Okay, my voice isn't fully back, but it's been too long since I've recorded, so I'm just going to give this a shot and edit out any coughs and stuff.

So I apologize for the tone of my voice. I'm going to do the best I can, but you've waited long enough for an episode. So let's get to it.

Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie, and this is episode 195, Red Sea Rising.

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Last time we ended with a saga of Judith and Baldwin, which took us a bit out of our timeline, but I'm glad we did it, because I really love that story.

However, let's get back to our not-so-tropical island.

It's December, nearly Christmas, in fact, and King Atholbald is dead. Queen Judith has sold her properties and is headed back to Francia, and according to King Athol Wolf's will, the Kingdom of Wessex was due to go to Athol Red.

A boy who was probably only around 13 or 14 years old.

Now on the one hand, it's nice to have a clear line of succession, and the fact that Atholbald didn't have any kids with Judith saves us from the possibility of an infant making a play for the throne.

But on the other hand, with Judith's exit, Frankish interests in the English kingdoms have substantially waned, and the communication between the kingdoms is breaking down.

Furthermore, the heir apparent was Athol Red, an untested fourth-born son who was still a young teenager and very likely never intended to sit on the throne, and who was likely thoroughly unprepared for the task.

Now, we don't know how King Atholbald died, and quite a few scholars have pointed out that he may have died from natural causes, due to his age, and the fact that his cause of death wasn't stated.

As you know, I'm not a historian, but based upon what the historians tell us about Atholbald's death, I suspect that, unless they're explicitly talking about diseases that can strike people in the prime of their lives.

The notion of death by natural causes is based upon outmoded beliefs and assumptions about this period of history.

The thing is that a lot of times natural causes is code for old age, and a lot of times that explanation comes to us from historians who wrote in earlier generations, or people who rely heavily upon those same historians.

The truth of the matter is that even in the formal study of history, old ideas die hard, so let me walk you through why, despite what some historians have argued, I don't think that Atholbald died of old age, or diseases that were associated with old age.

First, Atholbald wasn't all that old, he was probably only in his mid-20s when he died.

And usually people, even earlier historians, tend to underestimate life spans during this period, because they get confused by the term life expectancy.

If I say the average life expectancy for many regions of Europe during this era was around 40 years old, that doesn't mean that people don't live to their 60s.

And an assumption like that would fail to take into account early mortality when looking at average life expectancy.

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