All of them die from the plague, leaving Uhtred to end up in Book 13 War Lord with Benedetta – an Italian woman who had been rescued after being captured and enslaved as a child.īenedetta refuses to marry Uhtred and so becomes the unofficial Lady of Bebbanburg, while Uhtred is forced by the King to marry Eldrida, the young widow of a Cumbrian Ealdorman whose lands and men are ceded to Uhtred through the union. She contracts the plague after leaving Bebbanburg to care for Uhtred’s son-in-law and grandchildren, who’d caught the disease. Eventually, Eadith and Uhtred marry, and when he retakes his ancestral fortress, she becomes the Lady of Bebbanburg.īy the end of Book 12 Sword of Kings, however, Eadith goes the way of Uhtred’s other past loves Brida, Iseult, Gisela and Aethelflaed. When Uhtred suffers from an infected wound he received in a bout with Cnut, it’s Eadith who mystically cures him using Cnut’s blade. Aethelflaed isn’t pleased and orders Uhtred to get rid of her former husband’s mistress, but he won’t. In book eight The Empty Throne, Eadith and Uhtred become lovers the night before Aethelred’s funeral. But with season five finished, a feature-length film on the way, and three novels still unadapted, what can the books teach us about what destiny has in store for Uhtred next? Final warning – major book spoilers for instalments 11, 12 and 13 ahead. The TV adaptation diverges so regularly from Cornwell’s books in fact, that it’s probably folly to use them to try to predict the show’s next moves. In the Saxon Stories, dastardly, scheming Aethelhelm doesn’t take his own life and after he dies, is replaced by his dastardly, scheming son Aethelhelm the Younger… Sigtryggr survives in the books, but not in the show, while the reverse is true for Aldhelm. Lady Aelswith, for one, retired to a convent and died soon after the death of her husband King Alfred in the Saxon Stories, but is alive and well and planning a move to Bebbanburg by the season five finale. Uhtred’s route home, and who else is left standing by the time he gets there, differs from version to version.
In their final moments, he looks out over the water (with Finan in the book, alone on the show) and feels that he’s finally home.
Season five and Book 10 The Flame Bearer both end with Uhtred having regained his ancestral seat of Bebbanburg. Kings die and battles are fought, but exactly when, where, how, and who the casualties are, can vary.
Both prioritise their own storytelling over slavish adherence to source material, and so wind different paths towards the same destinations. Netflix’s The Last Kingdom approaches fidelity to Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Stories in much the same way that Cornwell’s novels approach fidelity to historical fact – as inspiration, not obligation. Warning: contains spoilers for The Last Kingdom season five finale and Bernard Cornwell’s War of the Wolf, Sword of Kings and War Lord.
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