A Saxon born in Northumbria, raised by Danes, fights for Alfred of Wessex and his heirs until many kingdoms become one: that is the story of The Last Kingdom, five seasons from 2015 to 2022 and a film, Seven Kings Must Die, from 2023. The hero is invented, his world is not. Alfred, Guthrum, Æthelflæd, Edward and Æthelstan lived, and Edington, Tettenhall and Brunanburh were real battles. This article sets series and film beside the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Asser, Æthelweard and the excavations at Repton and Torksey. It shows where the scripts stay surprisingly close to the sources, where they squeeze decades together and where they simply make things up.
The Last Kingdom is based on Bernard Cornwell's novels, known in English as The Saxon Stories and published in German by Rowohlt. The series runs to thirteen books; the first appeared in 2004, the last, War Lord, in 2020. The first two seasons aired on BBC Two; Netflix co-produced from the second season and became the sole broadcaster from the third. The dates: season 1 in autumn 2015, season 2 in spring 2017, season 3 in November 2018, season 4 in April 2020, season 5 in March 2022. That makes 46 episodes, produced by Carnival Films. Most of the filming took place in Hungary.
The film The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die was released on Netflix on 14 April 2023. It follows the final novel, War Lord, and ends with the battle of Brunanburh in 937. The first two seasons each adapt two novels closely; from the third season onwards the scripts depart markedly from the books. This check, however, measures it against the sources of the ninth and tenth centuries, not against Cornwell.
The historical adviser named in interviews is Ryan Lavelle, a historian at the University of Winchester; I know his statements only from press reports.
Uhtred, son of Uhtred, never existed in this form. No chronicle knows a Saxon of that name who was taken by Danes as a child and served Alfred. A historical Uhtred appears only in the early eleventh century.
That man is Uhtred, called "the Bold". He was a son of Waltheof, of the family that ruled the north of Northumbria from Bamburgh. From about 1006 to 1016 he was ealdorman of all Northumbria; an ealdorman governed a region on the king's behalf, and the title "earl" only took over under Cnut. After submitting to Cnut, Uhtred was killed with his retinue in 1016 on the way to a meeting, by Thurbrand and with Cnut's approval; a blood feud lasting generations followed. See also Cnut the Great.
Cornwell has told how, as an adult, he met his birth father, whose surname was Oughtred, and learned of a family tradition tracing the line back to the lords of Bamburgh. That became the idea for the character. Whether the descent holds up genealogically I cannot check. For the series it means that its hero lives about a century before his namesake, and some motifs, such as a Scottish siege of Bebbanburg, are borrowed from the later Uhtred's life.
The fortress name in the series is the Old English form of present-day Bamburgh on the Northumberland coast. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle links the place with Ida, said to have become king in 547 and to have enclosed the stronghold first with a hedge and later with a wall. Bede, writing around 731, derives the name from a queen called Bebba. Both are later origin stories.
What is certain is that Bamburgh was a royal seat in the early Middle Ages and later the power base of the family Uhtred the Bold came from. Today's castle is largely high medieval and heavily restored; the timber fortress on screen is a set designer's idea.
The lords of Bamburgh can be traced in the tenth century. Manuscript D of the Chronicle (under 926, probably meaning 927) names an Ealdred, son of Eadwulf, "from Bamburgh", who submitted to Æthelstan. Before that the family history is thin, a gap the novel exploits.
Almost everything we know about Alfred and his heirs comes from a handful of texts. The most important is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a set of year-by-year entries in Old English whose older core was compiled around 890, while Alfred was still alive. It survives in several manuscripts. For the early tenth century the "Mercian Register" matters: short Mercian entries on Æthelflæd's deeds, which the main West Saxon text tends to pass over.
Asser, a Welsh cleric at Alfred's court, wrote a life of the king, the Vita Ælfredi, in 893. It adds details, for instance about Alfred's illnesses, and it is also a work of praise; the manuscript burned in 1731. Æthelweard, an ealdorman descended from the West Saxon royal house, turned a version of the Chronicle into Latin in the late tenth century and added a few things, such as the names of Danish kings killed at Tettenhall. Later works include Abbo of Fleury's legend of King Edmund (around 985).
These sources speak from the viewpoint of Wessex and rarely name the enemy's leaders. A series that also shows the Danes inevitably fills gaps.
"This year about mid-winter, after twelfth-night, the Danish army stole out to Chippenham, and rode over the land of the West-Saxons; where they settled, and drove many of the people over sea; and of the rest the greatest part they rode down, and subdued to their will;—ALL BUT ALFRED THE KING. He, with a little band, uneasily sought the woods and fastnesses of the moors."Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, entry for 878; translation by James Ingram (1823), wording read through a reproduction of the text
The first season opens in the late 860s, when the Great Army arrives in England – the name scholars give to the force the Chronicle from 865 calls the "micel here", the "great army". York falls and East Anglia is subdued; up to this point the series follows the Chronicle. The death of King Edmund of East Anglia (869, entered under 870 in the Chronicle) is set in a church. The famous version in which Edmund is tied to a tree and shot with arrows comes from Abbo's saint's life, written more than a century later. The Chronicle only says he was killed.
Alfred becomes king in 871 after the death of his brother Æthelred I. The series shows a sickly, pious tactician who dreams of a united England. Asser attests the illness and the piety, and Alfred's writings and treaties show that he promoted the idea of the "Angelcynn", one English people. A kingdom of England, however, he did not create. That fell to his grandson Æthelstan. More in the article on Alfred the Great.
The attack on Chippenham in January 878, Alfred's retreat to the marshes of Athelney and the victory at Edington in May 878 are the strongest parts of season 1, and here the series stays close to the sources. Alfred gathered the levies of Somerset, Wiltshire and part of Hampshire at "Egbert's Stone", beat the army at Edington, besieged the fugitives and forced Guthrum to make peace. Guthrum was baptised, with Alfred as his godfather, who gave him the baptismal name Æthelstan. That is what the Chronicle says. Uhtred's share in the victory is invented. The tale of the burnt cakes is neither in the Chronicle nor in Asser; it is a later legend.
Ubba is a case of his own. In the series he dies in single combat with Uhtred at Cynwit, a fortified place in Devon. The Chronicle records for 878 that "the brother of Ivar and Halfdan" had landed in Devon with 23 ships and was killed with many of his men, and that a raven banner was captured. No name is given. Only later works identify this brother with Ubba. Asser credits the victory to king's thegns who had shut themselves into a fortress called Cynuit; Æthelweard is said to name their leader as Odda, which I know only from secondary literature. There is no single combat anywhere. The series turns a nameless note into a headline scene.
The series keeps invoking the sons of Ragnar. The Chronicle names Halfdan several times as a leader and, for 878, mentions "the brother of Ivar and Halfdan"; Ivar himself barely features in it, and it is Æthelweard and Abbo who present him as a leader of the early years. None of these texts names a father Ragnar. The link to Ragnar Lothbrok appears only in texts of the late tenth to thirteenth centuries. Ivar and Halfdan are well attested as war leaders; the brotherhood with Ubba and the shared descent remain a late construction. For a very different take on the same names, see Vikings fact-checked.
Where the written sources fall silent, the ground speaks. At Torksey in Lincolnshire, where the Chronicle has the army wintering in 872, metal detectorists and a research project of the universities of Sheffield and York (Dawn Hadley, Julian Richards) have recorded more than 1,500 finds. They include over 300 lead gaming pieces, more than 100 weights, more than 100 Arabic silver coins, known as dirhams, cut up and weighed as bullion, plus hacksilver, smithing tools and spindle whorls. The camp was a place of craft and trade. The excavators think estimates of 300 to 500 men too low; exact numbers do not exist.
At Repton in Derbyshire, the winter camp of 873/874, Martin Biddle and Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle found a mass burial of at least 264 people in the 1980s. A 2018 study in the journal Antiquity accounted for the effect of a marine diet on the radiocarbon dates and concluded that all dated remains are consistent with a single event in the late ninth century. The series barely shows such camps. Torksey and Repton show a mobile, wealthy army that traded and stayed in one place for months.
Æthelflæd, Alfred's eldest daughter, rightly takes centre stage in the series. In the 880s she was married to Æthelred, lord of the Mercians, who acknowledged Alfred's overlordship. After Æthelred's death in 911 she ruled Mercia alone. The Mercian Register calls her "Myrcna hlæfdige", "Lady of the Mercians", and records fortified places (burhs) at Bridgnorth, Tamworth, Stafford, Warwick and Runcorn, among others. In 917 she took Derby, in 918 Leicester. Shortly before her death in June 918 the people of York offered her their submission.
Her husband fares badly. The series paints Æthelred as jealous, violent and unfaithful, a man who wants to be rid of his wife. There is no evidence for this. The sources show a couple who issued charters and built together. That he was killed by a man from his own circle, as the series shows, is invented; he died in 911, apparently after a long illness.
Some episodes are turned on their heads. In the series Æthelflæd is taken captive by the Danes at Benfleet. The Chronicle reports the opposite for 893: the English stormed Hæsten's camp at Benfleet and captured his wife and two sons. Alfred returned them; one son was his godson, the other Æthelred's. Hæsten himself is historical, a war leader of the years 892 to 896. His role in the series is freely shaped.
Edward, later called "the Elder", succeeded Alfred in 899. The series shows an insecure son who grows hard and suspicious. Between 912 and 920, working with his sister until 918, he won back the Danish-ruled lands south of the Humber – the southern part of the Danelaw. Murders of Mercian nobles or a violent seizure of Mercia, as season 5 shows, are not recorded.
Right after Alfred's death Edward's cousin Æthelwold claimed the throne. He found backing among the Danes and fell in 902 in East Anglia, at the battle the Chronicle calls "the Holme". The series has him die shortly after Alfred's death.
The battle of Tettenhall, also called Wednesfield, was fought on 5 August 910 in Staffordshire. A Northumbrian raiding army was caught on its way home by West Saxons and Mercians. Æthelweard names three Danish kings who fell: Eowils, Halfdan and Ingwær. This Halfdan is not the Halfdan of the Great Army, who disappears some thirty years earlier. In the series Æthelflæd decides the battle. Whether she commanded at Tettenhall herself cannot be shown. The sources speak of an army sent by Edward and the Mercians; according to the Chronicle Edward himself was in Kent when the campaign began.
Sigtryggr is modelled on Sihtric, called Cáech, a grandson of an Ivar of the Dublin dynasty (Irish "ua Ímair", "grandson of Ivar"), who came from Ireland to York around 920 and was king there until 927. Rögnvaldr recalls Ragnall, who took York in 919. In the series Sigtryggr lands in Wales and even takes Winchester. Right family, wrong time, wrong place. The article on Jorvik tells the story of York under these kings.
Seven Kings Must Die opens with Edward's death. Edward died in July 924. His son Ælfweard, who had been accepted in Wessex, died barely more than two weeks later at Oxford. Æthelstan, Edward's eldest son from his first union, had grown up in Mercia and was chosen king there. He was crowned in September 925 at Kingston. His legitimacy was disputed because his mother Ecgwynn's status is unclear. Whether Æthelstan helped his half-brother to his death is unknown. The film has Ælfweard killed after a siege; there is no evidence for that.
Ingilmundr, in the film Æthelstan's closest adviser and lover, bears the name of a Norseman who, according to Irish and Welsh sources, came to the Wirral peninsula around 902 after the Vikings were driven out of Dublin. He has no known link to Æthelstan; the film character comes from Cornwell's novel. There is no evidence for a love affair between Æthelstan and a man. All that is attested is that he stayed unmarried and childless.
In 927, after King Sihtric's death, Æthelstan took York. On 12 July 927 several rulers met him at Eamont near Penrith. Manuscript D of the Chronicle names Hywel, Constantine of Scotland, an Owain of Gwent and Ealdred of Bamburgh; William of Malmesbury in the twelfth century names Owain of Strathclyde instead. They acknowledged Æthelstan as overlord. Many historians place the beginning of England here. In the film Uhtred, as lord of Bebbanburg, refuses to submit – historically it was Ealdred, and he submitted.
Brunanburh in 937 is the battle that confirmed Æthelstan's rule. Against him stood Olaf Guthfrithsson of Dublin, of the house of Ivar, who had claims to York, Constantine of Scotland and, according to later sources, Owain of Strathclyde. The Chronicle celebrates the victory with an Old English praise poem, the only near-contemporary account of the fighting. It lists five young kings and seven of Olaf's earls among the dead and has Constantine lose a son. At Æthelstan's side fought his half-brother Edmund, about sixteen years old. Its location is still disputed: many specialists favour Bromborough on the Wirral, others sites in Yorkshire or further north.
Here the film departs from the record in several ways. It sends Hywel into battle, though as far as we know he stayed neutral, and it invents a cavalry ambush; in the poem horsemen only pursue the fleeing enemy. And it makes Uhtred the mind behind the victory, while the sources name only Æthelstan and Edmund. Æthelstan died in October 939. Afterwards Olaf Guthfrithsson took York, and only in the 950s, after the end of Eric Bloodaxe in York, was the north won for good.
The series almost never says "Vikings"; it speaks of "Danes" and "Saxons". That is closer to the sources than many films. The Chronicle usually calls the enemy "Dene" (Danes), "hæðene" (heathens) or simply "here" (army). The Old English word "wīcing" does occur, but rarely. In these texts "Danes" is a catch-all for people from Scandinavia, not a statement of nationality. The armies probably came from Jutland, the Danish islands, southern Sweden and elsewhere. Old Norse "víkingr" meant someone who went raiding by sea. See also the glossary.
"Saxons" is just as rough a label. People named themselves after their kingdoms: West Saxons, Mercians, Northumbrians. Alfred used the title "king of the Anglo-Saxons". With the continental Saxons whom Charlemagne fought, this has only a distant origin in common; the article on the Saxons explains that older background.
The series draws a sharp line between the two groups: Danes are pagan, free and rough, Saxons pious, bureaucratic and devious. That drives the plot but fits the period only in part. Many Danes in England became Christians early; around 900 the kings of York struck coins with Christian legends. There were defectors, mixed marriages and alliances across origins. Æthelwold allied with Danes against Edward. The conflict was dynastic, not a front line between two peoples. For an overview of these centuries see The Vikings in England.
The Danes wear striking hairstyles, braids, tattoos and dark leather; the Saxons mail, cloaks and crosses. That is visual shorthand. Finds show similar basic forms on both sides: a knee-length tunic of wool or linen, trousers, a belt, a cloak fastened with a brooch, leather shoes. Tattoos among Scandinavians are not attested archaeologically; the often-quoted description by the Arab traveller Ibn Fadlan concerns the Rus on the Volga and its reading is disputed. More in the article on Viking clothing.
The series sensibly does without horned helmets. Helmets with horns were not used in battle in the Viking Age; the myth dates from the nineteenth century, as the article on the horned helmet myth shows. Mail shirts, on the other hand, are too common. A ring-mail shirt was expensive; the series gives them to ordinary warriors too. The article on mail shirts lists the few original finds.
The shield wall is the trademark of the battle scenes. Old English and Old Norse poetry suggest that warriors stood in close ranks with overlapping shields; the term "bordweal" (shield wall) even appears in the Brunanburh poem. What the formation looked like in detail the texts do not tell us; Lavelle doubts, for example, that shields were held overhead. The close-quarters struggle the series shows is plausible, but the details remain reconstruction. More in the article on the shield wall.
How many seasons does The Last Kingdom have? Five seasons with 46 episodes in total, broadcast from 2015 to 2022, plus the film Seven Kings Must Die from 2023. The first two seasons aired on the BBC, from the third season on only Netflix.
Was Uhtred real? Not as a ninth-century figure. The model is Uhtred the Bold, ealdorman of Northumbria from about 1006 to 1016. Bernard Cornwell regards him as an ancestor through his birth father's family.
Is Bebbanburg a real place? Yes. Bebbanburg is the Old English name of Bamburgh in Northumberland. The visible parts of today's castle date from the high Middle Ages and later restoration.
How accurate is the series overall? Rulers, battles and dates largely follow the Chronicle. Characters, motives and many twists are invented, especially from season 3 onwards, and spans of years are often compressed into a few episodes.
Where was the battle of Brunanburh fought? That is unresolved. Many scholars consider Bromborough on the Wirral most likely; other proposals lie in Yorkshire and further north.
Alfred the Great · Guthrum · Ubba · The Great Heathen Army · The Vikings series fact-check.
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