The Beautiful Girl and the History Class

Chief Ragusa: Thanks for both sets of information. If the MFA in Creative Writing doesn't happen, I'd considered a MA and/or PhD in Middle Ages or somespecificcountrythatwillbewrittenaboutlater history.

Llywelyn: I hadn't noticed the subliminal advertising. Good catch! I wish I'd known about the Welsh punishment for traitors when I played the Meriadocs, though to be fair I think Torstein of Agder did something similiar during his Regency of Error. I thought of Badon Hill myself but didn't include it. Maybe it'll appear later. Who knows?

Deaghaidh: Oh I'm sure he'll chat her up sooner rather than later, esp. considering his earlier alluded to rep. But creeping up on chicas is, like history, a matter of the proper timing

Walter Model: Haha, it wouldn't surprise me. One of the universities I've been to, there was this woman who was so unfortunately ugly that I nicknamed Ogre Woman to a few friends of mine.. and all of them agreed that it was quite the apropos sobriquet. I'm glad you like the reading thus far

JimboIX: The hottest girls tend to be in health fields or business majors (if my Marketing years are any judge), which is unfortunate in the first instance as nurses depress me and in the second case, they have a marked tendency to be materialistic and ice princesses. Oh and thanks! I rather like this one myself.

J. Passepartout: Pillage, plunder, loot, and rape in a burly, pagan manner?

Rocketman: Since OT's been co-opted, I'll take this opportunity to get all up in there. Oh and the obligatory pls.pst.pix

Hajji Giray I: Can I recommend the fraternity life?

Fulcrumvale: I've been on a grand total of one actually date in my life and I made $20 on it, but that's another story for another day. And yeeeah... the feminists and I have a mutual animosity of such degree that I deliberately play the misogynistic male chauvinist around them just to piss them off.

Llywelyn: *hisses at the mention of Ayn Rand, third only to Anne Rice and Emily Dickinson in his most hated writers list* FWIW, Wiccan females are pretty cool as a lot. It's when you combine Wiccan and feminist in the same body that things can get a little hairy.

Hajji Giray I: Yeah it's been trendy amongst the ultra-liberals in the ten years I've been in university. Given that I'm a moderate, I naturally despise it.

GhostWriter: The whole plot?! Don't make me sell my soul and dignity by having me write romance novels just yet! *insertbiggrinsmileysoIcanpostthis*

The weekend involved the usual beer pong playing, weed smoking, drunken partying, and everything else done to forget all the hassle of the school week. The only change in my routine is I didn't sleep with a random girl like I usually did. I couldn't get that girl from my history class out of my head.

Funny that I spent three days thinking about her and then I was two minutes late Monday morning, my head still throbbing a little from a nasty hangover. I slid into a back-row seat because I wasn't stupid enough to sit in the front where Morengay could see me.

When I looked up at the front of the room, I thought I was still stoned because it looked like there were -two- Prof Morengays. But then I looked a little closer and realized that the second prof was shorter, stockier, and had a red beard.

"Good morning, class" began Morengay brightly, "For the Viking era lecture, I thought I would bring in a guest lecturer so you didn't have to listen to me talk at you all the time. This is Professor Knud Knytling from the University of Copenhagen. He's here this semester as part of a cultural exchange between our two universities and his speciality is medieval history. He's agreed to teach this morning's lecture about Viking-era England."

The burly man nodded and made a short speech thanking Morengay for the opportunity to speak blah blah blah blah. I tuned him out and scanned the room, noting with considerable irritation that the girl wasn't present. As if my morning wasn't bad enough already.

When I finally turned my attention back to our guest, he's already begun his lecture.

"...King Aelle II of Northumbria's murder of Ragnar Lodbrok had severe consequences for his kingdom, for Ragnar's three sons, Ivar the Boneless, Halfdan Ragnarsson, and Ubbe Ragnarsson attacked Northumbria later that year with one of the largest forces of the era, the Great Danish Army, to avenge their father's slaying.

The kingdom of Northumbria fell in a year and by 870, the Vikings had also annexed East Anglia, forever after destroying it as a bastion for the Anglo-Saxons. In 871, another massive army, the Great Summer Army, arrived as reinforcement for the Great Danish area, defeating the Kingdom of Mercia by 874. Halfdan Ragnarsson marched north to conquer the Picts, which he did, eventually becoming King of Northumberland in 875.

In 876, Halfdan joined forces with the leader of the southern Viking armies, Guthrum, to penetrate deeper into Anglo-Saxon territory. Although Halfdan fell in battle in 877, Guthrum pressed on, only to be defeated by Alfred who the English call Great even though he really wasn't in 878. In the ensuing Treaty of Wedmore, Guthrum agreed to convert to Christianity and accept Alfred as his ruler in exchange for being allowed to rule the former territory of East Anglia and some ancillary possessions.

Despite Alfred's success in stopping the Viking expansion, the Danish presence was there to stay. In addition to ruling the southeast and the northeast kingdoms of the former East Anglia and Northumberland, there was also the Kingdom of Jorvik, founded by the incomparable Halfdan around the city the English call York. They also split the old Kingdom of Mercia between the English half in the west and the Danish half in the east.

The Vikings also influenced the English language, contributing many names and words that are still in use in today's modern English.

This concludes my part of today's lecture, because I know your Professor Morengay wants to get you to the Battle of Hastings."

Prof Morengay grinned then as he stepped to the lectern after Knytling and said the strangest thing:

"Knud Knytling, you're a genius!"

I didn't join in the hilarity that followed. It wasn't really that funny.

After the laughter died down, our regularly scheduled lecturer took on his teaching voice.

"While the Vikings did achieve impressive things, their time was not to last. Alfred the Great's defeat of Guthrum signaled that the time of the Danish as a power was coming to an end. In the decades that followed, Alfred and his successors Edward and most importantly Athelstan, built upon that watershed victory, the first truly unified kingdom of England occurring under Athelstan the Glorious.

Athelstan acquired a superb initial powerbase, inheriting the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex. He strengthened that base by, much like Offa had centuries before, making a shrewd political marriage, in this case wedding his sister to the Viking king Sithric of York.

When Sithric died a year later, Athelstan took advantage, invading the Viking kingdom in the ensuing moment of weakness and annexing it into his domains. This gave him more territory than any previous British king and his sphere of influence grew to encompass the island as a whole when the other kings in Britain, including the king of the Cornish, the king of the Scots, and the king of the Welsh, among others, agreed to recognize him as their superior sometime in the 930s.

Despite the fact that Britain was at long last united under a ruler, the center, to parphrase Yeats, did not hold and Athelstan's successors were forced to deal with a dominion that fractured and re-formed repeatedly over the subesequent years. It was not until Edgar in 973 that the English kingdom was at last secure as a perpetuting, stable territory.

What wasn't secure was the line of succession. Although Edgar's son Ethelred the Unready inherited the throne, he lost control of the kingdom to King Sweyn I of Denmark, who invaded England in retribution for Ethelred's foolhardy decision to slay all the Danes in England, save for those who lived in the area that Guthrum had ruled over, called the Danelaw. Clearly Ethelred did not learn from a certain Northumbrian king's previous mistake.

This resulted in much of the 11th century being a battle for the English throne between the descendants of Ethelred and Sweyn respectively. a situation that reached its boiling point when Edward the Confessor died without heir in a year many of you are no doubt familiar with, 1066.

Harold Godwinson, Edward's deathbed appointed successor, was believed to be have bloodlines tracing back to Athelred on his father's side and much less tenuously connected by marriage to Sweyn I on his mother's side.

William of Normandy, a true bastard and illegimate, on the other hand, was the grandnephew of Queen Emma, who was wife to both King Ethelred and King Canute, son of Sweyn I, who ruled England following his father's death. As his claim was much more readily verified than Harold's, this gave him much more considerable strength in the succession dispute.

There were other claimants, most notably Edgar Atheling, grandson of King Edmund II of England, who succeeded the original unifier Aethelstan. Unfortunately, he was not yet old enough to succeed the throne, and so despite having the strongest claim, and despite being named the heir apparent by Edward the Confessor at one point, he was never able to realize his right to rule.

Instead, it fell to what so often has decided disputes in the history of the world, that of right by might and trial of arms. William, as many of you know, prevailed in this contest, defeating Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Harold died during that battle and Edgar submitted to William in early December. With all rivals out of the way, William was crowned King of England on Christmas Day 1066 and thus the Norman era began.

But it must be remembered the old Saxon guard was not wholly defeated and the Scots and Welsh remained free of Norman oversight...

This concludes England. Wednesday we'll be taking a look at one of the other major powers in Europe, the Byzantine Empire."

I never cleared out of class so fast. My headache was much worse after all those names and dates.

phargle: Lipstick lesbian then. Gotcha.

Deaghaidh: I remember that thread quite well. A great read. As far as backstory before actual AAR, I'd planned on touring a few of the major areas in lecture from prehistory to 1066 before going into the true CK part of it. Just to give people some things to think about before I put it to class vote as it were to decide what to focus on post-1066.

Chief Ragusa: After 1066, all bets are off with regards to real history.