u/Spiritual-Major-1826

https://preview.redd.it/rf61ux5zjujh1.jpg?width=831&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f3b6115693042b52383914c1823667eae9632117

Alfred secured the throne of Wessex in 871 through a highly questionable political manoeuvre that sidelined his nephews who had a better claim.

 So, he badly needed to solidify his doubtful right to take the throne. To do this, he ordered scribes in his scriptorium literally to invent a 300-year-long genealogy claiming he had descended from a semi-mythological Germanic founder, Cerdic. 

This ignored great historical gaps, civil wars and usurpers to create a largely fictional unbroken line of father-to-son royal-blood succession. 

By this means, Alfred claimed his forebears were Germanic heroes descended from Woden. In fact, his family were Romano-British native and he claimed to rule Wessex by right of a conquest that never happened.

To read the full extract, click below: 

https://wessexxfiles.substack.com/p/alfred-the-great-built-a-myth-and

Together they broke Viking invasion. But King Edward erased sister Æthelflæd from history to stop her fame destroying Alfred’s legacy.

The brilliant military achievements of Alfred the Great’s daughter, the Lady of the Mercians, Æthelflæd, were both a blessing and a political nightmare. 

She played an indispensable role in saving the Anglo-Saxons from destruction by the Danes. 

But the image of a woman successfully commanding armies, taking a foreign queen hostage and executing brilliant grand strategies threatened, on her death, to cause her nationalistic supporters to split Mercia from Wessex. 

So, her brother and military partner Edward the Elder reduced the legendary warrior queen to a mere footnote, “the king’s sister.”

To read the full extract, click below:

https://preview.redd.it/37q0mw2wkjjh1.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=36ba9766811ba0291dc562098c2494ead379aa1a

https://wessexxfiles.substack.com/p/alfred-the-greats-daughter-was-such