Tuesday 10 March 2020

Special Guest Blogger: King Athelstan

Historians say that i inherited the throne after my 22 year old brothers Elfweard's suspiciously short reign, he was ruler for a month and then drowned in an unfortunate swimming related accident.
I did pass a law to spare children under 15 from the death penalty but as i only ruled Wessex which is in the south of England, the Danes who ran the North carried on doing what Danes did but it never stopped me calling myself the Emperor of Britain and telling everyone that i owned a piece of the true cross and the actual lance that pierced Jesus.
I did finally take the North off the Vikings and even invaded Scotland but the Scots didn't like that and preferred the Vikings so invaded England and took back the land i nicked from them in the first place so all a bit of a waste of time really.
Something i was famous for was calling dignitaries to me for frivolous reasons, i especially enjoyed summoning the Welsh Lords and after days of travelling to meet me, saying 'It's okay, don't worry' which ticked them off no end.
Something which did concern me was a rise in robbery so i introduced a law prescribing harsh penalties, including the death penalty for anyone over twelve years old caught in the act of stealing goods worth more than eight pence but what happened was people would still get robbed but anything over eight pence, they would give the change back to the victim.
With my rule wedged between my grandfather Alfred the Great and Harold 'One in the eye' Godwinson, us Anglo Saxons Kings who ruled between them tend to be rather forgotten but my toughness on all forms of robbery never really had any effect, sometime around the 16th Century someone nicked my bones and the piece of true cross i was buried with.

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