Category: Chapter Four

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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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Season Four is called Anglo Saxon Ascendancy because we have been seeing mighty kings like Offa, AEthelbald, and Coenwulf acquire vast amounts of power in Britain that enable them to nearly become the first kings of England. Their hegemonies were so big and impressive that we have one Mercian leader getting into arguments with Charlemagne and another claim the title of Emperor.

But we are reaching the end of that era. The Viking armies are coming…. and the great Kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia, which could have functioned as bulwarks against continental aggression 100 years earlier… are collapsing under their own weight.

The line of Ida in Northumbria had largely died out about 100 years ago. The Idingas were fierce and effective leaders… but they also tended to die young, and sometimes without children. And now with their end, the warnings of Bede regarding the weaknesses of the Northern Kingdom are starting to look like prophecy. For the last century, Northumbria has been wracked by civil war, with 5 families enthusiastically murdering each other in their attempt to claim the throne. There are too many kings of Northumbria to count who met an untimely death, many times without kids… And it might lead you to wonder whether the kingdom have been strong enough to stop the Norse invasion if King AEthelred I of Northumbria hadn’t been murdered. Or if any of the other kings and claimants hadn’t been murdered.

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We start today with a death. On the 28th of January, 814, Charlemagne died and the throne passed to Louis the Pious. The death of Charlemagne was a big deal for early medieval europe, not just because it meant that we wouldn’t have anymore passive aggressive comments about the quality of British wool, or weird tantrums over weddings, or (my personal favorite) utter freak-outs because an exiled queen thought Louis was hotter than Charlemagne… No, the death of Charlemagne would trigger a series of events that would shake the foundations of Europe and, in turn, impact our story for years to come. That’s something we will be keeping our eyes on.

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Last week we talked about the impact that the Church was having on internal politics within the Anglo Saxon kingdoms, and that is something we will continue to talk about today. However, before we begin, let’s talk about something strange that’s happening on the continent.

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