Month: March 2017

238 – A Patchwork of War

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The Sons of Rhodri Mawr were in a difficult position. Their father had been a powerful ruler in Britain… he was a man who had gained vast swaths of territory for his dynasty and was one of the few kings in British history that could claim the title of “the great.” Now when he died, there was a period of instability. War had threatened to turn his kingdom… the mighty kingdom of Gwynedd… into nothing more than a Mercian subkingdom. However, Rhodri’s sons proved to be just as ferocious as their father, and they quickly reestablished the independence of North Wales and set their confederation of kingdoms on a path for further expansion. But recent events had presented them with a significant barrier to their ambitions.

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237 – Asser

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The Sons of Rhodri, rulers of vast swaths of Wales, have followed in their father’s footsteps in their quest to bring all of the Western Kingdoms under a command of a single dynasty. Their dynasty.

In aid of this, they sought common cause with the Danes of Jorvik and their new King… a man called Guthred. There were rumors surrounding him. Rumors that likely gave the Sons of Rhodri Mawr hope.

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236 – A Return to Scholarship

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“I can not find anything better in man, than that he know, and nothing worse than that he be ignorant.”

That’s a quote from Alfred, and I think it’s my favorite quote. The nice thing about Alfred is that he’s a man for all seasons. There’s something in his reign for everyone. He’s got an excellent comeback story. He’s goes through a sort of Che Guevara phase. He’s got a period where he’s riding around with a cavalry strike force like King Arthur. He’s got a pious side. A scholarly side. A horny side. He has a keen mind for politics, for manipulation, and for tactics. Whatever your need… there’s an Alfred for that.

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235 – Alfred’s Educational Reforms

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One of the interesting things about piecing together the life of Alfred is that we find little windows into who he was in the strangest of places. Most kings of this era didn’t write much down for us to read… but Alfred did. In fact, he translated entire books (which we’re going to talk about today) and he didn’t just translate the books, he included his own thoughts on them as well. For example, in his translation of Pastoral Care by Pope Gregory the Great. Alfred tells us…

“[T]here were happy times then throughout England and… the kings, who had authority over this people, obeyed God and his messengers; and how they not only maintained their peace, morality and authority at home but also extended their territory outside; and how they succeeded both in wisdom and in warfare.”

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234 – The Sons of Rhodri and AEthelred’s Beautiful Hair

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This episode has been difficult to write. In fact, the last several have been difficult, and it all comes down to issues of time. Not space time flexing due to gravitational pull, and issues of whether a minute for Alfred in Wessex was the same as a minute for someone climbing the alps. Just good old fashioned questions of timing.

What goes first? When does it happen? What happens next and when?

The problem is that history, at its root, is a story, and a story generally needs a sequence of events. I mean, sure, some storytellers like William S Burroughs have completely cast off the idea of a sequence to great effect. But in general, to tell a story that people can understand, A needs to be followed by B which needs to be followed by C.

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