Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom

Many people know about Wessex, the "Last Kingdom" of the Anglo-Saxons to fall to the Northmen, but another kingdom, Mercia, once enjoyed supremacy over all of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Those interested in the period will surely have heard of Penda, Offa, and Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, but remarkably there is no single book that tells their story in its entirety. Historically, the records are in two halves, pre- and post-Viking, in the way they have been preserved. Pre-Viking, virtually all the source material was written by the victims of Mercian aggression and expansion. Post-Viking, the surviving documents tend to hail from places which were not sacked or burned by the Northmen. The inclusion of those records here allows for the exploration of Mercia post-924. Examining the roles of the great ealdormen in the anti-monastic reaction of the 10th century, through the treachery of Eadric Streona in the 11th, and the last, brave young earls who made a stand against William the Conqueror, this book shows the important role the Mercians played in the forging of the English nation.