Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie and this is episode 283, The

Kingdoms of the Foreigners. This show is ad-free due to members' support. And as a way

of thanking members for keeping the show independent, I offer members only content, including

extra episodes and rough transcripts. You can get instant access to all the members'

extras by signing up for membership at thebritishestraypodcast.com for about the price of a latte per

month. And thank you very much to George and Valerie for signing up already. Imagine that you

went from being a disfavored bastard with little power to the most powerful English king that

had ever existed. And you did it in the space of just a few years. That you went from being

functionally orphaned and shunted off to mercia to being so powerful that continental rulers

were seeking your support and sending their children to your court, just to further tie their

fortunes to you. Having annexed Northumbria, obtaining the submission of Cumbria Strathclide in

Scotland, and having brokered marriages with major Frankish figures while also obtaining foster

children from powerful monarchs in the region, that's the situation that King Atholstan was in.

It was a meteoric rise, but he wasn't done. The island is bigger than just England and Scotland.

They were also the Britons. The people who had remained distinct in language, culture, and

practice since the retreat of Rome. These same people, who the Anglo-Saxons called the Welsk,

meaning the foreigners. Now the situation between Wales and the Anglo-Saxons, who are now called

the English, was a complicated one. And it had been that way for quite some time. When Edward died

on Farnan and D, which wasn't too far from the Welsh border, he left a situation that remained

very fluid. Almost anything could happen next. And as we've learned, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms

didn't exist in a bottle. Their politics influenced and were influenced by many other political

events in the region. The obvious examples are the Scandinavians, the Viking conquests. But if

...