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Comment by kitd | Hacker News Reader

Good story, retold in typical style by Horrible Histories here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=289IDfmm8fM

A bit OT, but "The Last English King" by Julian Rathbone is an excellent historical novel surrounding the Battle of Hastings, told from a Saxon PoV. It's funny that even now, nearly 1000 years later, Hastings is generally felt from an English view as a defeat, despite being the founding event of the English monarchy. As alluded to in the video above.

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Alfred the Great et al. would beg to differ about Hastings being the beginning of the English monarchy rather than the beginning of the Norman monarchy.

Favourite part of the historiography of England: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_yoke

There is an amusing part of Michael Wood's excellent In Search of England about the Norman Yoke. While at school he had written a letter to Bernard Montgomery ("Monty") and was summoned to the House of Lords to debate the matter with the great man - he only realises fairly late on that of course Montgomery is from a Norman background (descended from Roger of Montgomery) while as a Wood he was from humble Anglo-Saxon stock.

Didn't Alfred describe himself as "King of the Anglo-Saxons" rather than "King of England" - a very minor point but it reminds me of the title "King of Scots" - the Scots being incomers to what become Scotland in a similar way that the Anglo-Saxon "English" were incomers to what became England?

Alfred was styled "King of the Anglo-Saxons"; his grandson and (indirect) successor Æthelstan was first styled "King of the English". The same kingdom was taken by William I, who also styled himself "King of the English", as would be common amongst the Normans until John.

While Alfred may have borne a different title, he held the same office as the (later) Kings of England.

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