King Edwin and the Northumbrian Empire

The year 616 saw the rise of the previously scorned Deiran prince Edwin to the kingship of a defeated but united Kingdom of Northumbria, seizing it from the Bernician Aethelfrith. By allying with King Raedwald of East Anglia to bring down Northumbria however, Edwin had severely weakened the kingdom he now precariously ruled. Would he be able to pick up the pieces, re-establishing Northumbria at the top of British politics? This short animated documentary covers the reign of King Edwin as he attempted to secure his dynasty at the head of the confederation, his conversion to Christianity as the first Christian king of Northumbria, and his widespread conquests which, in the eyes of the Venerable Bede, constituted an imperium, creating a short-lived Northumbrian Empire spread through the Menavian Islands and the north of England, and his eventual downfall at the hands of a fragile alliance of the vengeful Britons and the remaining pagan English under King Penda of Mercia, and how his vision for a strong and unified Christian Northumbria survived his own dynasty. Join the Patreon - patreon.com/TheAetheling Sources: Bede. A History of the English Church and People. tr. Leo Sherley- Price, ed. R. E. Latham, Penguin Books, 1968. Kirby, D.P. The Earliest English Kings (2nd ed.). Routledge, 2001 Morris, Marc. The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England: 400 - 1066. Pegasus Books, 2021. Rollason, David. Northumbria, 500 - 1100: Creation and Destruction of a Kingdom. Cambridge University Press, 2003. William of Malmesbury. Gesta Regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, vol. 1, ed. and trans. R.A.B. Mynors, R.M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom, Oxford Medieval Texts, Clarendon Press, 1998. Music is all from the soundtrack of Mount and Blade: Warband, by Jesse Hopkins: Uncertain Homestead Travel Vaegir Calradia (Travel Neutral) Lord's Hall Swadian