Okay, it's that time of year again, and have you been itching to get your hands on BHP swag like our buttons and stickers?

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Okay, let's get to the show.

Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie, and this is episode 145,

the Rise of King Athebald of Mercy.

All right, as you probably guessed from the title, we're talking about the Rise of King Athebald today,

but only sort of. The thing is that as you get into this episode,

you're probably going to notice that we're basically talking about everyone but Athebald.

And that's because of the way our histories are written, but rest assured,

what we're really talking about is how and why Athebald was able to form his mercy in hegemony.

Okay, so we ended our last episode with the death of King Cholred at a banquet,

and he went out swinging, or more accurately jibringing, cursing the heavens.

And let's face it, Cholred was a colorful character, and he really brought his A game right

until the end. I mean, you really have to work hard to completely destroy Pandas dynasty.

But he pulled it off. And now that he was out of the way, the throne of Mercia was open.

Cholred's rival, the man he feared so much that he drove him into exile and tried to have him killed,

...