Month: July 2015

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When we left off last time, we were talking about how we have a limited understanding of this area of history due to a combination of scarce resources and the victorians building a mythology of englishness. We also covered the early middle ages and the turn that was occurring in Southern Britain in the 6th century, where the Anglo Saxons (especially the West Saxons) had rebounded from their early losses and now were defeating the Britons in battle and steadily advancing towards the Severn.

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This season we’ve seen the Anglo Saxons come incredibly close to forming an early unified English Kingdom… in fact they will continue their attempts in this episode.

Though we can guess how that will go because we have seen their culture and governmental structure hamstring their previous attempts at unity. From our vantage point of over 1000 years later, we can see the broad strokes of their societies. We can look at generations and spot flaws that would have been nearly invisible to them.

We can also see the future. For example, we know we are on the cusp of a major invasion. We also know about the famed House of Wessex.

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When we left off, King Beornwulf was reigning over Mercia. Beornwulf was the beginning of the creatively named B-Dynasty, due to the fact that Anglo Saxons seemed to denote their dynasties by selecting the same first letters for their kids. So Beornwulf had two kids named Berhfrith and Behrtric, a brother named Bynna, and it’s thought that Baldred was his kinsman.

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