The Last Kingdom

The Last Kingdom is a war novel that chronicles the military campaigns that marked the unification of Britain’s four kingdoms. As such, it is centrally about death.

From the opening pages, when the severed head of Uhtred’s older brother is held up for the boy to see, to Uhtred’s dramatic execution of the much feared Ubba on the battlefields of Cynuit, the novel recreates death with unblinking realism and a sweeping cinematic sensibility. It is not enough for men to die. They are disemboweled, dismembered, decapitated, taunted and tortured, skewered through the eyes and mouth; entire companies are lured into a trap and slaughtered by the dozens. Men are shot through with quivers of arrows and immolated alive. The configuration of the shield wall, here so vividly depicted, involves exposing scantily armored men to ax and sword at close hand.

Much like other thematic elements, the novel juxtaposes the Norse and Christian philosophies about the inevitability of death. While the Norse have only a vague concept of an afterlife, the actual event of death is everything—particularly for soldiers. Ragnar struggles to explain to Uhtred, who was raised with Christianity’s vision of an elaborate afterlife, how Norse soldiers are rewarded for valor in battle and sent to Odin’s great hall in the shadowy world of Valhalla to await the end of the world. Beyond this, though, death is largely an unremarkable end. So, Uhtred learns to see the vital importance of the battlefield and comes to embrace and celebrate the inevitability of death—what he calls the sword joy.

Alfred then opens up the boy to a far different sense of death. By endorsing the drama of heaven and hell, and by emphasizing the critical import of free will, Alfred shows Uhtred that death for everyone is a passageway. The body is not as critical as the soul, and the ultimate conflict for a man is not between life and death or between warring factions on the battlefield—it is between sin and redemption. 

Although this novel only chronicles Uhtred’s youth, he is shaped in the tradition of the larger-than-life epic hero. Within a long literary tradition from Odysseus to Gilgamesh, Achilles to Arthur, Beowulf to Siegfried, epic heroes are uniquely and completely destined for greatness. From the opening lines, in which Uhtred lists his many titles and bravely exclaims his name, he has the brash and swagger of an epic hero. There is nothing common about the figure of Uhtred the Widow-Maker as a child.

Although he dabbles in the Christian sensibility that sees each person as a heroic expression of God’s will and a manifestation of free will, Uhtred believes deeply in the special power of destiny. “[D]estiny was everything. Fate rules. The three spinners sit at the foot of the tree of life and they make our lives and we are their playthings, and though we think we make our own choices, all our fates are in the spinners’ threads” (168). The image of the Fates spinning each man’s inevitability draws from the legends of antiquity. Unlike the Christian God, the weaving sisters cannot be deceived, pleaded with, or challenged. The implications are clear: for Uhtred, whatever the obstacles, challenges, or disappointments, he is destined for greatness. He is certain of that privileged status. Even as he shuttles between the two warring camps, he is certain that he will achieve his destiny.

This sense of confidence is juxtaposed against the Christian exemplum of the modest, quiet Alfred, whose confidence in the will of God magnifies the power of God rather than his own ego. Alfred’s God and his sense of purpose demands humility; Norse gods and their sense of purpose sustains pride. For Uhtred, the power of destiny draws him forward. He does not understand entirely why events happen, but he is sure the weaving sister have a purpose. “Destiny is all,” he says even as he surveys the Alfred’s unimpressive army at the encampment and agrees to serve as a sailor although he lacks significant naval experience. “The spinners favor me, or at least they have spared me, and for a time they made me a sailor” (225). That sense of destiny gives Uhtred his life’s purpose and provides meaning to his every action. It is not to secure the British island for Alfred or eradicate the menace of the invading Norsemen; it is to return to Bebbanburg and reclaim the land and title that are rightfully his. 

Set in the Dark Ages, two centuries before the dawn of the intellectually bent Enlightenment, The Last Kingdom is a portrait of the animal man struggling for survival. War in this novel is a “wondrous thing…The nerves go, the fear wings off into the void, and all is clear as precious crystal” (319).

The Danish occupation introduces a young Uhtred to the hard reality of combat. Before he is 10, he watches the expeditionary forces pillage the villages around Bebbanburg and then witnesses his father and brother’s deaths. Those experience do not turn Uhtred into what he fears most: a feeble and weeping penitent, a Christian turning the other cheek. He instead discovers a relish for the control and command he feels with his sword in hand. Even in the height of the insanities of battle, Uhtred asserts a calmness and sense of sure navigation. His heart swells when, with his brothers in arms, he marches steadily into the heart of the fray under the flimsy protection of the shield wall. So, war is presented as a place where one’s true self can be found and developed, rather than a place where one’s humanity is lost.

Readers can easily get swept up in the slaughter and feel the same satisfaction that Uhtred relishes in battle when he experiences the adrenaline rush of sword joy. Therefore, from a contemporary perspective, The Last Kingdom can seem like a barbaric and even dangerous endorsement of violence—especially because Cromwell offers no clear evidence of questioning the morality of such carnage. This apparent celebration of warfare may not play well within the real-world global culture. Any inclination to applaud the brutality and violence of combat seems radically out of place in a culture that embraces the ideals of peace and coexistence.