The Last Kingdom

Readers are accustomed to a novel ending with a sense of a resolution to the conflicts that have driven the plot. Because The Last Kingdom is something of a hybrid, unsurprisingly the story’s end raises more questions than it resolves. Closing in the uneasy quietus following the Battle of Cynuit, much of the novel’s story is only starting. And because the novel was conceived as the first installment of a series, the ending is, at best, problematic.

The Last Kingdom is at once a grand historical novel about the rise of Alfred the Great, the first of England’s defining monarchs; an adventure tale about the emergence of a great and savage warrior; and a traditional coming-of-age narrative about a boy who must reluctantly abandon the assumptions that defined his childhood and face the uncertainties, opportunities, and challenges of the real-time world.

As an historical novel, the novel moves Alfred to the forefront in the rise of the resistance to the Norse invasion and occupation. He defines himself as a master chess player whose moves, although initially puzzling to Uhtred, reveal a pattern of subtle, sly calculations. Alfred’s ability to muster the English armies into a cohesive fighting unit—symbolized by the shield wall—and his unique willingness to listen to the strategy posed by his own underlings define his emerging promise as leader of a unified England. He is at once commanding and humble, decisive, and contemplative. But it is difficult for a contemporary reader to see this ending as complete and satisfying. After all, historical records indicate Alfred’s visionary campaign to unify England is only beginning. There is still much history left to chronicle by the book’s conclusion.

As an adventure tale that chronicles the emergence of a larger-than-life military warrior, The Last Kingdom is initially tightly focused but ultimately open-ended. Uhtred assumes the swagger and the reputation typical of a warrior hero by the end of this novel. From the little boy who challenged Ragnar the Fearless with a toy sword to the magnificent warrior who nearly beheads the much feared Ubba Lothbrokson, the novel traces the emergence of a fearsome warrior. Uhtred’s recounting covers the training, drills, and the indoctrination of the Norse code of absolute war and how the measure of a true man comes from his ability to engage expertly and confidently in the art of fighting. Uhtred shares his growing blood lust and what he calls sword joy, the adrenaline rush he feels in delivering the coup de grace with his powerful sword. Killing Ubba should be the culmination of Uhtred’s arc, but the novel does not end there. It leaves murky the fullest implications of the boy’s emergence into a warrior. After all, the war is not over. Uhtred’s Hamlet-like confusions over his own status—Saxon one day, Dane the next—and the internal debate over which side he should fight for (or against) leave the close of the novel open ended, even as he stands above Ubba’s bloody corpse.

In the end, the novel coheres most dramatically as a coming-of-age narrative. In this sense, the last pages offer a traditional sense of closure. Unlike the evolution from play soldier to true warrior, Uhtred’s evolution from boy to man is resolved in this volume. By the end, Uhtred is no longer the boy he was in the opening pages. He leaves behind the innocence and trust that defined his life at Bebbanburg, renouncing the guiding assumptions he once held.

Uhtred is given the difficult gift of awareness, having learned many valuable lessons. He begins to question authority and explore the moral and ethical implications of the Christian religion into which he was born. He embraces the complex culture of a strange and unfamiliar people, which he was taught to consider as little more than animals. He learns the immediacy of mortality and that death comes for those he loves, admires, respects, and serves. Uhtred discovers that family is not given but earned and that it must be guarded and treasured. He learns that no individual can stand along for very long, and most importantly, he learns that the measure of a person comes not from what they destroy or kill but what they love and protect.

In taking these lessons to heart, Uhtred offers this education as a fitting close to the novel. Alfred’s future may be uncertain and Uhtred’s warrior status may still be tested, but the coming of age narrative is brought to its close, particularly in Uhtred’s affirmation of his destiny not as a Saxon or a warrior but as his father’s son and as a husband and father in his own right. Only in this sense does The Last Kingdom move toward a traditional close. At narrative’s end, the boy has become a man. But he is not shaped by his heroics on the battlefield or his willingness to take lives. Uhtred reaches manhood because he sees his destiny, embraces his identity, and leaves behind the whirlwind chaos of his childhood. In the closing pages, Uhtred at last defines himself.