500 years of history, and they were difficult years.

War, famine, invasion, disease, right from their earliest arrival on the island, time and

time again the Anglo-Saxons had faced destruction.

The solutions they found were specific to their circumstances.

Alliances were formed and broken.

Common cause was found.

Dynasties were merged, while others were obliterated.

Kingdoms rose and fell.

These people blended with the local population.

They mixed with new arrivals, and they did what the people of the island had always done.

They adapted and they survived.

But it wasn't easy.

One by one, the kingdoms of the Heptarchy had fallen.

But under the direction of Alfred's children, what crawled out of the ashes of war was a

single kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons.

And after centuries of catastrophe and neor annihilation, now there was just one Anglo-Saxon royal

family.

Alfred's family.

But unity is more than simply the absence of borders.

Even Atholstan, who is as much an emperor as a king, had struggled to unite this

fractious, clannish kingdom.

The very character which had brought the house of west-ex to power, their ruthlessness,

...