Edwin of Northumbria

Edwin was king of Deira and later ruler of a united Northumbria in the early seventh century. He expanded Northumbrian power, married the Christian princess Æthelburh of Kent and accepted baptism in 627 under the influence of Bishop Paulinus. He was killed at the Battle of Hatfield Chase in 633 by the allied forces of Cadwallon of Gwynedd and Penda of Mercia.

Edwin is the central figure of Edoardo Albert’s Edwin: High King of Britain, which turns the fragmentary evidence for his reign into a narrative of exile, conquest, conversion and fragile overlordship. Fiction about Edwin must reconcile ecclesiastical sources that celebrate his baptism with the violence of early medieval kingship and the resentment created by Northumbrian expansion.