line (through his brothers and nephews) to govern all the English peoples via an effective administrative machine. When he died, an Irish chronicler lamented the demise of the “pillar of the dignity of the western world”. How can so great a king, once celebrated for his achievements, have fallen into such oblivion today? Æthelstan is a major figure in Netflix film Seven Kings Must Die, the final chapter of The Last Kingdom series, which explores the formation of England through lens of conflicted her Uhtred of Bebbanburg. Discover the real history behind the film: Seven Kings Must Die: how close to real history is it? Seven Kings Must Die ending explained: who are the seven kings? The Last Kingdom: what's the real history and how historically accurate is it? The real Uhtred of Bebbanburg: the historical inspirations for The Last Kingdom’s hero Bernard Cornwell on The Last Kingdom’s finale Why don't we remember Æthelstan? Alfred's posthumous reputation received a substantial boost from the profusion of literature that emanated from his court in the latter years of his reign – including the first version of the collection of year-by-year accounts of early English history we know as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. One of his circle, the Welsh priest Asser, also wrote a life of the king in the 890s, giving an unparalleled insight into his personality, his devotion to the saints, his practical and creative abilities and his attitudes to kingship. Texts translated from Latin into English at his court also included passages attributed to the king himself. By contrast, the reign of Æthelstan is ill-served with narrative sources; the Chronicle offers the sketchiest narrative of events in his reign, there is no surviving biography, nor any writing attributed to his own authorship. Creating a picture of him as a man as well as a royal figurehead involves piecing together information from a disparate range of sources (and a good deal of imaginative licence). Read more | Ælfweard and Æthelstan: were they rivals for the throne of Wessex? Even so, after his death, Æthelstan enjoyed considerable fame. The West Saxon Latin chronicler Æthelweard saw Æthelstan as a mighty king and drew attention to his victory at Brunanburh (still remembered in the late tenth century as the ‘Great Battle’). Æthelstan’s submission of the Scots and the Picts brought significant and lasting consequences: “The fields of Britain were consolidated into one, there was peace everywhere and abundance of all things, and [since then] no fleet has remained here having advanced against these shores, except under treaty with the English.” Æthelred the Unready (reigned 978–1016) called his eldest son Æthelstan – and worked through various Old English royal names before he thought to name his eighth son Alfred. St Cuthbert and the kings of Wessex Both Alfred and Æthelstan are associated with legends relating to St Cuthbert (bishop of Lindisfarne, d687). At his time of greatest need, before the battle of Edington, King Alfred supposedly received a night-time visitation from the saint, who promised him victory and a glorious future for his sons. If Alfred would be faithful to Cuthbert and his people, Albion would be given to him and his sons, and he would be chosen king of all Britain. Æthelstan – who claimed that very title: king of all Britain – showed great devotion to the saint’s shrine on a visit to Chester-le-Street in 934. He gave many precious gifts including a book containing Bede’s life of Cuthbert. The frontispiece to that volume depicts a double portrait of the crowned King Æthelstan presenting the manuscript to Cuthbert. Æthelstan's Norman reputation After the Norman Conquest, Æthelstan’s reputation remained strong. To Anglo-Norman writers, he stood out as the founder of a united English realm, and – perhaps more significantly in that era – as having successfully asserted his authority over his Celtic neighbours. William, a monk of Malmesbury Abbey where Æthelstan was buried, paid him particular attention, providing insights not found in any other source, possibly drawing on a now-lost tenth-century life of the king. In William’s hands, Æthelstan became not just a king to remember but one about whom there were many stories, even popular songs worth recalling and repeating. Various factors combined to diminish Æthelstan's standing in the literary imagination during the late Middle Ages. Legends about a heroic British king, Arthur, received a substantial boost from the writing of Geoffrey of Monmouth. While Æthelstan's martial success still gained approval, rumours first reported by William of Malmesbury that Æthelstan's mother had been a concubine and he was therefore illegitimate gained increasing currency. The mysterious circumstances in which his younger brother, Edwin, was drowned at sea in 933 (supposedly in an open boat without an oar), and Æthelstan's foundation of the church at Milton Abbas in reparation did him little good either. Æthelstan's literary reputation reached its nadir in the 14th-century poem, Æthelston, in which the eponymous hero comes across as a troubled and insecure king, struggling to achieve the moral authority to control his realm. At the same time, other pre-Conquest kings achieved equal or greater prominence. Attempts to make a saint of Edward the Confessor began soon after his death; he was canonised in 1161. Most problematically for Æthelstan’s cause, Alfred was frequently hailed as the first king to have held sway over all England. Orderic Vitalis, writing in the 12th century, first made that claim, which was energetically promoted by monks at St Albans including Matthew Paris, who went so far as to say that “in view of his merits Alfred was called Great”. King Henry VI even tried in 1441 to get Alfred “the first monarch of the famous kingdom of England” canonised, but without success. No one tried to make a saint of Æthelstan, even though he never married and had such a great reputation for piety in his lifetime. Watch | Michael Wood on the astonishing Æthelstan Neither great nor saint, Æthelstan's place in the popular memory started to slide as the reputation of Alfred increasingly eclipsed that of all Anglo-Saxon kings. Elizabeth I's reign saw an increasing interest in the history of pre-Conquest England; antiquarians collected early English manuscripts and began to publish Anglo-Saxon texts, including Asser's Life of Alfred. This helped to increase popular understanding of Alfred's qualities as a ruler and build his reputation as a scholar and statesman at the expense not just of Æthelstan but of all other Anglo-Saxon kings for whom no equivalent biographies survive. William Tyndale had claimed that Æthelstan commissioned an early translation of the Bible. But it was Alfred's promotion of English over Latin as the language through which to get closer to God that would resonate in the reformed English church, eager to find the historic roots of the Ecclesia Anglicana in the distant past. Alfred's reputation flourished further after the publication (in Latin in 1678, and in English in 1709) of John Spelman's Life of King Alfred, which promoted the king as first founder of the English monarchy. Prince Frederick (son of George II) and his circle of patriots enthusiastically evoked Alfred for his protection of English freedoms and his defeat of foreign enemies, on land and sea. Thomas Arne's masque Alfred, first performed for Prince Frederick in 1740, concludes famously with the anthem Rule Britannia. Thus, gradually during the 18th and 19th centuries, Æthelstan’s memory waned. Only the Freemasons remembered Æthelstan and celebrated him as their mythical founder in England, his ‘son’ (brother) Edwin the first English Grand Master. History books (especially those written for children) found much to celebrate in the deeds for which Alfred was famed, not just his victories over the Danes but his inventions – a candle-clock sheltering inside a horn lantern – and his supposed role in founding the English navy by having ships of a new, longer, design built to try and defeat the enemy at sea. Æthelstan vs Alfred in the national myth Æthelstan’s right to be considered the first king of all England seemed long forgotten, that epithet given either to Alfred’s grandfather (Ecgberht, d839) or more often to Alfred. Anglo-Saxon topics were popular among Victorian painters but neither Æthelstan nor his great battle at Brunanburh found visual commemoration in any picture exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1769 and 1904; Alfred was however frequently depicted. It was Alfred who took the central role in the creation of a national myth of English and British origins; he became the archetypal symbol of the nation’s own sense of itself. The beginnings of political stability in Britain (which stood in marked contrast to the upheavals elsewhere in 19th-century Europe) went back to Alfred’s day. As Edward Augustus Freeman argued, Alfred was the most perfect character in history; no other name could compare with his. Nothing brings out the contrast between the two kings’ reputations better than the marking of the millennial anniversaries of their deaths. Thanks to uncertainty about the precise date of Alfred’s demise, his millennium was celebrated not in 1899 but in 1901. First planned in the aftermath of Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1897, the celebration was to be a “National commemoration of the king to whom this empire owes so much.” Crowds travelled to Winchester on Friday 20 September 1901 to watch Lord Rosebery unveil Hamo Thornycroft’s massive statue of the king set in the Broadway, Winchester, before proceeding to Winchester Cathedral for a service with the massed choirs of southern English cathedrals, at which the archbishop of Canterbury preached. In stark contrast, a single notice in The Times of London for 25 October 1940 (buried under "Ecclesiastical News"), noted the supposed millennium of "Æthelstan the Great" (dating his death to AD 940, in error for AD 939). Lamenting that there might in happier times have been some celebration of this event, the correspondent remembered the king as the greatest and most munificent benefactor to St Paul's Cathedral in London, his donations making that cathedral the richest in England. Only with the revival of Anglo-Saxonism in the latter years of the 20th century, increased scholarly interest in the Latin and vernacular literature of England before the Conquest, and the critical editing of royal administrative documents, has Æthelstan begun to regain something of his former prominence. His reign lay at the source of many developments. First to unite the English peoples under a single authority, Æthelstan also accepted the submission of all the other rulers of Britain. Welsh kings attended regularly at his court, travelling round the kingdom with him. Æthelstan expressed his claim to hegemony over all Britain in a new language of imperial rulership and in visual symbols, most obviously his decision to wear a crown (shown on his coins and in the surviving portrait of the king giving a book to St Cuthbert). His sway over the whole island brought together under one rule peoples that had previously suffered significant political disruption and consequent social breakdown because of the Danish wars and Scandinavian settlements. Æthelstan created an efficient administrative machine to govern a dispersed realm, and directed much of his legal He created an efficient administrative machine to govern a dispersed realm BBC History Magazine activity towards the repair and renewal of this fractured and damaged society. “Very mighty”, “worthy of honour”, “his years filled with glory”, “pillar of the dignity of the western world”, “pious King Æthelstan”: each of these near-contemporary comments reflects aspects of Æthelstan’s achievement and personality. He deserves to be brought out of the shadows that have obscured his memory and celebrated as a key figure in the making of England – and, indeed, the forging of Britain. Where is Æthelstan remembered? Æthelstan supposedly visited Beverley in the East Riding of Yorkshire on his way to fight a major battle in the north and paused to pray for victory at the shrine of St John of Beverley (a prominent figure in Bede's History, and an early bishop of Hexham). On his return south, victorious, he refounded Beverley church as a collegiate community of canons and granted it land and a number of privileges including the right of sanctuary. Three monuments in the minster recall the king, including a life-size statue cast in lead in 1781 added to the screen at the entrance to the choir. Æthelstan stands holding a sword in one hand, and in the other the charter of privileges he had given to the town of Beverley. On the opposite side of the archway leading into the choir is a similar statue of Bishop John of Beverley. Outside the guildhall at Kingston upon Thames in Surrey stands a piece of grey-wether sandstone, believed to be the Anglo-Saxon coronation stone on which Æthelstan was crowned in September 925. The stone once lay in St Mary’s chapel in the town; when that was destroyed, it was moved to the market place, where it served as a mounting block. The Masonic order of Surrey led a campaign in the 1850s to re-situate the relic in a more formal setting, arranging for it to be moved in 1854 to its current location, mounted on a heptagonal base and surrounded by railings. Re-laying the stone involved appropriate Masonic ceremonies, including the sprinkling of the monument with corn, oil and wine. Where is Æthelstan buried? In the restored Norman abbey church at Malmesbury in Wiltshire, Æthelstan is commemorated by a late medieval tomb chest in perpendicular style, now in the north aisle. The king’s recumbent, full-length effigy lies beneath a heavy traced canopy. The original head has been removed and replaced with another of unknown date. Æthelstan was a generous patron of Malmesbury in life and chose to be buried there, near the tomb of St Aldhelm. In the 12th century, William of Malmesbury saw the king’s remains and remarked on his fair hair. During the Reformation his bones were lost and the tomb is now empty. Sarah Foot is Regius Professor of ecclesiastical history at Christ Church, Oxford. She is the author of Æthelstan: The First King of England. This article was first published in the July 2011 issue of BBC History Magazine
Ælfweard and Æthelstan: were they rivals for the throne of Wessex?
Seven Kings Must Die pits half-brothers Æthelstan and Ælfweard against each other in its opening act: but how true to history is their clash for the crown? Historical consultant Ryan Lavelle considers what real history tells us about Ælfweard, and why Æthelstan may not have been first choice for king of Wessex…
Seven Kings Must Die, the eagerly awaited successor film to The Last Kingdom, sees conflicted hero Uhtred of Bebbanburg encountering a new generation of England’s history. It begins with King Edward the Elder’s death, a character whose somewhat tempestuous relationship with Uhtred dominated season 5 of the show, allowing the focus to shift to the reign of Aethelstan. The film depicts Æthelstan as rightful heir to the thrones of his father, whose first concern is fending off a challenge from his “traitor” half-brother and rival claimant Ælfweard. In the show, Æthelstan is the presumed and rightful king, and that Ælfweard’s claim is that of an upstart. Real history, though, suggests that the succession might not have been quite so clear cut. Might Edward have wanted to carve up his dominions between his eldest sons? On the podcast | Michael Wood introduces listeners to the fascinating life of 10th-century ruler Æthelstan How did Edward of Wessex die? It is the fallout from Edward’s death – off-screen, in the opening minutes of the film – that reverberates through Seven Kings Must Die, though no detail is given as to how he meets his end. Real history offers us a few clues, but not many. Edward is known to have died in July AD 924 near Chester, during or shortly after fighting a Mercian rebellion. He was buried in New Minster in Winchester – a monastery he himself had commissioned – close to his father, Alfred the Great, and mother, Ealhswith. Read more | Who was Edward the Elder? A brief guide to the Anglo-Saxon king Ælfweard and Æthelstan: who were the candidates to succeed Edward the Elder? The real Æthelstan (ruled AD 924-39) has been hailed by some historians as the first king who could credibly claim to rule ‘England’. He was Edward’s eldest son, born to Ecgwynn around AD 894. From his father’s ‘Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons’, Æthelstan conquered Northumbria and pushed his authority across the island of Britain. He proved able to match the political aspirations that are so famous in the writings associated with Alfred with a political reality of a kingship of ‘the English’. Read more | If King Alfred was great, was Æthelstan even greater? The historical legacy of King Æthelstan is given a helping hand by the 12th-century historian William of Malmesbury. From William’s writings, Æthelstan’s reign and the continuation of the story of the dynasty of Wessex appears like the natural next step from the reigns of his father Edward the Elder and his grandfather Alfred the Great. According to William, who claimed to have drawn from a certain old book, Alfred had bestowed upon the young boy a cloak, belt and sword; symbols of future aspirations for Edward’s eldest son. Æthelstan, then, was a successful king building on a strong inheritance, and his burial in Malmesbury meant that William had a vested interest in keeping this memory alive. Meanwhile there was Ælfweard: Edward’s second son, and the eldest born to his second wife Ælfflæd. View Green Video on the source website Was Ælfweard ever king? An altogether different tradition of Æthelstan’s succession seems to have emerged in Winchester, and it shows that we need to be wary of narratives of smooth continuity. In a remarkable manuscript, the Liber Vitae (Book of Life) of Winchester’s New Minster, the names and deaths of the great and good of Anglo-Saxon England are recorded in such a way that their souls might be regularly prayed for and their Christian salvation assured. New Minster was the foundation of King Edward and this was as close to an official record as it was possible to get, at least from a Winchester perspective. In a passage that is likely to record a late 10th-century tradition, the Liber Vitae noted that Edward the Elder was laid to rest by the high altar of the church, close to his father and mother. Alongside Edward, a certain Ælfweard, ‘crowned with kingly badges’, was buried. Ælfweard died very soon after his father – and, if the Liber Vitae is to be believed, was interred with a certain degree of royal pomp. Was this the fate of a lost king of Wessex? According to the 12th-century manuscript known as the Textus Roffensis, Ælfweard only ruled in Wessex for a matter of weeks, but he seems to have ruled there all the same, and Æthelstan’s succession was not initially to Wessex but to the neighbouring kingdom of Mercia. Could it have been Edward’s plan for the second of his sons, Ælfweard, to be his sole successor, disinheriting Æthelstan of any political authority? It is possible. In his later years, Edward had two principal kingdoms, Wessex and Mercia, which made up the ‘Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons’. That Edward had gone himself to fight a Mercian rebellion shows how important Mercia was when he died. On the podcast | Bernard Cornwell talks about the final novel in his Last Kingdom series A charter issued in the first full year of Æthelstan’s reign, AD 925, suggests that Æthelstan considered himself initially in terms of his rule of Mercia and during his reign he appears to have spent more time outside Wessex than any of the other pre-Conquest king of England. Therefore, although we really only have William of Malmesbury’s word for it, the claim that Æthelstan was brought up in Mercia at the court of his aunt, the Lady Æthelflaed, seems a reasonable one. There is no historical evidence that the young Æthelstan was trained by anyone called Uhtred, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable that it was in Mercia that Æthelstan learnt how to wage war. For an adult son to be expected to be the ruler of a second kingdom was a common political strategy in Europe at this time. Read more | How to run a medieval dynasty: survival secrets of ruling royal families Did Æthelstan and Ælfweard fight a succession war? In these circumstances it is also possible that Ælfweard, the second son, was seen by Edward as his successor in Wessex, despite the fact that Wessex was the kingdom of his father and his paternal line. Perhaps in the days after Edward’s death in the summer of AD 924, the two sons were planning to come to some sort of agreement, but fate intervened. There is no evidence of foul play in the historical record of Ælfweard’s death, but that doesn’t mean to say that everyone was satisfied, particularly in Wessex. The bishop of Winchester is conspicuous by his absence in many of the events of Æthelstan’s reign and a later plot, explained by William of Malmesbury (who liked a good story) by rumours of Æthelstan’s illegitimacy, seems to have had real historical foundation. Read more | Seven Kings Must Die ending explained: who are the seven kings? Would a succession war have been unusual? This was the concern that contemporaries and later writers tried to cover over: succession was a messy business, and with the right support it could easily be contested. A generation earlier, Edward’s cousin Æthelwold was aided by Viking allies in his attempts to seize power following Alfred’s death in AD 899. In the middle of the 10th century, Edward’s grandson Eadwig (ruled AD 955-59) saw his English realm shrink to Wessex alone when the nobility of Mercia and Northumbria supported the claim of his brother Edgar to rule over them. Because Eadwig died soon after his brother’s actions, the split in the kingdom lasted only two years and is often hardly noticed from afar but these events go to show that an English kingdom was not a done deal in the tenth century. Splitting territory according to the interests of particular groups in particular circumstances was quite normal and it would be unsurprising if in the case of Æthelstan and Ælfweard the two royal brothers and their supporters – or indeed their father – hadn’t considered it as an option. In the world of Seven Kings Must Die, this all plays out very differently: Æethelstan in presented as the rightful king of Wessex and Mercia, whose position is challenged by the upstart “traitor” Ælfweard. A full-blown succession war is only avoided thanks to the guile of Uhtred – and it still ends bloodily when Æthelstan murders his surrendering half-brother. The team behind the series have some scope to play around with history where historical evidence is lacking, allowing imagination to take us on a journey of possibilities, where the messy business of succession could get very messy indeed. Seven Kings Must Die alludes to destiny in its title, and its story goes far beyond the question of the succession of Edward the Elder. But like the rest of the Last Kingdom series, the film reminds us that uncertainties and our attempts to negotiate them are a common thread of humanity that binds us to the distant past. Seven Kings Must Die is available to stream on Netflix now Seven Kings Must Die: how close to real history is it? Seven Kings Must Die ending explained: who are the seven kings? Seven Kings Must Die spoiler-free preview The Last Kingdom: what's the real history and how historically accurate is it? The real Uhtred of Bebbanburg: the historical inspirations for The Last Kingdom’s hero Bernard Cornwell on The Last Kingdom’s finale Tom Holland on the life of Æthelstan, 'King of the English' If King Alfred was great, was Æthelstan even greater? Who was Edward the Elder? Brunanburh: the forgotten fight that changed British history Michael Wood on the astonishing Æthelstan Ryan Lavelle is professor of early medieval history at the University of Winchester, and worked as historical consultant for The Last Kingdom and Seven Kings Must Die
The battle of Brunanburh: the forgotten fight that changed British history
King Æthelstan’s victory at Brunanburh in AD 937 may just be one of the most important battles ever fought on British soil, yet today it is virtually unknown. Julian Humphrys explores what happened over an entire day of hard and bloody fighting, and why the events on that long-lost battlefield echoed through the centuries
Half a century after Brunanburh – the victory of the men of Wessex and Mercia over an alliance of Scots, Strathclyde Britons and Norsemen from Ireland – it was still being called “the great battle”. Indeed, it has been described as one of the most defining battles in British history. It helped the Anglo-Saxon king Æthelstan consolidate his hold over his Wessex kingdom and create a more unified England, while it has also been argued that the strong resistance put up by his enemies prevented the whole of Britain from being forcefully united into one imperial power. Despite its significance, few today have heard of the battle of Brunanburh in AD 937, and even fewer think they know where it was fought. The battle of Brunanburh: quick facts When was it fought? AD 937 Where? Great Britain (precise location disputed) Why? Allied invasion of northern England Who was involved? Kingdom of England, led by Æthelstan Kingdom of Scotland, led by Constantine II Kingdom of Strathclyde, led by Owain I Viking kingdom of Dublin, led by Olaf Guthfrithson Who won? After a day of fighting, according to some accounts, it was an English victory What led to the battle of Brunanburh? Ever since he’d been crowned king of the Anglo-Saxons in AD 925, Æthelstan had been steadily extending his authority. After his grandfather, Alfred the Great, had halted the Danish conquest of England, his father, Edward the Elder, recaptured the East Midlands and East Anglia from the Danes in AD 917. Building on these solid foundations, Athelstan pushed north. Two years after becoming king, he took over the last remaining Viking kingdom at York, extending his rule up to the Scottish border. In AD 934, he invaded Scotland, possibly because its king, Constantine, had broken a peace treaty. Read more | Aelfweard and Aethelstan: were they rivals for the throne of Wessex? After gathering his forces at Winchester, he marched north, picking up reinforcements on the way and paying a visit to the shrine of St Cuthbert at Chester-le-Street, in modern-day County Durham. Supported by a fleet that sailed up the east coast, Athelstan led his Anglo-Saxon warriors deep into Scotland, burning and ravaging as far as the great fortress of Dunnottar, south of Aberdeen. View Green Video on the source website Nobody dared take on the powerful southern army in battle, and the northern rulers soon gave in. Constantine surrendered to Æthelstan and his neighbour Owain, King of Strathclyde, followed suit. Both were forced to accept the overlordship of Æthelstan, now at the peak of his powers. Realising that their only hope of countering the powerful English king was by setting aside their differences, Æthelstan’s enemies forged a coalition against him, with Constantine and Owen joining forces with Olaf, the Viking King of Dublin. In AD 937, they moved into Northumbria, where there were large numbers of Danish settlers and few of the aristocracy felt much loyalty to Æthelstan. It’s not clear how or where they combined their armies, but it is said that 615 ships carried the Dublin Vikings to England. The one source that does give any details says that the Vikings sailed their longships up the Humber. Read more | The Danelaw: is the ‘realm’ of the Vikings in Anglo-Saxon-era England a place or an idea? Who was Æthelstan? During his 14-year reign, Æthelstan pushed England’s boundaries to the furthest extent they had yet reached. He eliminated opposition in Cornwall, extracted a huge tribute from the kings of Wales, conquered Viking York, extended his control over Northumbria and fought off a major invasion in AD 937. But he was more than just a warrior feared by his neighbours. He issued law codes to strengthen royal control over his expanded kingdom, regulated the currency, and encouraged town life. He was a great collector of works of art and relics and a generous patron of religious houses. In his final years, Æthelstan was respected and influential throughout Europe, and four of his half-sisters married European rulers. He died in AD 939 and was buried in Malmesbury Abbey. Read more | If King Alfred was great, was Æthelstan even greater? By autumn, the invaders had established themselves in York and were ravaging Æthelstan’s kingdom to the south. How would Æthelstan respond? According to a contemporary chronicle (which is now lost, but was quoted in the 12th century by the writer William of Malmesbury), he did nothing, spending “idle hours” while the invaders laid waste his lands. In fact, Æthelstan was busy raising troops. A 10th-century army took time to assemble, and Æthelstan wasn’t going to make the same mistake that Harold Godwinson would in 1066 by hurrying into battle before he had gathered all his forces. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle emphasises the part played by the West Saxons and Mercians in the ensuing clash of arms, but it seems that Æthelstan’s army wasn’t exclusively English. The king had brought in some extra muscle in the form of a force of Viking warriors under the leadership of two hard-bitten Icelandic adventurers: Egill and Thorolf Skallagrímsson. Egill’s colourful (and violent) life was the subject of a long saga, probably written by Snorri Sturluson, the famous 13th-century Icelandic poet, chieftain and historian. It’s a thoroughly entertaining read, offering a valuable insight into the Viking mindset, but it’s so full of literary invention that its value as a history is thought to be limited. Dawn attack According to Egill’s saga, Æthelstan bought some of the time he needed to raise his army by challenging his enemies to fight him on a “hazelled field”, a specially chosen battlefield marked out by hazel branches, where the fighting would take place by mutual agreement at a set time. By tradition, once you had been challenged in this way, it was considered dishonourable to refuse or continue to ravage an enemy’s lands. Finally, towards the end of the year, Æthelstan moved north, and the two armies clashed at a place called Brunanburh. There’s a lot of debate over where this actually was, with Yorkshire, the Wirral, Galloway and Northamptonshire just some of the suggested sites. Egill’s saga describes the battlefield as an open heath bordered by dense woodland on one side and a river on the other, with Æthelstan and his brother Edmund’s forces drawn up where the gap between the two was narrowest. Read more | Brunanburh: Where did the battle that saved England take place? The main battle began with a dawn attack by the English, but the first casualties had already been suffered when an Anglo-Saxon bishop arrived with his men the night before, pitched his tents too near the enemy, and fell victim to a surprise attack. The initial fighting bore little relation to the confused free-for-all often depicted in today’s films. Both sides would have drawn up in closely packed ranks, presenting a solid wall of shields to their enemies. It’s sometimes suggested that the shields overlapped for extra protection, but this would have been impossible in the hurly-burly of battle as well as making it extremely difficult to use a weapon effectively. The lines of both armies would have bristled with spears, the commonest weapon of the period, leading at least one poet to describe an army as a “war-hedge”. Swords are frequently mentioned in contemporary poems and accounts, but they were expensive and usually only carried by the richer members of an army. Some warriors carried two-handed axes, which could shatter a wooden shield or cleave a man’s head in two. Unless one army attempted a surprise attack, a battle would normally begin with the two armies drawing up opposite each other, shooting bows and hurling insults – and spears – before one side (or both) felt confident enough to move forward. This might be a slow and steady advance, but an army could give up the security of a shield wall in favour of the impetus provided by a mad rush. Sometimes, warriors would deploy in a wedge formation, commonly called a ‘swine array’, and try to punch their way through an enemy shield wall. Axemen needed room to swing their deadly weapons, so it was almost impossible for them to fight in tightly packed ranks. They may have dashed forward to take on individual opponents, or used their axes to splinter the wooden shields of their enemies. If both lines held firm, the fighting would degenerate into a bitter battle of attrition. This was close-quarter combat at its most terrible, where you looked into the eyes of your enemy and could smell his breath and taste his blood. Accounts say the fighting at Brunanburh lasted all day. According to the Annals of Ulster, the battle was “immense, lamentable and horrible, desperately fought” while a contemporary poem concluded “never was there more slaughter on this island, never yet as many people killed before this… since from the east Angles and Saxons came up over the broad sea”. Eventually, the English gained the upper hand and the invaders broke and fled. Athelstan and his army pursued them until nightfall, “hew[ing] the fugitive grievously from behind with swords sharp from the grinding”. Olaf made for the safety of his ships and sailed back to Dublin with what was left of his army, Constantine escaped to Scotland and abdicated a few years later, while Owen was probably killed in the battle. Athelstan and Edmund headed south in triumph. But the English paid a heavy price for their victory: two of Athelstan’s cousins had been slain, along with two bishops, Thorolf Skallagrímsson, and “a multitude” of lesser men. The invaders’ losses were even higher. Five minor kings, seven Viking earls and one of Constantine’s sons were killed together with thousands of their followers. Read more | 10 ways the Anglo-Saxons changed the course of British history Locating the battlefield: where is Brunanburh? A wide variety of sites have been suggested. One is near Lockerbie in Scotland, not far from the hillfort at Burnswark, but it’s unlikely the battle was fought this far north, especially as Olaf and his allies had overrun Northumbria and occupied York. Another suggestion places the battle further south, in the hills on the Huntingdonshire-Northamptonshire border. Some accounts refer to Bruneswald rather than Brunanburh, and there was indeed a forest of that name between the rivers Nene and Ouse in that area. Some historians argue that the battle was actually fought on the Wirral. Dismissing the 12th-century account of the Vikings sailing up the Humber as a mistake, they base their conclusion on two place names that are mentioned in the contemporary account: Brunanburh and Dinges Mere. They believe that Brunanburh was the old name for the Wirral village of Bromborough, and that Dinges Mere meant ‘marshland of the Thing’, the old Norse word for the assembly which met at Thingwall on the Wirral. Others aren’t convinced. Historian Michael Wood believes that the account of the Viking landing on the Humber is probably correct, and points out that two sources, one Irish and one English, say the invaders were helped by Danes within England, who could only have been from Northumbria or the East Midlands. He argues that the battle was probably fought somewhere south of York, which was, after all, the main war zone between the 920s and 950s AD. Wood concludes by asking that if the Vikings’ aim was to re-establish their kingdom in York, what were they doing in the Wirral? It seems likely that unless some new written evidence is uncovered or there’s a stunning archaeological find, the debate will rumble on. Brunanburh is the final battle in Seven Kings Must Die, the finale film to The Last Kingdom. Check out more of our related content: Seven Kings Must Die: how close to real history is it? Seven Kings Must Die ending explained: who are the seven kings? Seven Kings Must Die spoiler-free preview The Last Kingdom: what's the real history and how historically accurate is it? The real Uhtred of Bebbanburg: the historical inspirations for The Last Kingdom’s hero Bernard Cornwell on The Last Kingdom’s finale If King Alfred was great, was Æthelstan even greater? Who was Edward the Elder? Brunanburh: the forgotten fight that changed British history Michael Wood on the astonishing Æthelstan This article was first published in the September 2017 issue of BBC History Revealed
Bamburgh Castle: The Real Bebbanburg of The Last Kingdom
The long-awaited film Seven Kings Must Die, bringing the story of Uhtred, son a Uhtred and The Last Kingdom to a thrilling climax, has finally arrived on Netflix. But where was Bebbanburg, the ancestral home that obsessed our Anglo-Viking hero? Travel journalist and history fan Paul Bloomfield explores the history of Bamburgh Castle
Over five dramatic seasons of The Last Kingdom spanning several decades, protagonist Uhtred, son of Uhtred has endured a rollercoaster existence. Born an Anglo-Saxon noble but raised as a Dane, he’s been orphaned and adopted, betrayed – more than once – and sold into slavery. He’s won and lost battles and loves, switched allegiances, consorted with kings and with Vikings. Throughout it all, though, one obsession has dominated his hopes and schemes: a determination to reclaim his birthright – his ancestral home, Bebbanburg. Is Bebbanburg a real place? Uhtred himself, hero of Bernard Cornwall’s hugely popular Last Kingdom novels and the BBC/Netflix series based on them, is a composite character, albeit named for at least one real medieval noble from Northumbria. But Bebbanburg, the fortress on which Uhtred is fatefully fixated, is far from fictional. Today it’s known as Bamburgh Castle. Read more of our content on Seven Kings Must Die Seven Kings Must Die: the real history behind the Last Kingdom movie Seven Kings Must Die spoiler-free preview Seven Kings Must Die ending explained: who are the seven kings? The hulking stone citadel that now guards the Northumberland coast south of Lindisfarne from atop its dolerite outcrop largely dates from after Uhtred’s era of Viking-on-Saxon conflict. But the castle’s history stretches back centuries earlier, and its tumultuous and often violent tale continues through the Middle Ages and beyond. It’s a story populated by Vikings, saints, kings, conquests and conflict. Where is Bebbanburg? Like so many castles around Britain, Bamburgh was planted in a border region. This is a liminal point where land meets sea, standing between the peoples of what’s now Scotland and England, the territories of the Anglo-Saxons and the Danelaw, paganism and Christianity. Today it’s just 15 miles south of the Tweed, which marks the modern border with Scotland. In the Iron Age, a Celtic people now commonly known as the Votadini inhabited the area. They built a fort called Din Guaydri (or Din Guarie) that may have stood on the site now occupied by Bamburgh. After the Roman retreat from Britain in the fifth century AD, Anglo-Saxon conquerors pushed north, establishing the kingdom of Bernicia. It was here, in AD 547, that – says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle – Ida the Flame-bearer, first king of Bernicia, founded his capital, building a fortified wooden stockade. Why is it called Bebbanburg? According to at least one source, Ida’s grandson, Æthelfrith, gave the fortress to his wife, Bebba – from whom it took the name Bebbanburh (or Bebbanburg). His son, Oswald, ruled a unified kingdom of Northumbria, where he promoted Christianity and gave the nearby island of Lindisfarne to the monk Saint Aidan. According to the historian-monk Bede, after Oswald’s death in battle in AD 642, his arm was brought back to Bamburgh, where it was venerated as a holy relic in the castle chapel. Bede’s description makes it clear that Bamburgh was an important urban centre by the turn of the seventh century. Archaeological excavations have unearthed artefacts from that era backing up that impression, including the embossed gold ‘Bamburgh Beast’ brooch, an iron sword and fragments of a carved stone seat that may have been a throne. Read more | The Viking raid of Lindisfarne Was Bebbanburg attacked by Vikings? All too soon, a new enemy arrived in Northumbria: Vikings. The attack on Lindisfarne, just five miles from Bamburgh Castle, on 8 June AD 793 marked the start of terrifying waves of assaults by Danes hungry for loot, slaves and land. Seven decades later, the Great Heathen Army invaded, conquering and occupying much of eastern England, which became known as the Danelaw. And in AD 993, Bamburgh was sacked by Vikings, then left to fall into disrepair. Bamburgh in the medieval period Rebuilt after the Norman Conquest, it was certainly back in defensible shape by 1095, when the rebel Earl of Northumbria Robert de Mowbray made the mistake of defying William II. Following a siege that ended with Robert’s capture, Bamburgh became crown property, and was further developed. The mighty stone keep, oldest part of the extant fortifications, probably dates from the early reign of Henry II, who came to the throne in 1154. Over the next few centuries, a number of monarchs stayed in this key north-eastern base, including King John, Henry III and the first three Edwards. Read more | Reassessing Edward I: battle-hungry aggressor or dutiful conqueror? One less-willing guest was the Scots King David II, son of Robert Bruce, held as a wounded hostage after defeat at the battle of Neville’s Cross in 1346. Years of relative calm at Bamburgh came to an end in 1462, when the Wars of the Roses arrived at the castle gates. Then a Lancastrian stronghold supporting Henry VI, that December a Yorkist siege masterminded by Richard Neville, the ‘Kingmaker’ Earl of Warwick, forced the garrison to surrender. A brief respite followed but a second, much longer siege by Yorkists in 1464 ended with the castle largely in ruins – making Bamburgh the first British castle to be substantially damaged by artillery fire. Read more | Did the Tudors invent the Wars of the Roses? Who was the last king to hold Bamburgh Castle? Bamburgh, somewhat rebuilt, was granted to prominent local landowner Claudius Forster in 1609 by James VI and I, who – after the union of the crowns in 1603 – had no further need for a border fortress. Forster and his descendants didn’t have the money to maintain such a large property, which crumbled into ruins once more. In 1700, the last Forster heir, Dorothy, married the bishop of Durham, Lord Nathaniel Crewe – a man well over twice her age – who invested heavily in the restoration of the castle. That work continued after this death through a charitable trust in his name, directed by influential trustee Dr John Sharp. Much of Bamburgh village was rebuilt and its people supported through the foundation of a hospital, school and pharmacy within the citadel. On the podcast | The North: Brian Groom shares some notable moments in the history of northern England Who owns Bamburgh Castle today? Castles are expensive, though, and in 1894 the Lord Crewe Trustees were forced to sell Bamburgh for £60,000 to inventor and arms manufacturer William Armstrong. His renovation of the castle cost more than £1 million, and wasn’t completed until after his death in 1900. The result of his ambitious remodelling is a romantic melange of faux-Medieval fortress and grand Victorian mansion – a suitable home for a wealthy industrial magnate. Armstrong’s family live in the Grade I-listed Bamburgh Castle to this day – though it’s also open to visitors keen to discover the ancestral home of the legendary Uhtred of Bebbanburg. Five things to see at Bamburgh Castle The Great Hall In the 13th century King Henry III, one of successive monarchs who held Bamburgh, was keen to make it a more comfortable residence. He’s credited with installing glass windows and constructing a magnificent great hall. That original construction is long gone, but on the same site now stands a replacement matching William Armstrong’s vision of a grand medieval hall. Though lined with historic artefacts and artworks, the main draw of the Victorian Great Hall is the spectacular hammer-beam ceiling made with teak imported from Thailand. The keep The square stone tower, believed to have been built by Henry II in the decade after he took the throne in 1154, is the oldest surviving part of the Norman castle. With walls more than three metres thick, it stands on a platform of solid rock to prevent attackers from tunnelling into it from below. Today it houses the armoury, a collection of weapons including pikes, halberds, muskets, a composite 15th-century bow and a 17th-century Flemish crossbow. You can also explore the vaulted Keep Hall, where an Anglo-Saxon well was sunk over 40 metres into the rock. Read more | How to build a medieval castle: 9 top tips The archeology museum With a recorded history stretching back nearly 15 centuries, Bamburgh has been the focus of major archaeological study. Today, some of the fruits of various excavations in and around the castle can be admired in the Archaeology Museum. Highlights include the Bamburgh Beast, an ornately embossed gold brooch featuring a curious creature, and a rare pattern-welded iron sword from the seventh century. Together the artefacts highlight the importance of this site during the Anglo-Saxon period. The Armstrong and aviation artefacts museum William Armstrong, who bought Bamburgh Castle in 1894 and funded its restoration and redevelopment, was an industrialist and inventor who rose from lowly beginnings to make his fortune from hydraulic engineering then arms manufacturing. This museum in the castle’s West Ward explores his life and work, featuring not just artefacts and inventions from his own career but also a range of items relating to aviation during both World Wars. Read more | Who was the original king of the castle and who was the dirty rascal? The wards and grounds From a historical perspective, almost more fascinating than the surviving buildings are the echoes of the past to be found wandering outside. The Inner Ward, protected by battlements facing the sea, was likely the site of the earliest fortification. Remains of the 12th-century chapel remain at its eastern end, probably built over St Peter’s Chapel, where Saint Oswald’s arm was kept following his death in the seventh century. At the opposite end of the grounds, past the Keep in the Western Ward, stands St Oswald’s Gate – the medieval entrance to the fortress. And from the Battery Terrace, fortified with cannons in response to the threat of invasion by Napoleon’s forces, you can enjoy views across to the Farne Islands and holy Lindisfarne. More from us HistoryExtra members can explore this topic further with exclusive content from our archives Bernard Cornwell on writing historical fiction and his blockbuster series The Last Kingdom: your questions answered What is it like to be an historical consultant on a period drama? Not a HistoryExtra member? Explore our latest membership offers For more content like this, check out the best historical movies of all time as chosen by historians and ranked by you, history TV and film to stream tonight, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week
Seven Kings Must Die ending explained: what next for England?
The Netflix film wants to wrap a bow on both The Last Kingdom series and the establishment of England as a unified nation. But the real history tells us that the dream of England had only just begun. Plus: who were the real seven kings mentioned in the title?
After five seasons of The Last Kingdom and the finale film Seven Kings Must Die, the story of the formation of England through the eyes of Uhtred of Bebbanburg has drawn to close. But what can real history tell us about what happens next? Spoilers for Seven Kings Must Die follow. Not seen the film yet? Check our spoiler-free Seven Kings Must Die preview or our spoiler-heavy Seven Kings Must Die real history. Seven Kings Must Die ending explained: what happens next? The alliance of Scots, Vikings and Britons is shattered at the battle of Brunanburh, with the kings of Scotland, Strathclyde, Shetland, Orkney and Man all stumbling from the field as broken men, humbled by the loss of their heirs. Only Anlaf has any fight left in him, though his exaltations that the alliance can weather this defeat falls on deaf ears. Realising his cause is lost, he asks Constantine for a ship to take him back to Ireland. The King of Scots turns, silently, and walks away. Meanwhile in Bebbanburg, Uhtred pledges Northumbria to Æthelstan, who in turn names his lands ‘England’, making him King of the English. The dream of England seems secure, with Æthelstan – the film tells us in its closing moments – reigning for 15 years. That is how Seven Kings Must Die ends. But as far as the real history goes, the dream of England was anything but secure. Let’s start with Æthelstan’s reign: he did rule for 15 years, but in total; not 15 after the battle of Brunanburh in AD 937, which took place 13 years into his kingship. Nor did he assume the title of King of the English after the battle. He came to the throne as King of the Anglo-Saxons in AD 924 and adopted the mantle of King of English in AD 927, after he had seized York and coerced the kings of Wales, Scotland and Strathclyde to accept his overlordship. Read more | Why is it so difficult to find the battlefield of Brunanburh? Just two years after Brunanburh, in AD 939, Æthelstan died at Gloucester and was succeeded by his half-brother Edmund. The upheaval was sufficient enough for the real Anlaf to return from Ireland, install himself as King of York and spread his influence across the entirety of the Danelaw, which he held until his own death in AD 941. In an echo of Æthelstan’s own succession crisis with Ælfweard, ‘England’ was split once more in AD 955, following the deaths of King Edmund, in AD 946, and then his brother and successor King Eadred. As historian Ryan Lavelle notes, the new king Eadwig’s realm (ruled AD 955-59) shrank to “Wessex alone” in AD 957, when Mercia and Northumbria chose to support the claim of his brother, Edgar. Wessex and Mercia only again had different kings, if only briefly. It was only Eadwig’s early death in AD 959, Lavelle suggests, that meant this fracturing of the realms was “hardly noticed from afar”. Who are the seven kings in Seven Kings Must Die? Seven Kings Must Die revolves around its titular prophecy, breathed into life by Finan’s wife Ingrith: “Seven kings must die, lord, seven kings and the woman you love.” The ‘woman’ is Ingrith herself, but what about the kings? This should be straightforward, since seven kings are identified with numerals through the film. They are: Contantine II of Scotland Æthelstan of Wessex, Mercia and East Anglia Owain of Strathclyde Hywel of Wales An unnamed king of Orkney An unnamed king of Shetland An unnamed king of the Isle of Man Yet these cannot be the kings referred to in the prophecy: not one of them dies at the battle of Brunanburh or in its aftermath. For answers, we can look to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which has this to say of the clash: “Five young kings lay dead upon the battlefield, by swords sent to their final sleep; and likewise seven of Anlaf’s earls, and countless of his host.” Seven Kings Must Die plays with this by killing off the sons, or as Finan observes “five kings who will never be crowned”. The heirs of Scotland, Strathclyde, Orkney, Shetland and Man all fall in battle. Somehow the death of Astrid – daughter of Irish king Anlaf, who was felled by an arrow – doesn’t seem to count. That leaves two more: who were these kings who needed to die for the dream of England to live? In the film, it is suggested Edward the Elder could be one of them; could the other be his son Ælfweard? Though Seven Kings Must Die represents his claim to the throne as a minor rebellion, there are hints in medieval manuscripts that he may have been an uncrowned king of Wessex. Then there is Uhtred himself, who is more than once questioned about his desire to be King of Northumbria, as his ancestors were. Though there was no Uhtred, son of Uhtred in line of Northumbrian rulers during Æthelstan’s rule, there was an Ealdred in Northumbria. He was one of the lords who swore to Æthelstan at Eamont Bridge in AD 927, and in doing so added Northumbria to the kingdom of England. Does Uhtred die in Seven Kings Must Die? The clue might be in the golden light Uhtred sees spilling from an open doorway in the film’s denouement. Within comes the ring of laughing voices and the song of feasting, as warriors crowd around long tables chock-full with meat and ale. The presence of the warrior Steapa, Uhtred’s lover-turned-enemy Brida, and his second father Earl Ragnar the Fearless – all long dead – can mean only one thing: Uhtred is having a vision of Valhalla, the warrior afterlife of Norse mythology. Destiny is all, but at the death of the film Uhtred’s own destiny is left purposely ambiguous. What Seven Kings Must Die does make explicit is that Bebbanburg is a real place – better known as Bamburgh Castle – and that you can still visit today. Find out what to see, and how it got the name of Bebbanburg. Seven Kings Must Die is available to stream on Netflix now. For more content like this, check out our best historical TV series and films streaming now, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week Seven Kings Must Die: how close to real history is it? The Last Kingdom: what's the real history and how historically accurate is it? The real Uhtred of Bebbanburg: the historical inspirations for The Last Kingdom’s hero Bernard Cornwell on The Last Kingdom’s finale Tom Holland on the life of Æthelstan, 'King of the English' If King Alfred was great, was Æthelstan even greater? Ælfweard and Æthelstan: were they rivals for the throne of Wessex? Who was Edward the Elder? Brunanburh: the forgotten fight that changed British history Michael Wood on the astonishing Æthelstan
Seven Kings Must Die: the real history behind the Last Kingdom movie
Uhtred of Bebbanburg may not have really existed in Anglo-Saxon England, but there is plenty of real history in Seven Kings Must Die, the feature-length finale to The Last Kingdom
Seven Kings Must Die is the culmination of the story that began in The Last Kingdom, spanning decades of real history. At its core is the struggle between Saxons and Danes in the 9th-and 10th-century when England was not one nation, but a series of independent kingdoms variously overrun or ravaged by Vikings. What started as a simple revenge story – that of the dispossessed Uhtred of Bebbanburg reclaiming his ancestral home from an usurping uncle – swiftly became a history-adjacent Vikings versus Anglo-Saxons epic. Among the hero’s travels and deeds across five seasons, he found himself in the Kingdom of Wessex, where he encountered Alfred the Great, dreaming of creating a single nation – something that wouldn't be achieved until the reign of his grandson, Æthelstan. This final chapter is the story that Seven Kings Must Die tells. Spoilers for Seven Kings Must Die follow. Not seen the film yet? Check our Seven Kings Must Die preview for spoiler-free hints about what real history can tell us and find out about the history of Bamburg Castle, the real Bebbanburg. The Vikings | A short course from HistoryExtra Academy Member exclusive | Join Professor Ryan Lavelle for our four-week course on the Viking period, covering everything from trading and raiding, to daily life. Explore the course now When is Seven Kings Must Die set? The film begins in AD 924, with the death of Edward the Elder. The ensuing instability sets events in motion, creating both a succession crisis within the kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia, and precipitating the formation of an alliance between Scots, Vikings and Britons to challenge Saxon dominance over the British Isles. For Uhtred, last seen contented as lord of Bebbanburg at the end of season 5, that means he must pick sides once more. Read more | What’s happened in The Last Kingdom so far? Catch up with our series recap and breakdown of the real history Why is the film called Seven Kings Must Die? The film’s title is an allusion to a prophecy that comes to dominate the minds of the Uhtred and his men in the wake of Edward’s death. Readers of Bernard Cornwell’s book series may remember that those words have already appeared in print – in book six, Death of Kings. When Uhtred meets with the witch Aelfadell, she delivers this chilling portent: “Seven kings will die, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, seven kings and the women you love. That is your fate. And Alfred’s son will not rule and Wessex will die and the Saxon will kill what he loves and the Danes will gain everything, and all will change and all will be the same as ever it was and ever will be.” In the film, it falls to Finan’s wife Ingrith to deliver a much briefer version: “Seven kings must die, lord, seven kings and the woman you love.” Read more | Seven Kings Must Die ending explained: who are the seven kings and what happens next? Seven Kings Must Die plot: what is the real history? The major event that kicks off Seven Kings Must Die is the death of Edward the Elder, which puts us in AD 924 – this is the year Edward is known to have died, while putting down a rebellion in Mercia. We quickly discover the intrigues surrounding Ælfweard’s claim to the throne (a major arc in season 5) has not abated. With Edward dead and Æthelstan away from court, his half-brother is raising men to take what he sees as his birth right by force. Under threat on imprisonment, Edward’s widow’s Eadgifu and her son Edmund (half-brother to both Æthelstan and Ælfwaerd) seek refuge with Uhtred at Bebbanburg. He hatches a plot to seize Ælfweard before all the scheming ruptures in open warfare, prompting protestations from Eadgifu that perhaps Uhtred is a bit old for the task. How old is Uhtred of Bebbanburg in Seven Kings Must Die? It is a fair point. Actor Alexander Dreymon has played the role of Uhtred for the best part of a decade now, but he certainly has not been aging at the same rate as his character should have been. The first season of The Last Kingdom begins nearly 60 years before the events of Seven Kings Must Die, opening as it does in AD 866, the year that Vikings first seized control of York. If the characters were to age in tandem with historical events, then the lord of Bebbanburg should be around 80 years old by the film’s conclusion. Could an octogenarian Uhtred have even stood in a shield wall? “I doubt it,” author Bernard Cornwell told us in this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast. “But as somebody reminded me before I wrote the book, Beowulf must be very close to that age when he finally fights the dragon. The Saxons had older heroes.” Uhtred’s increasing decrepitude aside, he manages to convince Aelfweard to surrender without bloodshed – only for Æthelstan to murder his supplicant half-brother and massacre his followers. It seems unlikely there a succession war in real history, seeing as the historical Aelfweard perished just 16 days after his father. What is notable, points out Ryan Lavelle, historical consultant for Seven Kings, is that Ælfweard was buried alongside Edward the Elder, and was “crowned with kingly badges”. Could Aelfweard have been an unanointed king? “It is possible that Ælfweard, the second son, was seen by Edward as his successor in Wessex, despite the fact that Wessex was the kingdom of his father and his paternal line,” says Lavelle, noting that only Mercia may have been destined for Æthelstan. “Perhaps in the days after Edward’s death in the summer of AD 924, the two sons were planning to come to some sort of agreement, but fate intervened.” Was Æthelstan a tyrant? ‘Tyrant’ is the charge levied by Uhtred in the wake of Æthelstan’s heartless dispatching of Aelfweard, and it is just the first of the young king’s apparent transgressions. Æthelstan is shown to have demanded monetary tributes and fealty from lesser kings (in the case of Hywel Dda of Wales, secured by taking his son hostage). Off-screen, Æthelstan seizes York, the city that we’re told held Uhtred as their rightful lord. As the film progresses, we see him burning villages in the Scottish Lowlands, severing the truce made by his father. Later, he exiles Uhtred for a perceived act of treachery. Certainly, some of these events happened: in AD 927, Æthelstan did conquer York, though it was held by Viking warriors rather than an erstwhile friend. That same year he summoned the lesser kings of the British Isles to a grand assembly at Eamont Bridge, near Penrith, and forced them to submit to him. He also invaded Scotland in AD 934, though it seems the Scots were the first to break that peace. “He did claim on his coins and in his charters to be Rex totius Britanniae, the King of All Britain. In reality, he is only king of the English south of the Humber,” says Æthelstan biographer Michael Wood. “He is overlord of everywhere else, and he only maintains his overlordship by force.” Being ruler of all Britain, Wood notes, was as such an imperialist project. “You have to pay him tribute. You have to come down to the south and attend his court on the big festivals and give your allegiance to him. You have to give your son his hostage if you've done anything wrong. It's the coercive arrangements of an overlord.” Æthelstan’s actions in Seven Kings are explained in a much simpler way: in the film, he is manipulated by his advisor, Ingilmundr. Watch | Michael Wood on the West Saxon king Æthelstan Who is Ingilmundr? “Born a Dane and a raised a Saxon,” Ingilmundr quips to Uhtred, a clumsily presented foil both to our hero and his motivations: where Uhtred seeks to unite the peoples of Britain, Ingilmundr is working to sow discord. He appears to be loosely based a real Viking warlord of the same name, who appears in the historical record in the early 10th century and, like his Seven Kings counterpart, was the leader of a settlement in the Wirral. But there’s no indication that Ingilmundr and Æthelstan ever met; he may even have died before Æthelstan was born, as there is some speculation that Ingilmundr is the same person as ‘Agmund’ in the Anglo-Saxon­ Chronicle, who was slain during the battle of Tettenhall in AD 910/11. Where do the seven kings fit in? Simmering in the shadows amidst these domestic dramas is the threat of the ‘wolf warriors’ led by Viking king Anlaf, and it is on his behalf that Ingilmundr schemes. Anlaf is a real historical figure, a Viking king of Dublin also known as Olaf Guthfrithson. He was believed to be a member of the Uí Ímair, a dynasty that ruled much of the Irish sea region and was theorised to be descended from Ivar the Boneless. In Seven Kings, Anlaf uses Æthelstan’s aggression (all spurred on by Ingilmundr) as a pretext to unite kings Constantine II of Scotland, Owain of Strathclyde (also known in real history as Owain ap Dyfnwal) and three unnamed rulers of Shetland, Orkney and Man into an alliance against the Saxons. He even tries to tempt Uhtred to join them as ‘King of Northumbria’. As in the film, the historical Æthelstan appears to have been late to realise the scale of the alliance ranged against him ahead of the battle of Brunanburh in AD 937, the climatic clash between his army and this coalition of Norse-Irish, Scots and Strathclyde Welsh. “Æthelstan had acted at first as though frozen by the sheer horror of it,” writes historian Tom Holland. “As harvests in the north of his kingdom were put to the torch and peasants fled before the onslaught, so the Rex totius Britanniae had seemed to shrink from acting.” What really happened at the battle of Brunanburh? Quite how the real Æthelstan prevailed when he met Anlaf’s armies at the battle of Brunanburh is lost to time, though the Annals of Ulster record that the battle was “immense, lamentable and horrible, desperately fought”. We’re not even sure where the fighting took place; the battlefield has been lost. Seven Kings Must Die chooses to place it in the Wirral, one of frontrunners in more than 30 sites that have been suggested, at a place called Bromborough – which has the same name, ‘Bruna’s fort’. Read more | Brunanburh: Where did the battle that saved England take place? Why didn’t Æthelstan marry? When, in the Seven Kings’ final scenes, Uhtred cedes his lands to Æthelstan, it is on the condition that the king promises never to marry, allowing his half-brother Edmund to succeed unchallenged (which is exactly what happens in real history just two years later, in AD 939). It’s a way of rationalising another narrative decision for which there is no historical basis, but explains how Ingilmundr is able to manipulate Æthelstan through his faith: Aethelstan is portrayed as a homosexual man, with Ingilmundr as his lover. The reason why Æthelstan never married is something we can only guess at. As historian Sarah Foot writes in her Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry of Æthelstan, the king had four brothers and may have worried over his own succession, or was perhaps influenced by his own faith or the rumours of his illegitimacy. Certainly, as Michael Wood notes, Æthelstan’s accession to his father’s thrones had not been smooth, even facing “opposition within the royal house”. This speaks to a wider issue: there is a lack of narrative sources for Æthelstan’s reign. “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle offers the sketchiest narrative of events in his reign,” writes Foot in a piece examining how Æthelstan measures up to Alfred the Great. “There is no surviving biography, nor any writing attributed to his own authorship. Creating a picture of him as a man, as well as a royal figurehead, involves piecing together information from a disparate range of sources – and a good deal of imaginative licence.” Seven Kings Must Die is available to stream on Netflix. For more content like this, check out the best historical movies of all time as chosen by historians and ranked by you, history TV and film to stream tonight, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week Seven Kings Must Die ending explained: who are the seven kings? The Last Kingdom: what's the real history and how historically accurate is it? The real Uhtred of Bebbanburg: the historical inspirations for The Last Kingdom’s hero Bernard Cornwell on The Last Kingdom’s finale Tom Holland on the life of Æthelstan, 'King of the English' If King Alfred was great, was Æthelstan even greater? Ælfweard and Æthelstan: were they rivals for the throne of Wessex? Who was Edward the Elder? Brunanburh: the forgotten fight that changed British history Michael Wood on the astonishing Æthelstan
Seven Kings Must Die: what to expect from The Last Kingdom movie
When will the film sequel to The Last Kingdom series be released, and what do Bernard Cornwell’s books (and actual history) tell us about what to expect from Uhtred of Bebbanburg, Aethelstan and the future of Anglo-Saxon England? Spoilers for season 5 of The Last Kingdom
Everything seemed golden for Uhtred, son of Uhtred at the end of season 5 of the The Last Kingdom. No longer is he Uhtred of Bebbanburg in name only, but lord of what we now call Bamburgh Castle in his own right. Moreover, he is at peace. For all his oaths and all the questionable places they have taken him throughout the popular Netflix historical series, he is now content in his ancestral home, acting as a barrier between King Constantine II of Scotland and Edward the Elder of Wessex and Mercia. And yet there are dark clouds on the horizon, which forms the basis of Netflix’s follow up film, Seven Kings Must Die. The synopsis promises more bloodshed: “Following the death of King Edward, a battle for the crown ensues, as rival heirs and invaders compete for power. And when an alliance comes seeking Uhtred’s help in their plans, Uhtred faces a choice between those he cares for most, and the dream of forming a united England.” Read more | Catch up on what's happened and the real history of all five seasons of The Last Kingdom What is the plot of Seven Kings Must Die? Season 5 of The Last Kingdom took Uhtred’s story up to the end of The Flame Bearer, the tenth book in Bernard Cornwell’s epic saga, which culminates in Uhtred finally reclaiming his ancestral home of Bebbanburg. That leaves three books left for adaptation: War of the Wolf, Sword of Kings and War Lord. With Edward dead, it is likely we will see a succession crisis between Aethelstan and his half-brother Aelfweard, grandson of Wessex noble and season 5 antagonist Aethelhelm. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast at the time of War Lord’s release in 2020, Cornwell told us exactly how his books would end: with one of the lynchpin clashes in all of British history, the battle of Brunanburh in AD 937. “The battle marked the beginning of England, so obviously had to be included in the series,” Cornwell told us. This was the battle that made the ‘dream of England’ pursued by Alfred the Great a reality. It is where Aethelstan defeats a combined army of Vikings and Britons, claiming Northumbria and becoming the first ‘King of the English’. Listen | Hear more of this conversation on the HistoryExtra podcast The Last Kingdom’s Aethelstan has shown glimmers of becoming that warrior king, besting Uhtred in a one-on-one sparring match in an understated moment towards the end of the last season. From the look of the trailer for Seven Kings Must Die, there are more confrontations to come between the two men. View oEmbed on the source website Who are the seven kings in Seven Kings Must Die? If you’re wondering if the phrase “seven kings must die” has the ring of prophecy to it, you’d be right. One of more intriguing things about the film’s title is that, though it has not been mentioned in the show, the seven kings are mentioned in a prophecy as early as book six in Cornwell’s novels. In Death of Kings, Uhtred seeks out the witch – some might say seer – Aelfadell, whose utterings include this portent: “Seven kings will die, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, seven kings and the women you love. That is your fate. And Alfred’s son will not rule and Wessex will die and the Saxon will kill what he loves and the Danes will gain everything, and all will change and all will be the same as ever it was and ever will be.” What does it mean? One way of looking at it is that for there to be an England, there can only be one king, which means one kingdom. There’s a plausible allusion here to the ultimate demise of the ‘Heptarchy’ of seven Anglo-Saxon petty kingdoms that existed from the fifth to eighth centuries. They were Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia, Northumbria, Essex, Sussex and Kent. By the time The Last Kingdom begins, the latter three had already vanished having been absorbed into the other four. And at the point that Seven Kings Must Die picks up, Northumbria remains as the only kingdom not in Aethelstan’s grasp. Most likely, the film’s title signposts that the we’re heading in the same direction as the books: to Brunanburh. Video Q&A | Who was Æthelstan? Historian Micheal Wood considers his greatest achievements Were there seven kings at the battle of Brunanburh? According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, “Five young kings lay dead upon the battlefield, by swords sent to their final sleep; and likewise seven of Anlaf’s earls, and countless of his host.” The five are not identified, though the Anlaf of the Chronicle is Olaf Guthfrithson, King of Dublin and the architect of the anti-Saxon alliance. Brunanburh is recorded in the Annals of Ulster as “immense, lamentable and horrible, savagely fought”, and decades later would still be referred to as the ‘great battle’ – even though by that time all knowledge of where it was fought had been lost. Read more | Where is the lost battlefield of Brunanburh? Olaf is known to have fought alongside kings Owain of Strathclyde and Constantine II of Scotland. Yet both Olaf and Constantine are known to have survived the clash. Who then are the five, and what of the other two? Only one thing seems certain: in keeping with the prophecy, if a unified England is to exist, Wessex itself needs to die. What role Uhtred will play in the machinations of Anglo-Saxon England, we will have to wait and see. The Last Kingdom: everything you need to know Catch-up on all five seasons of The Last Kingdom and explore the real history that underpins the fictional adventures of Uhtred, son of Uhtred | Read more Seven Kings Must Die is available to stream on Netflix. For more content like this, check out the best historical movies of all time as chosen by historians and ranked by you, history TV and film to stream tonight, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week
The real Uhtred of Bebbanburg: the historical inspirations for The Last Kingdom’s hero
The Last Kingdom draws a great deal from history, but is the character of Uhtred of Bebbanburg among them? The formidable warrior of the TV series may be a fiction but, writes Professor Ryan Lavelle, he has parallels in real history – not least an 11th-century ealdorman named Uhtred, who fought the Vikings and married the daughter of King Æthelred II…
Uhtred of Bebbanburg, the hero of Netflix’s The Last Kingdom and it's fimale film Seven Kings Must Die (not to mention Bernard Cornwell’s novels of the same name) is a fierce and cunning warrior. Born a Saxon and raised a Dane, “Uhtred, son of Uhtred” (so the show calls him) is a man of conflicting loyalties, bound by the many (often inadvisable) oaths he makes, and driven by a desire to regain his lost birth right – the Northumbrian coastal fortress of Bebbanburg. It’s a real place: today we know Bebbanburg better by its medieval name, Bamburgh Castle. Seven Kings Must Die: everything you need to know Catch-up on real history that underpins the fictional adventures of Uhtred, son of Uhtred Plus, who are the seven kings? Find out and learn what's next in store for Anglo-Saxon in our explainer of Seven Kings Must Die's ending Uhtred’s adventures in The Last Kingdom are set against the great events of the Viking Age. Through him, we’ve witnessed the bloody activities of the 9th-century Great Heathen Army, the defence of the kingdom of Wessex under Alfred the Great (who reigned from AD 871 to AD 899), and the political turbulence in the different kingdoms across England following Alfred’s death. We’ve seen the ascension of Edward the Elder in Wessex, the triumphs of Æthelflæd in Mercia, the failed rebellion of Alfred’s nephew, Æthelwold, and now, in Seven Kings Must Die, the rise of the man to fulfil Alfred's dream of England, Æthelstan Read more | Who were the key players in the struggle to succeed Alfred the Great? Though this fictional Uhtred moves deftly throughout these events, even in exile from Bebbanburg he remains linked to the great fortress, to Northumbria at large, and to the Vikings who settled in northern England. His interests sometimes lie with Wessex and Mercia, but Uhtred’s loyalties remain conflicted throughout the series, and it is often in these conflicts, including within Uhtred himself, that the heart of the drama lies. Is Uhtred of Bebbanburg real? Sadly, there is no ‘Uhtred, son of Uhtred’ amongst the Northumbrian royalty or nobility in the early Middle Ages, but there was more than one Uhtred associated with Bamburgh who was important enough to be remembered in historical records. One was the son of a certain Eadwulf, Lord of Bamburgh; this Uhtred was simply named in passing in an episode recorded in a Northumbrian work known as the History of St Cuthbert. Read more | The real Aelfwynn of Mercia Intriguingly, he was referred to as the brother of a figure who was a ‘favourite’ of King Edward the Elder of Wessex (Alfred the Great’s son), who ruled from AD 899 to AD 924). This is not a million miles away from the events in The Last Kingdom, then, even if the fictional Uhtred probably would have edged away from being described as favoured by the southern king. Read more | Bamburgh Castle: The real Bebbanburg of The Last Kingdom The second historical Uhtred, again linked with Bamburgh, is far more prominent in a range of sources: he was active during the Viking Age and his reputation suggests that he was held in high regard, at least in parts of Northumbria. This Uhtred was not a contemporary of Alfred the Great and his descendants in the 9th and 10th centuries, but can be found in the early 11th century. Read more | Aethelflaed: who was the warrior queen who crushed the Vikings? This was a time when the realisation of Alfred’s dream of a united England was threatening to unravel during the tribulations of the Viking attacks under the rule (some would say the misrule) of Æthelred the Unready (who reigned from AD 978 until 1013, and then again from 1014 to 1016). With little guarantee of the loyalty of lords to their king and defences quickly crumbling in the face of massive Viking onslaughts, it is little wonder that individual successes could capture the imagination of contemporaries. What did the real Uhtred do? The real Uhtred of the 11th century is a fascinating figure. Manuscripts from the period show the name ‘Uhtred’ in the lists of witnesses to the charters of King Æthelred, the earliest of these being from 1009, recorded as a dux. Dux was a Latin word for someone with the regional governor office of ealdorman or, in Uhtred’s case, the title of earl (from the Scandinavian jarl). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/04/Alexander-Dreymon-as-Uhtred-in-season-4-of-The-Last-Kingdom-b3f1bee.jpg" width="800" height="530" alt="Alexander Dreymon as Uhtred in season 4 of 'The Last Kingdom'" title="Alexander Dreymon as Uhtred in season 4 of 'The Last Kingdom'. In season 4 Uhtred realises now might be the time to challenge his uncle Aelfric for his birthright, the lordship of Bebbanburg in Northumbria. (Photographer Joe Alblas | Copyright Carnival Film & Television Limited)" /> As charters recorded those who came to the royal courts of the period, forming the ‘witan’ of the advisors of the king, this Uhtred was evidently a prominent person within the English kingdom – so prominent, indeed, that in the last years of his reign, King Æthelred gave him the hand of his daughter, Ælfgifu, in marriage. Read more | Æthelred II and the St Brice’s Day Massacre There is evidence of Earl Uhtred as a man of action. It exists in a description of a defence of the city-fortress of Durham against attacking Scots that probably took place in 1006, when Uhtred’s father (whose name was Waltheof, not Uhtred), remained in Bamburgh. When that battle was over, a particularly lurid source relates that Uhtred had the heads of the dead Scots displayed on poles around the walls of the city. Though the account was written down some years after the battle occurred, such macabre displays of victory weren’t uncommon in early medieval warfare, and the episode could have reflected Uhtred’s new authority in the wake of a successful defence. What was Uhtred’s relationship with Northumbria? Uhtred probably earned recognition as the earl of the Northumbrians at this point, even though his father was still alive for a short time afterwards. Earl Uhtred’s lordship seemingly extended from the northern realm dominated by Bamburgh to the whole Northumbrian region – probably also including the former Viking kingdom of York, which formed the southern part of Northumbria. More like this | Vikings: Valhalla – the real history behind Netflix’s successor to Vikings Despite being at the heart of the ‘Land of the English’, made famous as early as the 8th century by the ecclesiastical historian Bede, there was no guarantee that Northumbria would end up as part of the English kingdom that emerged in the early 10th century. But there is evidence of Anglo-Scottish hostilities, and the evidence of Uhtred’s marriage to Æthelred’s daughter suggests that under Uhtred, Northumbria was moving towards the orbit of an English kingdom. Many Viking attacks on England at this time were visited upon the south, so it is likely that Uhtred’s activities were mainly focused upon countering Scottish pressure in the north of England. This may even have included leading a force against the Scots at Carham on the River Tweed in 1018, two years after the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports Uhtred’s death: historians disagree over which account to believe (in fact both might be correct), but less contentious is the suggestion that Uhtred’s dominance of York helped to maintain its place within an English kingdom at a time of great political stress. Listen | Bernard Cornwell talks about the final novel in his The Last Kingdom series on the HistoryExtra podcast How does Uhtred of Bebbanburg die? There is an air of pragmatism to Uhtred’s actions during the final years of Æthelred’s first period of rule. He is recorded by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as submitting to Danish king Sweyn Forkbeard in 1013, along with “all the Northumbrians” and the inhabitants of Lincolnshire. It was this event that led to Sweyn’s brief kingship of England and Æthelred’s exile to Normandy. Like the fictional Uhtred of The Last Kingdom, the historical Uhtred’s position was determined by the need to balance out different interests in the face of changing political circumstances. Sweyn’s rule did not last – he died in early 1014 – and Æthelred returned as king, but a political balancing act came into play again. This time, Uhtred joined forces with Æthelred’s son, Edmund Ironside, attacking areas around the West Midlands as a way of countering the notorious ealdorman Eadric Streona, who had sided with another Danish invader, Cnut (Sweyn Forkbeard’s son). Read more | Cnut’s invasion of England: setting the scene for the Norman conquest Cnut responded by ravaging Uhtred’s Northumbrian lands, forcing Uhtred to come to a truce, in which hostages were handed over. Whether Uhtred’s historical death came at the orders of Cnut shortly afterwards, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has it, or some years later in the aftermath of the battle of Carham, there can be no doubt that one tradition of Uhtred’s death was straight out of the world of Norse saga. As Uhtred came into Cnut’s presence under cover of a truce, the Danish king’s soldiers were hidden behind a curtain. Stepping out, they ambushed the Uhtred, slaughtering him, along with 40 of his men. The 12th-century tract De Obsessione Dunelmi appoints this act not to Cnut directly, but through “a powerful king's thegn named Thurbrand, known as Hold”. Read more | Does Uhtred die in Seven Kings Must Die Who did Bernard Cornwell base Uhtred of Bebbanburg on? There are clear parallels in the figure of a Northumbrian warrior, drawn into the various politics of different parts of Viking Age England. Bernard Cornwell, the historical novelist behind The Last Kingdom books, has never claimed his Uhtred to be anything other than a work of fiction, but there remains a personal note that sounds across a millennium. When he first turned his hand to the Viking Age in The Last Kingdom, first published in 2004, Cornwell’s imagination was fired by the discovery the family name of his biological father, Oughtred, and the links that this gave him to Northumbria. Cornwell may not be able to lay claim to a lost birth right in the form of Bebbanburg, but his sense of personal connections adds to a story that resounds through the ages. More from us HistoryExtra members can explore this topic further with exclusive content from our archives Bernard Cornwell on writing historical fiction and his blockbuster series The Last Kingdom: your questions answered What is it like to be an historical consultant on a period drama? Not a HistoryExtra member? Explore our latest membership offers Seven Kings Must Die is available to stream on Netflix. For more content like this, check out the best historical movies of all time as chosen by historians and ranked by you, history TV and film to stream tonight, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week
The Last Kingdom: real history and historical accuracy
The Last Kingdom, based on the novels of Bernard Cornwell, re-tells the history of King Alfred the Great and his desire to unite the many separate kingdoms into what would become England. Here, we recap the real history behind the show...
When is The Last Kingdom set? It is the story of the struggle between Saxons and Danes in 9th-and 10th-century England, when England was not one nation but a series of independent kingdoms variously overrun or ravaged by Danes. The era of Lindisfarne and raiders from the sea is long past – by this point in history, the Vikings in Britain are settlers, lords and kings. A follow up film, Seven Kings Must Die, releases on Netflix on 14 April. The Last Kingdom summary: what's the story? The Last Kingdom season 5 plot The Last Kingdom season 5: the real history The Last Kingdom season 1: recap and real history The Last Kingdom season 2: recap and real history The Last Kingdom season 3: recap and real history The Last Kingdom season 4: recap and real history The Last Kingdom summary: what's the story? This tale plays out from the perspective of Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a man born a Saxon and raised a Dane, grappling with his persistently split loyalties between his oaths (of which he makes many), his conflicting cultural identities, and his quest for retribution. What starts out as a tale of straightforward revenge – reclaiming his ancestral home in Northumbria from his usurping uncle and avenging the murder of his adoptive Viking father – rapidly extends into a history-adjacent Vikings versus Anglo-Saxons epic, as Uhtred finds himself in the Kingdom of Wessex, where Alfred the Great has dreams of expelling the northmen from all the realms of 'England' and creating a single nation, something that wouldn't be achieved until the reign of his grandson. The show is based on the Saxon Stories novels of Bernard Cornwell (now renamed as the The Last Kingdom series owing to the show’s success). The final, 13th – War Lord – was published in October 2020. View oEmbed on the source website How many seasons of The Last Kingdom are there? There are five seasons of The Last Kingdom, all of which are now available to stream on Netflix, but this is not the end for Uhtred, son of a Uhtred. A concluding feature film, Seven Kings Must Die, releases on Netflix on 14 April. The Last Kingdom books – in order There are 13 novels in Bernard Cornwell's Last Kingdom series. They are: The Last Kingdom (2004) The Pale Horseman (2005) The Lords of the North (2006) Sword Song (2007) The Burning Land (2009) Death of Kings (2011) The Pagan Lord (2013) The Empty Throne (2014) Warriors of the Storm (2015) The Flame Bearer (2016) War of the Wolf (2018) Sword of Kings (2019) War Lord (October 2020) Buy the Last Kingdom books on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org The Last Kingdom season 5 plot **This section contains major spoilers** Season 5 of The Last Kingdom begins several years after the end of season 4, with the intervening years ones of relative peace. Edward the Elder still sits upon the throne of Wessex, Æthelflæd still rules as the Lady of Mercia. Of Uhtred’s nemesis Brida, there have been only whispers. More like this | Vikings: Valhalla – the real history behind Netflix’s successor to Vikings Right now, it’s Æthelflæd who holds Uhtred’s oath (not to mention his heart). He’s carved out a life for himself on protecting Mercia’s northern border, where he has raised Edward’s supposedly illegitimate first-born son Æthelstan into a capable warrior. The peace unravels swiftly. In a completely fictional arc, Brida returns from an exile in Iceland to ‘save’ the Danes living in York, with a side mission to end Uhtred’s bloodline. Æthelflæd is dying, and is moving quietly to ensure that her daughter Ælfwynn, succeeds her as the Lady of Mercia. Meanwhile in Wessex, the divisions between Edward and his queen, Ælflead, seem deeper than ever. Their son Ælfweard is also now a man grown, but Edward refuses to name him as the heir – something that greatly vexes Ælfweard, Queen Ælflaed and her father, the overmighty ealdorman Æthelhelm. And in Wessex, the divisions between Edward and his queen, Ælflead, seem deeper than ever. Their son Ælfweard is also now a man grown, but Edward refuses to name him as the heir – something that greatly vexes Ælfweard, Queen Ælflaed and her father, the overmighty ealdorman Æthelhelm. As if to widen the rift, Edward openly pursues a relationship with Eadgifu – the daughter of a Kentish noble who, in both The Last Kingdom and in real history, is bound to become his next queen. In the power struggles that follow, we see the ugly side of the Mercian succession, a shift in power in Viking York, the conclusion of Uhtred and Brida’s bloodfeud, and a scheme to unseat Edward from the throne of Wessex. Inevitably, all roads lead to where the series began: the Northumberland fortress of Bebbanburg, where Uhtred will finally face down his usurping cousin Whitgar. The Last Kingdom season 5: the real history Discover the real history that underpins season 5 of The Last Kingdom Uhtred wasn't real, but there was a real Uhtred Uhtred of Bebbanburg as depicted in The Last Kingdom is not real – and if he were, by this point in the books he would be around 60 years old. But while there is no recorded line of 'Uhtred, son of Uhtred' in real history, there are some historical parallels – not least an ealdorman named Uhtred, who fought the Vikings and married the daughter of King Æthelred II. "He was active during the Viking Age and his reputation suggests that he was held in high regard, at least in parts of Northumbria," writes Professor Ryan Lavelle. Though he didn't when we might expect: "This Uhtred was not a contemporary of Alfred the Great and his descendants in the 9th and 10th centuries, but can be found in the early 11th century," Lavelle adds. Read more | The Real Uhtred of Bebbanburg The real Ælfwynn succeeded Æthelflæd as Lady of Mercia – briefly Æthelflæd’s death and the question of the Mercian succession is one of the major crises of this season, and though the outcome in both the show and real history are the same, the journey there is quite different. After Æthelflæd’s real-life death (“possibly of dysentery”, notes Janina Ramirez), her final wish was that her daughter Ælfwynn take her place as Lady of Mercia. This is also Æthelflæd’s wish in The Last Kingdom, but it is not to be. First Æthelhelm bribes the region’s ealdormen [high-ranking nobles] to name his grandson Ælfweard as Æthelflæd’s successor – only for Edward the Elder to have the ealdormen murdered in the street and claim Mercia for himself. But it seems the real Ælfwynn did rule, briefly: for either six or 18 months, depending on different interpretations of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. "It is difficult to overstate how unusual Ælfwynn’s succession was'" writes Alex Burghart. "In any era, for one woman to succeed another is rare but in the early medieval period it was completely unheard of." After this period, Edward did indeed march north to claim Mercia as his own, though there is no evidence for any of the nefarious machinations depicted in The Last Kingdom. Read more | The real Aelfwynn of Mercia Ælfwynn vanishes from history after losing Mercia Ælfwynn is something a MacGuffin in season 5 of The Last Kingdom: never taking power in Mercia, she is spirited way for her safety after Edward claims her crown. Read more | Why is Edward of Wessex called Edward the Elder? But she doesn’t stay safe for long – too many believe that she is the key to a kingdom – and she ends up imprisoned in Bebbanburg, waiting to be married off to the king of Scotland. It is this revelation that drives the final battle to reclaim Uhtred’s home. It’s also a convenient fiction. There’s no record of what prompted Edward to depose Ælfwynn in Mercia, just as there is no record of any opposition to her removal from power. It is known that Ælfwynn was conveyed into Wessex, but after that nothing can be said of her life with certainty. Constantine of Scotland did invade Northumbria – but he didn’t fight Edward of Wessex In season 5, Æthelhelm’s scheming culminates in a plot to foment rebellion, unseat Edward the Elder and install his grandson Ælfweard as king of Wessex and Mercia. For this he turns to King Constantine II of Scotland, setting off a chain of events that ends with battle at Bebbanburg. Though the circumstances are a fiction, Constantine II of Scotland did wage war in Northumbria in 918, the same year that Æthelflæd died, and when season 5 of The Last Kingdom is set. But it was not a fight against Edward of Wessex, the future king Æthelstan or even the Saxons. At the battle of Corbridge – which is some miles south of Bebbanburg – Constantine took to the field against the Viking warrior Ragnall ua Ímair, who had recently arrived from Ireland and claimed Northumbria as his own. For this reason, Constantine had unlikely ally – Eadred (sometimes rendered as Uhtred) of Bamburgh, one of the possible real-life counterparts to Bernard Cornwell’s hero. The battle was indecisive, though a strategic victory for the Vikings: Constantine retreated to Scotland, and Ragnall was able to claim York, where he was crowned king of Northumbria. Rögnvaldr was a real Viking – and a formidable one Rögnvaldr was the name of a real Viking warrior, though he was not considered to be Sigtryggr’s brother as portrayed in The Last Kingdom. He is loosely based on Ragnall ua Ímair, who was king of Northumbria and the Isle of Man in the early 10th century. Whereas Rögnvaldr is portrayed as treacherous and inept, Ragnall seems a more formidable character. What they share is that they end up rulers of York. In The Last Kingdom, Rögnvaldr receives his lordship from Edward the Elder, who remains his overlord. Rögnvaldr’s ultimate fate in the show is unknown. Ragnall claimed York after a strategic victory over King Constantine II of Scotland at Corbridge in Northumbria, though he wasn’t welcomed with open arms. As he was still a pagan, he faced resistance from the Danes of York who had already converted to Christianity (something that would become increasingly common through the Viking world). It would have been during Ragnall’s reign that the Danes of York offered Æthelflæd their submission. “Securing the fealty of the Danes of York would have been Æthelflæd’s ultimate achievement,” writes Janina Ramirez. It wasn’t to be, as the real Æthelflæd died before that promise could be made into reality. Around AD 920, Ragnall is believed to have reached some form of agreement with Edward the Elder, though it’s not clear if that extended to accepting overlordship. Ragnall died in AD 920 or 921. Rögnvaldr and Sigtryggr weren’t brothers The real Vikings on which Sigtryggr and Rögnvaldr are based – Sitric Cáech and Ragnall – are not considered to be brothers, but they may have been kin. Both are believed to belong to the Uí Ímair, a dynasty that ruled much of the Irish sea region which is theorised to be descended from Ivar the Boneless, himself believed to be one of the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok. In a reversal of what is portrayed in The Last Kingdom, it was Sitric Cáech who succeeds Ragnall as ruler of York, arriving from Ireland in AD 921. There’s no evidence for Æthelhelm’s rebellion All we know of Æthelhelm is that he was an ealdorman, possibly of Wiltshire. Ælfweard might have become king eventually Ælfweard was born c902 to Edward the Elder and Ælflaed, but we know little about his life, beyond that he died just 16 days after his father in AD 924. In The Last Kingdom, his grandfather Æthelhelm is devoted to making sure Ælfweard become king of Wessex. It’s to that end that he creates a war between Christian and Danes, and then, when that is not enough, between the Saxons and the Scots. Intriguingly, the real Ælfweard could have become king of Wessex – though he is not widely considered as such. The scant evidence comes in the form of a 12th-century manuscript called the Textus Roffensis, which includes Ælfweard in its list of West Saxon kings. Edward’s marriage to Eadgifu produced a future king Eadgifu was Edward the Elder’s third wife, after Ecgwynn (who gave birth to Ælthelstan) and Ælflaed (who gave birth to Ælfweard). By the end of season 5 they have an infant son, Edmund – who would become king of the English after Ælthelstan’s death in AD 939. The Last Kingdom season 1 recap and real history The Last Kingdom begins in 866, the year that Vikings first seized control of York. Uhtred is a child and heir to Bebbanburg (Bamburgh) in Northumbria. When the Vikings arrive, his father, Lord Uhtred, rides out to give battle and is predictably slain; the boy Uhtred is captured. Uhtred's uncle Aelfric hopes to ransom the boy back and quietly murder him so that he can claim the lordship of Bebbanburg for himself unimpeded, but that plan is scuppered when Danish jarl Ragnar the Fearless takes a liking to the lad and ultimately takes him back to Denmark along with a Saxon girl, Brida. Fast forward several years: Uhtred is now a young man, fully immersed in Norse culture and religion. His apparent happiness comes crashing down when Ragnar the Fearless is murdered, burned alive in his hall by shipmaster Kjartan and his son Sven the One-Eyed, in retribution for Ragnar taking Sven's eye many years before. Kjartan spreads rumours that Saxon-born Uhtred is the miscreant behind the deed, forcing Uhtred to flee back across the North Sea to the lands he left as a boy. How long does Bernard Cornwell spend researching for The Last Kingdom? Plus your other questions answered It's on returning to Northumbria that Uhtred meets Guthrum and Ubba, one of the fabled sons of legendary Viking hero Ragnar Lothbrok, whom he watches murder King Edmund of the East Angles. The real Edmund “was tied to a tree, beaten and then murdered with a volley of arrows,” writes ecclesiastical historian Emma J Wells – which is pretty much what happens here, except it plays out in a church. Guthrum and Ubba don't believe his innocence, so Uhtred flees to Winchester, capital of Wessex, the titular 'last kingdom' to fall prey to the Danes. Aethelred I rules, but by the middle of the season he has been mortally wounded, and on his deathbed passes the crown to his brother, Alfred – overlooking Aethelwold, his own son, portrayed as a drunkard who believes the crown should have been his by default. “[Alfred] can never have expected to be king, as the youngest of five brothers, but all of them died young,” writes Michael Wood. “He was 21, pious and brave, but in poor health, with a crippling hereditary illness, perhaps Crohn’s Disease.” Young Ragnar, son of Ragnar the Fearless, returns from Ireland – one of the many shores aside from England that the Vikings sailed to – to confirm for himself that Uhtred didn't kill their father. When he leaves to seek revenge on Kjartan, Brida departs with him. Uhtred proves instrumental at the battle of Cynwit in Devon in 878 – one of the five most important ‘lost battles’ of the Viking age, writes Thomas Williams, who describes it as “one of the great military reversals of the early Middle Ages”, prior to which he kills Ubba in single combat. Uhtred's part in the battle is glossed over (a common theme in The Last Kingdom) and victory is ascribed to Odda the Elder, ealdorman of Devon, as it is in real history. Uhtred and Alfred clash frequently through the rest of the series over loyalty and religion, but where Alfred is forced to admit Uhtred's usefulness is when the would-be Lord of Bebbanburg helps Alfred escape into the Somerset Marshes – where he famously burns the cakes – in the wake of the Danish invasion of Wessex in 878, and then at the battle of Edington in which the Saxons inflict a crushing defeat on the Northmen. Listen | Renowned historical novelist Bernard Cornwell talks about his books that inspired The Last Kingdom, and about his writing career more broadly The Last Kingdom season 2 recap and real history Uhtred heads north – not to Bebbanburg, but to rescue Guthred, a Christian Dane prophesised to become the king of Cumberland. The mission is a success, but once king Guthred is convinced to betray Uhtred and sells him into slavery. Alfred sends Young Ragnar (son of Ragnar the Fearless and Uhtred's adoptive brother, taken hostage by Wessex at the end of season one) to rescue him. Reunited, Ragnar and Uhtred besiege Kjartan and Sven the One-Eyed in Durham, finally avenging Ragnar the Fearless. This season also develops the character of Aethelflaed – not yet the ‘Lady of the Mercians’, but a young woman and, as a daughter of a king, one ready to be married off in alliance – “As a wife, Æthelflæd’s story is all too familiar in terms of royal dynastic marriages,” writes Dr Janina Ramirez. She is wed, in history and on The Last Kingdom, to Aethelred of Mercia. “Theirs was an entirely political union, designed to strengthen the two kingdoms against Danish and Norwegian incursions in the north,” says Ramirez. Aethelflaed: who was the warrior queen who crushed the Vikings? On the show, the Mercian Aethelred reveals himself to be a poor husband, possessive and abusive. He takes Aethelflaed to war against Danish brothers Siegfried and Erik (both fictional antagonists) and their underling Haesten (who did exist), where she is captured and held for ransom, setting up the season's climactic battle at Benfleet in 893 and Odda the Elder's suicide in lieu of certain execution for treason. The Last Kingdom season 3 recap and real history Season three opens by introducing two new antagonists, the warrior Bloodhair and his seer, Skade – who has a vision of Bloodhair killing Alfred in battle. But Alfred really is dying, through ill health; Edward the Aetheling is a young man not yet ready to rule; Aetholwold is sowing discord as he sees a route to finally becoming king. Relations between Uhtred and Alfred reach crisis point when Uhtred accidentally kills a priest after Aethelwold's meddling; in response, Alfred tries to make Uhtred swear an oath to serve Edward. Uhtred, realising that swearing an oath to Edward would mean a life of servitude, flatly refuses, then takes Alfred hostage to effect his escape. Season three places Aethelwold centre stage playing politics. He also leaves Wessex, stopping first at Mercia, where he sows the seeds of betrayal for Aethelflaed, and the at Bloodhair's camp, where he argues that the Danes should form a single ‘great army’ to crush Wessex. “West Saxon chroniclers were scathing about Æthelwold’s alliance with Vikings, but as a tactic of war it wasn’t unusual,” writes early medieval historian Professor Ryan Lavelle, who is also The Last Kingdom’s historical consultant. “There is good reason to suspect that Alfred too allied himself with Viking mercenaries when circumstances required.” Uhtred makes his way north to Durham and to his brother Ragnar the Younger, where he briefly plots with Bloodhair, Haesten and Ragnar's cousin Cnut to form a great army to invade the Saxon kingdoms, but abandons them to rescue Aethelflaed – now hiding in a nunnery, because Aethelred is plotting to have her killed. Later, Aethelwold murders Ragnar in his bed – preventing him from reaching his sword and denying him entry to Valhalla. Haesten is revealed to be a spy for Alfred and alerts the king to the Danish threat. The best historical TV shows and films to stream right now Alfred finally succumbs to his illness – but not before he reconciles with Uhtred and sees Edward married. Uhtred publicly affirms his support for Edward as the presumptive king, and they ride to meet Aethelwold and the Danes near Bedford – defeating them with the help of Mercia and Kent. At the battle’s climax, Uhtred catches up with Aethelwold (having learned that he was the one responsible for Young Ragnar's death) and stabs him through the heart. This final act of Aethelwold's machinations plays out markedly different to real events. Though in the show it is dealt with in the immediate aftermath of Alfred’s death in 899, the actual battle took place at unidentified location suspected to be Holme in East Anglia in 902, after a three-year insurrection in which Aethelwold had moderate success. Even the circumstances of the battle are reversed, with the Danes ambushing Edward’s army – they won the battle, but Aethelwold died in the fighting, making it somewhat pyrrhic. “Æthelwold’s insurrection is little known today, a mere footnote in Anglo-Saxon history,” says Lavelle. “It also hints that, had Æthelwold enjoyed a little more fortune in the fallout from Alfred’s death, and had one obscure battle in 902 had an alternative outcome, the future of England could have been very different indeed.” The Last Kingdom season 4 recap and real history Edward rules in Wessex, battered from all sides by advisors and trying to step out of Alfred the Great’s shadow (or perhaps live up to it), but that’s no lingering concern of Uhtred. By the end of episode one he is sailing north to reclaim his ancestral home of Bebbanburg (Bamburgh) from Aelfric, the dastardly uncle who tried to have him murdered as a boy and then connived to have him sold into slavery as an adult. Who were the key players in the struggle to succeed Alfred the Great? Bebbanburg is conveniently vulnerable – not because of the Danes, but the bellicose attentions of the Scots – and Aelfric is struggling to contain them. The history is mixed here, says early medieval historian Ryan Lavelle in our episode one review: “Northern Northumbria was in a frontier zone contested by an emerging Scottish kingdom and raiding was probably frequent enough, though the events portrayed here are as much a nod to the historical lord [Uhtred] of Bamburgh.” That Uhtred, whom Lavelle explains would have been at the limits of his power much like Aelfric is here, fought the Scots in the 11th century, not the 10th. Listen | Dan Jackson traces the distinctive history and culture of northeast England, from ancient times to the present day Back in The Last Kingdom, Uhtred reckons a small army could take the fortress. Alas, Edward refuses to give him said army, so it’s on to Plan B: kidnap his estranged son (also called Uhtred) from his church, have him sneak into Bebbanburg with some other priests, then open its sea gate under the cover of darkness so that Uhtred and his merry band can sneak in and assassinate Aelfric. Uhtred does get in – not without some mishap – only to find his plan scuppered by the return of the Aelfric’s own estranged son, Whitgar, who terminally alters the power balance in the north by executing Aelfric and claiming Bebbanburg as his own. Outmanoeuvred, Uhtred and co escape, but not without the death of Father Beocca, his close confidante and effective father figure. In Mercia, Aethelred’s captain of the guard (Eardwulf) brings news that the Danes in East Anglia have left their camp for Ireland. Aethelred, chafing at being nominally subservient to Wessex, sees an opportunity to one-up Edward and promptly marches his entire army to East Anglia to claim it as his own. But it’s all smoke and mirrors: the Danes, led by Cnut and Brida, did leave East Anglia, but didn’t put out to sea. They sailed upriver, disembarked near Aethelred’s seat in Aylesbury, and took it as their own. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/04/Jamie-Blackley-as-Eardwulf-in-The-Last-Kingdom-season-4-1a42fbf-scaled.jpg" width="2560" height="1708" alt="Jamie Blackley as Eardwulf in 'The Last Kingdom' season 4" title="Jamie Blackley as Eardwulf in 'The Last Kingdom' season 4 episode 5. Eardwulf pretends to Aethelred that he shares his commitment to a strong and free Mercia, but his loyalties will be proven to be driven by his own ambitions. (Photographer Adrienn Szabo | Copyright Carnival Film & Television Limited)" /> The news doesn’t reach Aethelred; Eardwulf fails to tell him, fearing his master’s rage. It’s another black mark in a long line of character flaws in this depiction of the Mercian ruler, who is by turns capricious, adulterous and cruel. (“[Aethelred] is played as a pretty despicable character – a portrayal for which there is no historical evidence,” notes Lavelle.) In Winchester, Edward refuses to spill Wessex blood to save Mercian soil, earning the approval of his most powerful vassal (and father-in-law) Aethelhelm, and the ire of his sister Aethelflead and his mother Aelswith. Though long-dead in real history, the Aelswith of The Last Kingdom has to deal with her diminishing role at court – leading to a momentous decision to retrieve Edward’s son from his first marriage (which both took place and was annulled off screen in season three) from a convent. The boy is revealed to be Aethelstan, the future first king of the English. The intrigues and vacillations culminate with Aethelflead taking decisive action: she sneaks away from Winchester, raises the Mercian fyrds independently of her absent husband and (thanks to Uhtred) lures the Danes to battle at Tettenhall – a real clash that took place in 910, in which three Viking kings were killed. It was this battle, writes historian Dr Janina Ramirez, that “secured [Aethelflaed’s] image as victorious warrior queen”. In the show, Aethelflaed doesn’t stand alone: she has the support of the Welsh (making their first appearance in The Last Kingdom), and late in the battle both Aethelred and Edward arrive to turn the tide. Cnut is slain, and Brida is taken back to Wales as a slave. “The appearance of Welsh warriors on the battlefield is a historical imagining on this particular occasion, but Welsh military service for Anglo-Saxon armies wasn’t unknown at this time,” says Lavelle in our episode four review. These are the men King Hywel Dda (‘the Good’), who ruled Deheubarth (‘the South Part’), and they serve an important role – “a reminder that the story of early medieval Britain was more than an English one.” The real Saxon army at Tettenhall was an alliance of Aethelflaed and Edward, though Aethelred’s presence is uncertain. The Last Kingdom sees Aethelred sustain a fatal head injury at Tettenhall. Despite the fact he is only expected to live for a few days (a fiction: Aethelred died in 911), Eardwulf kills him in his sickbed. Why? To protect a sudden elevation. With the question of who should succeed as ruler of Mercia, Eardwulf finds himself the firm favourite, a deal to be legitimised through marriage to Aethelred and Aethelflaed’s daughter, the child Aelfwynn. Though Aethelflaed eventually takes the throne as she did in history (though it's thanks to Uhtred in this telling), this sets up an arc in which Uhtred spirits Aelfwynn across the countryside in search of safety, bringing her into contact with ‘The Sickness’, which – in an era without handwashing – is as pernicious as you might imagine. Aylesbury is even put into quarantine. What is this sickness? “There is no historical epidemic known in early medieval Britain from 910/911 or even the first decades of the 10th century, but what is happening is not long after a period of disease recorded in 896, in which a number of the great and good of Wessex perished,” says Lavelle in our episode six review. Despite its imagery being heavily linked with the middle ages, there is nothing, either in the show or in real history, to suggest that it this Sickness is the Black Death. In the midst of the succession crisis, a new Danish threat emerges: Sigtryggr, a real Viking who mooted as a descendant of Ivar the Boneless. He lands in Wales, routs King Hywel, rescues Brida, leads a warband to Wessex and ahistorically seizes Winchester – left undefended while Edward interfered in the Mercian succession. At the end of the season’s climactic month-long siege, Uhtred turns negotiator, helping to forge an agreement in which Sigtryggr relinquishes Winchester in favour of York. This is again the right history at wrong time: Sigtryggr, notes Lavelle in our episode ten review, was the historical ruler of the Anglo-Scandinavians of York – but not until 920. Uhtred rides into the sunset (for now) with Aethelstan as his ward – the boy can’t stay in Winchester, not least because Aethelhelm, grandfather to Edward’s current heir, has just poisoned Aelswith to ensure his family retains power… How will The Last Kingdom end? There are no more full seasons of The Last Kingdom to come, but a concluding feature film – Seven Kings Must Die – releases on 14 April. Plot details are scant, but if it follows the thread of Bernard Cornwell's novels, then we might already know the answer. Cornwell told HistoryExtra in 2018 that "The Last Kingdom series is going to end with a real historical event: the battle of Brunanburh in AD 937. The battle marked the beginning of England, so obviously had to be included in the series." Read next | Seven Kings Must Die: what to expect from the Last Kingdom movie For more content like this, check out the best historical movies of all time as chosen by historians and ranked by you, history TV and film to stream tonight, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week