King Aelle of Northumbria in ‘Vikings’
I am a simple man at heart but full of conviction.
~King Aelle of Northumbria in Vikings
Table of Contents
Short Description
Main antagonist of the main storyline in the first 4 seasons of History Channel’s Vikings (2013-2017).
Historically, Aelle was a King of Northumbria during the 9th century when England was divided into several petty kingdoms.
He fell victim to an attack by an unexpectedly large army of Vikings near York. Norse sagas relate that he has been subjected to execution by the infamous blood eagle torture by Ivar the Boneless after killing the latter’s father Ragnar Lothbrok by throwing him into a pit of poisonous snakes.
Historians currently favour the view found in other reports that King Aelle died on the battlefield.
In the show, King Aelle is the first Saxon king whose kingdom is attacked and pillaged several times by the Vikings led by the legendary Viking leader Ragnar Lothbrok. King Aelle’s attempts to defend his territory and people fail and his brother is made captive. Hence, the king is forced to negotiate to win time.
Meanwhile, he calls more men to arms, but a surprise attack on the Viking camp fails as well and his brother’s corpse is sent to his castle. King Aelle has to pay a high ransom to persuade the Vikings to leave his kingdom. This course of events turns him into an irreconcilable lifelong enemy of the Vikings and especially their leader Ragnar.
King Aelle is a quite typical man and king of his time and, therefore, not too sympathetic to a modern audience. But he is honest, true to his principles and caring about his duties and not more brutal or selfish than other characters of the show.
Basically, he is in the wrong place at the wrong time and facing a challenge he cannot handle, a victim of circumstances and personal limitations who has no chance to escape his gloomy fate. Based on this he can be seen as a tragic figure.
Ivan appears in 12 episodes throughout all 4 Seasons. In Season 3, he has little screentime, but memorable scenes worth watching that also provide some valuable insights into the character and his situation.
Relative to the volume of the show and the importance of the character for the fate of the protagonist, overall screentime is limited, but each and every scene is great to watch and it is much more material than can be seen in a movie. The character is epic and fascinating with more layers and complexity than is obvious at first glance, and very suitable to convey Ivan’s charisma.
Family and Biography
Historically, we do not know much about King Aelle of Northumbria except that he did not rule for a long time and that his memory might have been distorted under the influence of the Viking invaders’ successors during their fights with those of King Aelle. It is also not clear if he was actually tortured to death by the infamous blood eagle execution (historicity of which is also disputed) or rather died fighting in the battle for York. (For the historical King Aelle see Wikipedia.)
In the show, he appears to be firmly in power at the time of Ragnar’s second raid and remains so until his own death roughly twenty years later. There is no sign of Aelle having usurped the throne or being regarded as an illegitimate ruler or a tyrant. On the contrary, he is presented as well-respected by his noblemen who speak without fear in his council.
In the first season, King Aelle’s (probably younger) brother is a general who leads his brother’s army. They also talk about a third “youngest” brother and King Aelle has a wife Ealswith and a son Egbert. In the second season, a daughter Judith suddenly appears while from the third season onwards King Aelle’s son disappears and it is made clear that he does not have a male heir any longer. In the second part of the fourth season, a second daughter is introduced who has no name but has been identified by fans with the historical Aelle’s daughter Blaeja.
King Aelle himself is probably in his early forties in the first season or possibly in his late thirties if we stretch it. Hence he is high in his fifties or more probably sixty-plus at the end of his life which is a high age at those times.
He allies with Ecbert of Wessex out of necessity in Season 2, sealing the alliance by a marriage between his daughter Judith and Ecbert’s only son and heir Aethelwulf which results in two grandsons for King Aelle, Aethelred and Alfred. However, due to his increasingly tense relationship with his daughter Judith who falls prey to Ecbert’s manipulation and because of the distance between Wessex and Northumbria, King Aelle never gets to build a real relationship with his grandsons.
In Seasons 2 and 3, he provides troops and participates in the defense of Wessex against the Vikings and in the war against Mercia that is won with the help of Viking mercenaries on Ecbert’s suggestion.
In Season 4A King Aelle visits Wessex over advent and Christmas, discusses the current situation in Mercia and further steps with Ecbert and Queen Kwenthrith of Mercia and discovers Judith’s liaison with her father-in-law. In the end, he attends Ecbert’s triumphal coronation as King of Wessex and Mercia after the latter has won Mercia by ruse and betrayal against Aelle whereby Ecbert destroys the alliance between Wessex and Northumbria.
A fairly successful ruler on his own, King Aelle stays on the throne of Northumbria and seems to rule more or less peacefully for roughly another ten years until Ragnar comes back to England for revenge against Ecbert (who has betrayed him as well by having the Viking settlement in Wessex destroyed that had been part of their treaty) in Season 4B. As Ecbert is not ready to kill Ragnar – who has lost trust at home to the point that having himself killed in England is his only chance to induce his sons to take a large army to England to avenge him – they decide to hand him over to King Aelle.
Hence, King Aelle finally gets to fulfill his oath from twenty years before and to execute Ragnar in a pit of poisonous snakes for his crimes committed in Northumbria as well as for the murder of King Aelle’s brother and the humiliation of the king himself.
In consequence, Ragnar’s sons attack Northumbria with the largest army they can muster and defeat the hugely outnumbered army of King Aelle. He is violently humiliated and tortured to death by Bjorn ripping his back open and cutting his ribs from his spine with an axe.
Thus, King Aelle of Northumbria ends up as a “blood eagle”, hung up in the trees above the pit where he has executed Ragnar before. We never see the reaction of his wife who seemed to have a loving relationship with him or of his younger daughter, neither do we ever hear about their further fate. Judith and his grandsons survive as they go into hiding with Aethelwulf after a lost battle but never honour his ultimate sacrifice for the Saxon cause with a word or show the shock and outrage to be expected on the Saxon side regarding such barbarity towards their kin.
List of family relations:
- Wife Ealswith/Elsewith (S1-4B)
2. Son Egbert (S1-2)
3. Brother Lord Aethelwulf (S1)
4. unnamed younger brother (S1, mention only)
5. Daughter Judith (S2-5B)
6. unnamed younger daughter (S4B)
7. grandsons Aethelred and Alfred by Judith and Aethelwulf (S3-5A, 6B)
King Aelle’s Story in the Show
Season 1
Season 1
In the first season, King Aelle has been styled “the most important king of four English kingdoms during the 8th century”. Athelstan describes him to Ragnar as
a great king – a powerful king
in episode 3 of Season 1.
Indeed he is the ONLY Saxon king who has been reported to ever have had an encounter with Ragnar Lothbrok (whose historicity is doubtful anyway).
We first meet him in episode 4 ‘Trial’ during Ragnar’s second raid of Northumbria. King Aelle is informed of the presence of the intruders after an encounter at the shore with the king’s rather peaceful men has ended in a massacre caused by the overly nervous Vikings.
The king tries to figure out who these strangers are and where they come from (Frankia seems to be a familiar option that has to be discarded due to their description), but the guy who has previously escaped Ragnar’s band is not of much help here.
Hence, King Aelle is left marvelling throughout much of the season at the reasons of this calamity that has so unexpectedly befallen his kingdom.
However, a letter of “Abbot Alcuin” to the king about the atrocities that had happened at the monastery of Lindisfarne, and the link Lord Wigea suggests between the pagans responsible for that attack and this new offense suffice to convince King Aelle of the need to take action against the intruders.
They’re not welcome in my kingdom,
he understandably states. We soon learn that this means sending out armed troops against Ragnar’s band to block their way back to their ship and kill them on spot.
Unfortunately for the Saxons, the Vikings are using a shield wall to protect themselves and are fighting hard with the result that the Saxon soldiers are killed and their leaders escape on their horses.
(*Historical side note: The 8th-century scholar Alcuin of York‘s letters to fellow clergymen, in fact, are the only remaining reports about the attack on Lindisfarne in actual history and the letter that is addressed to King Aelle in the show quotes him almost verbatim.*)
After this failed attempt to fend the Vikings off, King Aelle is enraged and confronts his general Lord Wigea as he does not buy the latter’s explanations for his defeat, dismissing them as superstitious excuses and blaming the general’s own failure and incompetence.
Wigea is also unable to bring any new information except for the name of the Northmen’s leader which the king thereby learns: Ragnar.
For now, the Vikings are gone, but after two successful raids to Northumbria, they are certain to return. First, Ragnar has to defeat his earl and to take his place, but after he has become earl, nothing can hold him back from raiding England again – this time with three ships instead of one.
In episode 6 ‘Burial of the Dead’, King Aelle learns of the return of the Northmen and faces yet another unpleasant surprise: They can use their ships to sail up the River Tyne and thus come threateningly close to King Aelle’s royal villa this time. The king, however, is more than ready to beat the Northmen back forcefully this time.
His first measure in preparation for this endeavour is to rid himself of his general Wigea who is obviously way too fearful of the Vikings to his king’s taste. The man ends up in King Aelle’s newly established snake pit. For a discussion of this execution as a preventive psychological measure in preparation for the next Viking attack rather than a punishment see farther below.
Up to this point, King Aelle has been presented as an energetic, forceful and irascible king with an alert sensitivity for the psychological dimension of warfare who will not accept excuses, who does not hesitate to take drastic measures against his own men if necessary and who has no intention to give in to the Viking threat easily even though he is visibly unhappy about and appalled by their aggression.
It is in episode 7 ‘A King’s Ransom’ that we see him really concerned for the first time and get a glimpse at how much this unprecedented challenge weighs him down and how the repeatedly failing attempts at defending his kingdom start to erode his confidence in the order of the world.
The episode starts off with the arrival of King Aelle’s brother, Lord Aethelwulf, who is supposed to lead his army into battle as he is considered to be the kingdom’s best general. The king is not only overjoyed to see his brother but also relieved that he has come as their younger brother has already deserted him and fled to the neighbouring kingdom of Mercia.
Hence, it becomes clear that King Aelle meanwhile regards the Vikings, who have come dangerously close to his own residence, as a serious threat now that calls for his best man and that he has been worried that he might not get this support. His reaction to his wife’s obvious fear also shows again how uncomfortable he is and that he is not completely convinced of positive prospects even with his brother by his side.
It is, therefore, no wonder that his first reaction to the news about his brother’s defeat is a desperate
God help us! God help Northumbria!
That is closely followed by a short outbreak of rage directed at one of his nobles and at the world as a whole:
Why have they come to torment us?!
That only shows once more under how much strain he is now. When the bishop suggests that the Northmen might be a punishment of God for sins ad transgressions, it is plainly visible how unsettling this thought is for the king (and it seems to stick with him to the end of his life as we will see farther below).
King Aelle then proceeds to ask his nobles for advice and later we will find that the suggestion of one of his nobles has given him an idea on how to buy the time needed to prepare another attempt to get rid of the Vikings. Back to a pragmatic and energetic approach, he states that he needs to think about the advice given and that he also has called more men to arms if needed.
Next, we find the king in prayer, grappling with his calamity and intensely imploring God to assist him. It is here that his image of God as a wrathful, belligerent lord and his personal approach to spirituality through willpower that is tragically doomed to failure become apparent for the first time.
King Aelle is the typical medieval warrior king, exactly the type of person who would have been most likely successful at placing himself into a position of power in those days and despite his apparent efforts to get through to a higher meditative level in prayer, the realms of spiritual wisdom and intellectual subtleties are alien to his forceful and straightforward nature, hardened by the tough circumstances and obviously not mitigated by any beneficial kind of instruction through his clergymen.
As the Vikings have captured King Aelle’s brother alive and thus have a hostage to add to the pressure of a lack of armed forces, in the end, the king is forced to invite the Vikings to his villa for supper in order to stall for time by negotiations or maybe come to terms with the intruders. This first direct encounter between Ragnar and King Aelle expectedly does not go well.
Against the background of even a modest royal Saxon court, the Vikings come across as rude and uncultured and King Aelle’s visible disgust feels completely justified while Ragnar does not seem to take the King of Northumbria seriously and, undiplomatically, does not grant him the slightest chance to save face while proposing an obviously enormous ransom in exchange for the king’s brother and a peaceful retreat.
Even though King Aelle is a most reluctant victim of blackmail, he decides not to shed any Northmen blood in his hall which would also jeopardize his brother’s life even though it would have rid him of the raiders for good. Hence, he agrees under the condition that one of the Vikings becomes Christian and the Vikings remain peaceful in their camp until the ransom has been prepared. Rollo volunteers much to Ragnar’s displeasure.
However, the Vikings do not show any respect or seriousness during Rollo’s baptism (who thereby acquires the Christian name of Rolf) and King Aelle is well aware of it.
As soon as his new troops are ready, King Aelle tries a surprise attack on the Vikings camp but Ragnar is prepared and fends the Saxon soldiers off once more. Lord Aethelwulf is sent to his brother’s residence dead in a disrespectful way and the king is now forced to pay the ransom just to make sure that the Vikings leave his kingdom.
King Aelle has been portrayed throughout the first season as a man who is not especially aggressive or ambitious but rather satisfied with his small kingdom and intent on defending it against a new aggressive enemy while at the same time struggling to understand the nature of this unprecedented heathen threat and to make sense of his repeated failures. But by this blow and humiliation Ragnar has brought him to the point where he turns into an unforgiving deadly enemy of the Viking leader.
While watching a smirking Ragnar depart by ship down the river Tyne, King Aelle, embittered, swears his famous oath of vengeance, thereby providing a major buildup for the further confrontation between Ragnar and his nemesis:
I swear before God Almighty, I declare war eternal on the Northman Ragnar Lothbrok. I swear to our Lord Jesus Christ and to the Blessed Virgin that one day, I will avenge myself on him and bring him to justice and to death, so help me God!
Season 2
Season 2
Despite this promising development towards the end of the first season that leaves the audience at the edge of their seats with regard to further confrontations between the Viking protagonist and the Saxon king who is widely known as Ragnar’s nemesis, Season 2 presents us with a pretty long wait until we finally meet King Aelle again in episode 7 ‘Blood Eagle’.
After King Aelle’s infamous snake pit has already been introduced as a horrible instrument of execution in Season 1 and demonstrated on the Saxon noble Lord Wigea, now it is the likewise legendary and horrid execution method of the blood eagle that is explained and demonstrated on Jarl Borg in this episode.
On the Saxon side, King Aelle, obviously aware of his need for support in dealing with the Vikings and informed about new attacks on the kingdom of Wessex, arrives there in the company of his family in order to negotiate an alliance with the Saxon King Ecbert.
He has been elaborately introduced in the preceding episodes as an opposite type of king: elegant, educated and viciously scheming, yet leaving the actual business of warfare to his adult son Aethelwulf.
After some hesitation on the part of a suspicious King Aelle who fears Ecbert’s thirst for power with good reason, the Saxon kings end up with an agreement about a marriage alliance and concerted action against the Kingdom of Mercia – an unstable neighbour of both kingdoms – in addition to forming a united front against the attacking Vikings.
Hence, King Aelle’s teenage daughter Judith – who is introduced in this episode for the first time while his half-grown son Egbert is reduced to a fleeting presence in the arrival scene – marries Ecbert’s son and heir Aethelwulf. This is probably not as spontaneous a decision as it looks as King Aelle must have brought her to Wessex for a reason, probably with the possibility of a marriage alliance already in mind.
After this arrangement, King Aelle returns to Northumbria with the rest of his family, to assemble troops against the Viking force that has invaded Wessex. While Ecbert waits for his return, he has Athelstan translate Caesar in search of a strategy.
On King Aelle’s return, the combined Saxon forces defeat the united Viking army of two jarls (Ragnar and Lagertha) and a king (Horik) and take a badly injured Rollo as a hostage after King Aelle identifies him on the battlefield.
King Aelle is overjoyed by the victory and wants to annihilate the weakened Northmen but Ecbert curbs his enthusiasm with objections and the suggestion to strike a deal with the Vikings instead. He wants to use their fighting skills for his own endeavours in Mercia and persuades King Aelle to negotiate.
Only half convinced and not very happy with these prospects, King Aelle agrees and ends up as a hostage in the Viking camp during negotiations – an idea of Ecbert that he cannot reject without losing face despite the undeniable danger for his life posed by Ecbert’s lack of enthusiasm for his Northumbrian ally.
Unfortunately, we do not get to see what happens in the Viking camp while Ecbert negotiates the use of any interested Viking warrior as a mercenary for a piece of land where some of the Northmen can settle.
The last we see of King Aelle in this season after his safe return from the Viking camp is his amusement at Kwenthrith of Mercia’s way of “checking” the Norse warriors in the courtyard of Ecbert’s villa.
Season 3
Season 3
In the next season, King Aelle makes only three short but insightful appearances. We find him as a guest at the court of Wessex again when Ragnar has helped Aethelwulf with Ecbert’s and King Aelle’s troops to defeat Kwenthrith’s uncle and brother in Mercia.
He welcomes his son-in-law cordially but notices immediately that something is wrong with his unenthusiastic daughter’s marriage.
In fact, Judith has meanwhile started a secret affair with Athelstan that eventually results in the birth of her second son Alfred. King Aelle, however, does not know that. Therefore, he tries to talk sense into her by making her aware of her duties as a royal daughter and wife and of what is at stake if she does anything foolish.
Our alliance with Wessex rests upon YOU. Not on your shoulders but on your womb. Thankfully, you have already delivered a son and hopefully more will follow. Then, our dynasty will be secured.
He thereby exposes his dependence on her proper behaviour and the fact that he has lost his own heir since we last met him as his dynasty is now reliant on his daughter’s offspring.
When Kwenthrith, now Queen of Mercia beside her younger brother, poisons the latter in the presence of the whole court, the royal Northumbrian guest, and the Viking leaders, everyone is shocked and starts pouring out their wine cups.
King Aelle, who has watched what first looked like a heartwarming scene between loving siblings with a broad, jovial smile, looks especially shocked for a moment but then, in an instinctive, fatherly gesture, takes the cup out of Judith‘s hand and pours her wine away before he does the same with his own cup.
Season 4A
Season 4A
After another overly long wait, we finally meet King Aelle again in Season 4A, once again in Wessex where he visits for advent and stays over Christmas – closing with Epiphany.
His visit starts with a verbal clash with Queen Kwenthrith of Mercia who has been freed from captivity by Aethelwulf. Once again, Mercia has to be conquered and King Aelle is not amused about the queen‘s affair with Ragnar and the prospect of his bastard as the heir of Mercia.
Another unsettling discovery for the King of Northumbria is the behaviour of his daughter Judith and his son-in-law Aethelwulf during the celebrations for Epiphany: He understands instantly that Judith‘s marriage is damaged and that she does not only have an extramarital affair but even one with her father-in-law.
Despite his visible disgust, King Aelle still contents himself with a verbal outburst of anger and embarrassment, loudly and vehemently scolding an unimpressed Judith.
He also agrees to raise troops for another attack on Mercia and even kisses Judith Goodbye, clearly blaming Ecbert more than his daughter for her shortcomings as she is a woman and it seems that he, in accordance with the views of the times, does not expect too much moral strength from them.
Women are frail
Is his remark to end the discussion. Judith barely holds herself back from replying in front of her children who get a grandfatherly advice and Goodbye kiss from King Aelle before he leaves Wessex for this time.
However, Ecbert is already plotting to take over Mercia all by himself – and a look by King Aelle in the council where the further strategy for Mercia is being discussed shows that he has well noticed Ecbert‘s intonation and probably knows that he is up to something but cannot figure out what it is.
When King Aelle reappears, Ecbert has done exactly that: Taken Mercia over without force and gotten rid of Queen Kwenthrith by a dagger in the back administered by Judith. Now, he is being crowned as the King of Wessex and Mercia by his bishop. King Aelle grumpily stands by and notices his own daughter‘s delight upon Ecbert‘s triumph that, at the same time, marks her father‘s betrayal and humiliation.
As holding anything back is not in King Aelle‘s nature, he confronts Ecbert directly and does not accept the latter’s attempt to veil his treachery by smart words but his tone makes clear that he realizes his helplessness against Ecbert‘s ruse.
You always have a clever answer. The fact is: You betrayed me!
This eruption of anger does not help him much as Ecbert just changes to a superior attitude, lecturing King Aelle about the changing character of the world and rubbing his dominance in. King Aelle is visibly beaten, offended, and in a gloomy mood but cannot do anything about it.
Season 4B
Season 4B
We finally meet King Aelle again when Ragnar is delivered to him on a silver platter (or rather: in chains and a cage), courtesy of Ecbert who has plotted with Ragnar to satisfy both their needs: Ragnar’s need to get himself killed in England and Ecbert’s need to avoid the vengeance of his sons. (Unfortunately for Ecbert, he will find himself on the losing end in this case.)
King Aelle, however, knows nothing about Ecbert’s ulterior motives and rejoices to get a chance to execute his life-long enemy eventually. After promising Ragnar that
You will atone for your sins against my countrymen!
he has the cage suspended over a pit in the ground of a clearing in his forests not too far away from his royal villa and encourages his likewise happy soldiers to torment Ragnar with spears and torches from beneath during the night.
The next day, he holds a memorable speech to Ragnar as well as to his soldiers, stating:
Today is a good day, Ragnar Lothbrok. For today, every innocent Christian, man, woman, and child that you and your pagans slaughtered will escape from their purgatory and sing Hallelujah.
It is completely clear that he regards this unexpected “gift” as a divine sign that God has finally decided to restore the order of the world and has chosen him to carry it out:
God has chosen me, without doubt, as the instrument of his judgements.
Consequently, he does his level best to get Ragnar to
Ask for absolution!
by beating, a hot iron, and a cross cut into his forehead, much of it administered by the king himself with increasing signs of frustration and desperation, visible shock at Ragnar’s non-reaction to the hot iron applied to his body included.
Despite all his efforts, King Aelle gets nothing out of the Viking than suppressed grunting and an ominous
How the little piggies will grunt when they hear how the old boar suffered.
The next day, while he has the pit filled with snakes for Ragnar’s execution, King Aelle, in prayer, exhibits the full amount of insecurity that Ragnar has managed to instill in him once more. It is clear that he tries to reassure himself that he is on the right side and about to do the right thing.
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands … Surely, the righteous will give thanks upon Thy name, the upright will dwell in your presence.
His intonation, however, says more about his essential insecurity than his words.
As always, the prayer seems to give him the strength needed to continue on his path: King Aelle returns to his throne and pavillon that have been set up on a raised spot close to the new snake pit two nights before.
Yet he is decent enough to allow Ragnar to hold a last speech expressing triumph before he has the Viking dropped into the pit where he dies from the snake bites to King Aelle’s final satisfaction.
While Ivar brings the news about Ragnar’s death in England to Kattegat and the sons start to muster a huge army for their intended revenge expedition, Judith visits her family in Northumbria to warn her father – or rather to visit Ragnar’s grave under the influence of Ecbert’s old age delusions (possibly brought about by an onset of dementia).
King Aelle’s bitter disappointment with Judith clearly shows in his tone when he starts the conversation:
To what do we owe the honour of your visit.
Unsurprisingly, he is not too impressed by Judith’s concerns as he is not a fearful type of person and, knowing about the probability of a revenge expedition, has already taken precautions for the option of a new Viking incursion – as much as imaginable for him at this point.
He also suspects this to be an attempt by Ecbert to drag him back into an alliance and, after the latter’s betrayal years before and the alienation and dishonouring of his daughter at Ecbert’s hands, he is not inclined to reinstate this alliance.
I have no wish or need to ally with such a degenerate monarch.
Judith just fuels the fire as she talks back to both her parents in a similarly arrogant tone and mocks her father’s religious scruples.
In the end, the whole family visits the pit where King Aelle has executed Ragnar as Judith is eager to see it. When she asks about the pit, her father confirms with discernible relief:
Yes, thank God! Just in this place, just here! This is where the pagan died.
Of course, he is not pleased to hear his own daughter declare the pit “a sacred place” and asks her if she is mad. No wonder that her final plea to heed her warning – followed by uncanonical advice to her sister as a further trigger – is only met with a partly enervated and desperate, partly defiant look by her father. And thus they part.
The next time we meet King Aelle is when he is informed that “a Great Heathen Army” has landed on Northumbria’s shores. The scout has seen the ships land with his own eyes and hurried to the royal villa to inform the king.
He disturbs King Aelle during Communion, so the king has a short outbreak of annoyance. But then, he readily accepts that the information is important enough to justify the disturbance and reacts surprisingly politely:
Thank you. Now, get out!
When he turns over to the bishop, he does look decidedly concerned but he instantly collects himself and clarifies his priorities:
The Lord comes before all things.
Yet he still does not look too comfortable even after the Holy Communion.
By the time he prepares for the battle, however, King Aelle has managed to find back to his confidence again as he does his best to reassure his womenfolk – with questionable results.
He explains that the Northmen profit from their reputation as great warriors as it
sows the seeds of fear in those who oppose them.
But as he, King Aelle, is not affected by this irrational fear
they are about to discover that they can no longer attack us with impunity.
He then forcefully sets out to battle with his bishop.
As they arrive on the battlefield, there is only a very small force of Vikings visible and King Aelle already sees himself victorious:
Not such a great army, after all, Mylord Bishop. What do you think, Your Grace? Can we not expect to dispose of these heathens quite easily?
Unfortunately for him, this is not the full army of the Northmen yet and once more of them roll up, led by Floki, the triumphant smile on King Aelle’s face dies in an impressive display of changing emotions, conveyed through masterful, subtle facial expressions as more and more Northmen come in sight.
When the rest of the army floods down the hill, the bishop exclaims in a terrified tone:
God help us!
To which King Aelle dryly replies:
I don’t think He can.
His facial expressions show that he is likewise horrified and understands clearly that his fate and that of his kingdom is sealed, yet he retains his composure and faces his certain doom bravely.
The next time we meet him, right after seeing the Great Heathen Army storm towards King Aelle’s much smaller force, the unfortunate King of Northumbria is being dragged violently through the mud on his back with his feet tied to Ivar’s chariot.
When they arrive at the clearing where King Aelle has executed Ragnar and pull the king up from the ground, he is not only too weak to stand up straight on his own after this rough and disdainful treatment but also visibly in a shock state.
Bjorn, however, wants to know the exact spot where his father died and has no patience to wait for King Aelle to recover. So, he slaps the king in the face, thereby almost sending him back to the ground – if he did not pull him up again by his shirt.
This time, when Bjorn roars at the king to show them the spot, King Aelle, feebly hanging in the grip of the Vikings and obviously intimidated to an odd degree and totally broken, nods hastily with a whimper. The Vikings drag him by the collar down to the pit where he shows them the exact spot and confirms it in a pitiful posture with a cowed nod.
While the Ragnarssons open the pit and get ever more angry by its sight, King Aelle’s desperation reaches the point where he makes a last attempt to save himself: he offers a bargain.
How much gold and silver do you want to spare my life? Name your price! Anything – anything!
But Ivar clarifies that his father’s worth cannot be matched by precious metals and King Aelle has to pay a different price.
While the King of Northumbria actually is about to cry, Floki approaches him. Sigurd, who has held him at the point of his axe and had grabbed him by the collar with the other hand for the whole time, now lets go of him as Floki grabs his shirt.
After a very short moment of wrestling with little resistance from a weak and desperate King Aelle, Floki throws him down to his knees and scares him to death, saying in his slightly mad voice:
I have been told your god is a carpenter – and guess what? So am I.
King Aelle whimpers in horror, his face a terrified grimace – from which a cut propels the story forward to the moment when the Ragnarssons hold King Aelle down with united force, the latter leaning forward over the trunk of a massive, cut tree, and Floki nails his hands to the trunk with large carpenter nails while the king screams in agony.
After this “crucifixion”, Bjorn rips his shirt open from the back and slowly approaches King Aelle, who is panting heavily in his immobilized state with his eyes darting around in panic, with a glowing knife. As he thrusts the knife in King Aelle’s back, the victim writhes with pain and a monumental scream that echoes through space as far as Wessex and Kattegat.
Bjorn cuts along King Aelle’s spine and rips his back open, then proceeds to severe his ribs with an axe, hacking into the king’s back like a butcher while King Aelle is convulsed with pain, time and again, screaming on top of his lungs until he grows weaker and weaker and finally dies a silent death. Ivar is staring into his eyes in fascination during this whole blood eagle procedure.
When King Aelle is dead, Floki mocks him by making the sign of the cross over his corpse, and the Vikings hang him up in the trees above the pit in the posture of crucifixion with his ribs pushing the skin of his back outward, making it look like the wings of an angel.
This is the end of King Aelle of Northumbria in the show and the last time we see his corpse as he is not given a scene where he is taken down and buried by his people.
Disgracefully, he also gets not more than four passing mentions after this, two during the rest of Season 4B, one in Season 5A and one in Season 5B.
King Aelle’s Character Traits
Please note that this section only gives a general overview of King Aelle’s character traits that can be described easily.
More complex aspects of his character that can only be treated appropriately in the context of a more involved discussion of his behaviour in the story are to be found in the more elaborate section devoted to discussing our analysis and interpretation farther below.
Pictures will be added piece by piece for reasons of time economy and the discussion will be improved, refined, and complemented from time to time.
In Season 1 we get to know King Aelle as a devout Christian monarch with an explosive temperament reacting with force and anger to the intrusions of the Vikings and with drastic measures of punishment to failures of his own generals.
He is a forceful and proud personality and a battle-hardened king which is shown by the scars on his face, but it quickly becomes clear that he is completely unprepared for the exceptional new challenge he is facing and his own and his generals‘ strategic abilities fall short of those of Ragnar who leads the Viking warriors.
King Aelle is presented as a typical Medieval monarch with a conventional way of thinking and a mindset focussed on preservation.
Conservatism
He is conservative, both in a positive and a negative sense:
On the positive side, he is satisfied with the status quo and we do not get any hints to political ambitions or for power or riches. His vision is to provide security and peace for his people and a sound religious foundation for life in his kingdom.
The idea of taking over Mercia together with King Ecbert of Wessex is planted by Ecbert and King Aelle just accepts it – and which king would not accept an offer to expand his territory and power at the expense of a rival?
But it is not his idea and while Ecbert seems to see the Viking incursions just as an occasion and pretext to persuade his Northumbrian rival to forge an alliance and assist him with his plans to expand his influence, King Aelle only reluctantly accepts an alliance with Wessex, because he sees Ecbert as an immediate threat to his own power and the security of his kingdom.
So King Aelle allies with Wessex only out of necessity to defend himself from what he obviously regards as a greater threat than Ecbert at the time the alliance is founded while Ecbert is pursuing an agenda of his own.
Later on, we never see Aelle press for overtaking Mercia or making plans to expand his own power. It is, therefore, safe to conclude that King Aelle is not greedy for power or wealth, he just wants to preserve and protect what is already his. Hence, he does not seem to be a threat to anyone outside the sphere of his power until the Vikings invade his kingdom.
His conservatism also is expressed in an honest approach and moral integrity, counting on treaties and trust and not betraying or harming others.
On the negative side, King Aelle‘s conservatism is expressed by the fact that he has no interest or sees no need to transcend the horizons set by his upbringing and cultural environment or to make any changes to his worldview.
This holds true although unexpectedly successful incursions of barbarian strangers into his kingdom, the contact with them during the alliance with the Vikings founded by Ecbert, and King Aelle‘s exposure to Ecbert himself could have incited him to do so or even could have convinced him of the usefulness of getting to know the Vikings better – if only because it is helpful to know the enemy. Yet he displays more knowledge than one might expect at closer examination, especially when talking in their own tongue at the end.
At first sight, it looks as if he does not have the intellectual capacity to venture outside the realm of received knowledge and traditional ways of thinking and hence does not feel an urge to do so. But let us take a closer look at his intelligence:
Intelligence
At closer examination, the situation is not as clear. King Aelle appears to be narrow-minded to a modern audience which is enhanced by a literal understanding of religious commandments that usually do not leave much room for any kind of free-thinking.
But he is a king, not a scholar or clergyman. That means he is a noble and belongs to the warrior rank and at this time the nobles whose task it was to fight and rule were not expected to engage in intellectual skills like reading and disputations.
Therefore, based on his social status and upbringing, we cannot expect King Aelle to think or behave like an intellectual of his time, let alone like a modern one.
But he is, in fact, exceptinally educated as he is able to read as shown in Season 1 when a letter informing about the Vikings‘ attack on the monastery of Lindisfarne is handed over to him and he reads it out aloud. This alone is noteworthy and attests to his rather high standard of education. The same goes for his knowledge of the Vikings’ tongue in his penultimate scene. Furthermore, he does display a fairly high level of intelligence on a couple of occasions.
In Season 2 he is well aware of the threat Ecbert poses to him and the other rulers of petty kingdoms in England and adduces valid objections to Ecbert‘s proposals.
And he is definitely intelligent and sensitive enough to recognize subtle aspects of interpersonal relationships like in Season 3 when he immediately notices that his daughter is uncomfortable with the safe return of her husband and in Season 4A when he takes note of a couple of rather small hints and draws the correct conclusions about the state of his daughter‘s marriage and her relationship to her father-in-law.
He also seems to be well aware of Ecbert plotting something behind his back even though he has no way to find out what it is.
Therefore, the only conclusion that can be drawn from what is visible of his way of thinking is that he may not be an exceptionally intelligent and resourceful man like Ragnar and Ecbert are presented to be (although Ecbert seems to be overrated, see last chapter), but he is far from being an idiot.
What appears as narrow-mindedness is due to a narrow world and worldview that correspond to very limited ways of communication and travel and probably to a natural disposition that does not urge him to venture outside the familiar.
This is unsurprisingly combined with a lack of imagination and a vision aimed at preservation.
Different from Ragnar‘s curiosity and Ecbert‘s immorality and ruthless urge to gain more power, King Aelle‘s vision is limited to a strong desire to provide security for his kingdom and culture and to restore what he perceives as the God-given order of the world and his dignity – lost in his inglorious first encounters with Ragnar.
That basically means that he is striving to achieve a fundamental and lasting victory of God-fearing Christians over heathen savages.
A bigger problem he faces is that his approach prevents him not only from fully understanding the enemy but also from transcending his prejudice that they are not equals which eventually may play a part in him drastically underestimating them with the result of his miserable end.
In Season 1 it is pretty obvious that the Vikings leave him with the impression that he has to do with people who are barely above the state of animals. One has only to watch the scene when the Vikings visit King Aelle‘s villa to see the contrast – even for an audience with a pro-Viking bias their behaviour here looks wild and uncultured.
If we take it that the view voiced by King Aelle‘s brother shortly before his defeat that they are almost wild beasts is shared by the king as well, it is clear that he regards them as inferior. Besides, it is to be expected from a medieval Christian to think of non-Christians as inferior beings who, additionally, can‘t be favoured by God.
And, indeed, up to the very end, King Aelle mostly refers to the Vikings as to „heathens“, „barbarians“ and „pagans“ all of which are pejorative terms expressing contempt and a feeling of superiority. We will come back to King Aelle‘s relationship to the Vikings when analyzing his behaviour in Season 4B which poses a couple of problems.
Integrity
A rather likeable aspect of King Aelle‘s conservatism is that he remains true to his principles and behaves according to a set of traditional values. This results in respect for bonds like a marriage alliance and refraining from betrayal and cheating. He basically is a fair and honourable man who does expect others to abide by the rules like he does.
This is the reason why Ecbert is able to win him over and to convince him to trust Ecbert and the alliance: because a marriage alliance was one of the rare halfway reliable ways to seal a covenant and turn a foe into a friend in those days – by literally becoming one family.
It is also the reason why he is taken by surprise and justifiedly embittered by Ecbert‘s betrayal in Season 4A when the King of Wessex takes over Mercia through a conspiracy, thereby pushing King Aelle aside and thus denying him to take his share as agreed upon in Season 2.
The importance King Aelle assigns to trust in politics shows most clearly in the scene of the kings‘ council with Queen Kwenthrith in Season 4A where the current situation in Mercia and the most dangerous pretender to the throne are discussed: His only contribution to the discussion is the question if Queen Kwenthrith regards the pretender to the throne of Mercia as a trustworthy man.
As King Aelle states subsequently in Season 4A when leaving Wessex after Christmas, he is „a simple man at heart, but full of convictions“. His uncompromising adherence to his values and convictions may look naive and invite mockery in an environment where treachery and deviousness are the most common features to be found in powerful men.
But in itself, it is a sympathetic character trait and could, in a less derogatory vein, rather be labelled as a certain measure of innocence than as naivety.
There may be one objection to this statement: That King Aelle actually does cheat Ragnar in Season 1 when they agree upon a ransom the King of Northumbria has to pay for his captured brother and in order to make the Vikings leave his kingdom without doing further harm, but instead, King Aelle sends empty treasure chests as a distraction followed by an unsuccessful surprise attack.
This may have been intended to show him as a treacherous and unreliable man, but his behaviour in the rest of the show doesn‘t corroborate this assessment.
Therefore, we have to take into consideration that it probably is a singular incident which, consequentially, must be explicable in the framework of his basically honest personality. Two reasons come to mind either of which can explain his behaviour in this case, but most probably both of them concur to produce the reaction described above.
The first reason is that King Aelle is, as mentioned above, does not perceive of the Vikings as equal human beings. They are merely savage brutes to him who have infringed on everything he respects and regards as sacred. Rollo‘s volunteering to be baptized serves to appease the situation during negotiations but does not help much, because it is more than obvious that the Vikings do not attach any importance to it.
Therefore, it is to be expected that King Aelle does not feel bound to keep any promises to them which have been obtained by force anyway.
And this is the second reason: King Aelle has given his consent to pay the ransom under pressure and Ragnar – always a bad diplomat – has not granted him an opportunity to even superficially save face. Basically, King Aelle has been ridiculed and humiliated in his own hall in front of his men. As a king, he probably feels the need at least to try to win back his honour by outwitting the Vikings and taking control of the situation.
It may also be clear to him that paying them off would not keep them away for long and rather teach them where to find bounty conveniently.
Under these circumstances, it should be regarded as justified that King Aelle tries everything to defend his kingdom – as the saying goes: All is fair in love and war. And as a king, it is his main job to defend his kingdom and subjects against alien intruders.
Even though all comparisons have issues, it is fair to acknowledge that the Vikings, essentially, are robbers and murderers much like today’s bank robbers when they kill people and take others hostage. We would not reproach the police for appeasing them by promising what they want and then trying to outwit them.
King Aelle’s situation is very similar to that of the police here as he is the rightful upholder of law and order in his kingdom. And much like today’s governments, he cannot simply give in to blackmail just because his foes have taken his brother hostage.
Another character trait that is connected to King Aelle‘s conservatism is his obvious feeling of responsibility for his kingdom and the well-being of his subjects. It might not be rooted in any larger amount of compassion with said subjects and rather offend his pride to see HIS subjects slaughtered and the riches of his kingdom plundered by savage intruders but he does take care of his subjects.
Additionally, his own family is threatened too – and all of that without any prior provocation. Therefore, King Aelle‘s driving force, emotionally speaking, may well be offended pride – but that is because he feels responsible for his subjects and takes his duties as a king seriously.
We never see him do anything that would suggest that he is violating his own principles. In Season 4B he even goes to war in person despite advanced age which is the main reason why he finally meets his destiny at the hands of the Vikings. We will come back to his end in due course.
Attitude towards Women
Another, less sympathetic facet of King Aelle‘s conservatism is how he perceives women. Like the typical Medieval man, he is a misogynist of sorts and cannot regard women as equals. Like much bigger minds of his times, he just takes their inferiority for granted and expects them to quietly fulfill their God-given functions as daughters, wives, and mothers.
But let us not forget that generally in Medieval Christianity, women were not only seen as inferior to men for lack of the faculty of rational thinking. It was also disputed if women have immortal souls.
Therefore, King Aelle can love his wife and daughters – and there are, indeed, strong hints that he does – and still not grant them equal rights. If one wants to judge him fairly, one must do so by the standards of his times.
It is just beyond his horizon to think of a royal woman as something else than an obedient daughter and wife and a mother to preferably sons who are needed to continue the bloodline. All of that makes her a valuable “bargaining chip“ for alliances – the main political function and most meaningful role granted to a medieval royal woman.
But keep in mind that sons were used as “bargaining chips” as well in the exact same way.
Based on his very conventional views about women, King Aelle expects his daughter Judith to be obedient to himself and her husband, to deliver legitimate sons and, by extension, not to jeopardize the reliability of the bloodline and his alliance with Wessex by irresponsible behaviour like fornication.
Additionally, and this is part of his calamity when directly compared (unfavourably) to the other kings, he lacks any kind of charm in treating women since he is too honest for that and also probably would not regard it as necessary to flatter or persuade them.
For King Aelle, women are clearly inferior and have to obey. Everything else is out of the question and to concern himself with finding clever ways to treat them would appear superfluous to him.
Bear in mind that the story is situated at a time way before the invention of chivalry and King Aelle is not the exception to the general rule. And Ecbert for all his charm clearly does not respect women anymore than King Aelle does and just uses his charm to manipulate them.
Besides, as indicated above, it could be argued that King Aelle‘s lack of charm is just a necessary repercussion of his honest and straightforward personality.
Affection
King Aelle’s lack of charm in treating women also accounts for the impression that he might not be too good at showing affection towards his family – basically composed of women from Season 3 onwards – although there is good reason to believe that he does love them. We will come back to this point in the discussion on his family below.
In any case, King Aelle‘s behaviour towards his wife and daughters forms a sharp contrast to the genuinely cordial way he usually relates to other men like his brother or his son-in-law Aethelwulf or even Ecbert when he still regards him as a friend.
King Aelle tends to express his cordiality by hugging which shows that he feels much more comfortable in the company of comrades than in that of his own womenfolk where he always appears to be somewhat restrained.
But that can be due to the circumstances in the scenes as we always see him with his womenfolk in public and it was probably not seemly to show affection towards women in this situation. In addition, the setting usually does not invite or call for that.
As often with King Aelle, we lack a sufficient amount of evidence to get a clearer picture in this case.
Typical Medieval Views
There are two more repercussions of King Aelle‘s traditional and conservative attitude which do not make him too likeable to a modern Western audience.
One is his conviction that reading is almost useless for kings and rather suitable for monks – a very conventional view at his time and not astonishing or idiotic in itself.
The moment he voices this view, however, does not make him look too intelligent, because it is precisely after the victory over the Vikings which has mainly been achieved due to Ecbert‘s interest in ancient Roman strategy books.
However, note that King Aelle himself is able to read and that is NOT a self-evident skill for an early medieval monarch. He is actually very educated and this points to the possibility that his utterance in this scene one of the instances of making him look dumber than he is in order to make Ecbert appear especially clever – a technique used frequently in the show for other character constellations as well.
The second repercussion is King Aelle‘s literal understanding of religious precepts and his strict adherence to these rules.
This comes with the further consequences of self-righteous and judgemental behaviour towards others who do not abide by the rules as closely as he deems necessary and a killjoy attitude towards common breaches (like the lack of enthusiasm for the fasting period at Ecbert‘s court).
Although this does not appear too sympathetic to a post-modern Western audience but it is understandable when scrutinized more carefully. We will come back to the meaning and function of religion for King Aelle in the more involved discussion on the sub-pages.
Besides, most people who inappropriately think of King Aelle in terms of modern (Christian) fundamentalism and believe that this is the theme addressed here tend to overlook that the much-loved Floki character is a Viking counterpart of King Aelle when it comes to attitudes towards religion and traditions. Meaning: If King Aelle is a fundamentalist, Floki is a fundamentalist too.
But that is not an appropriate appraisal of the medieval mindset anyway.
Temperament and Physicality
Aside from the various aspects and repercussions of King Aelle‘s typical medieval conservatism and traditionalism, there are some general character traits to be addressed.
As mentioned in the introduction, King Aelle has a somewhat explosive temperament and is to a large degree ruled by his emotions. This cannot only be witnessed when he is exploding with anger (e.g. when receiving the news of the defeat of his forces after the first encounter with the Vikings in Season 1), but also when he is happy (e.g. after the victory over the Vikings in alliance with Ecbert in Season 2) or in pain during the blood eagle procedure.
We will come back to the last instance when trying to make sense of his last scenes. For now, it may suffice to say that King Aelle is of a type who does experience strong emotions and act upon them – in contrast to Ecbert who is both, a chess player and an actor who toys with other people and cannot be trusted.
He can, however, control himself when necessary but he is not someone to put on a “poker face” or to conceal his emotions.
Yet one gets the impression that, in contrast to Ragnar, King Aelle does not exercise any mind control and is completely untrained in this art. Put more positively, King Aelle does express his feelings without much filtering which definitely is not always pleasant, but another sign of his honest and straight-laced nature.
Despite his hot temper King Aelle does not always mean harm as he often acts his rage out by a short rant and then calms down again as he does when he finds out about his daughter‘s liaison with her father-in-law or when he is informed about the arrival of the Great Heathen Army.
Generally, King Aelle is a man not only of great physical force and energy that unload themselves in his frequent outbursts of emotions. He is also happily indulging in physical joys like eating and even more drinking.
In Seasons 1 and 2 we get the impression that he values a good meal a lot and he is shown eating more than once while in Season 3 and 4A, we mostly see him with a cup in hand (less eating scenes may be partly due to the fact that he insists in adherence to fasting rules when visiting Wessex in Season 4A).
Even when his men are tormenting Ragnar in his cage while King Aelle is joyfully watching on his throne, he is taking swallows from his cup.
He also resorts to drinking during the visibly bitter moments of his discussion with Ecbert about the latter‘s betrayal of King Aelle regarding the take-over of Mercia and takes sips from his cup when confronted with open contempt by his daughter Judith during her last visit to Northumbria.
Pride
Talking of his revenge on Ragnar: The way King Aelle nurtures his hatred against Ragnar over the years and seems to get ever more bloodthirsty shows, among other things, his pride and concern for his dignity that make him sensitive to humiliation and the revengefulness that results from this after Ragnar has, indeed, humiliated him in a most ruthless way.
It is also his pride showing when in Season 4B he reacts to his daughter‘s warnings about the revenge of the Vikings for Ragnar in what looks like arrogance. But Judith does not fall short of his behaviour either and we will discuss the situation farther below when we are going to make sense of his reactions.
In fact, King Aelle comes across as enormously arrogant in Season 4B already when Ragnar arrives at him from Ecbert as a captive in a cage and he clearly thinks that he has finally won and will get the satisfaction now that he has been longing for over decades. A closer look in the discussion farther below, however, will reveal the reasons behind his attitude.
It looks like this final triumph makes him not only arrogant to the point of regarding himself as an instrument of God‘s judgement but also overly self-confident to an extent that makes him blind for the possible scale of the Vikings‘ retaliation – or rather it seems so at first sight.
There are scenes that contradict this assessment: King Aelle‘s prayer right before Ragnar‘s execution that shows him insecure and shaken or the concerned look he has for a moment after being informed about the arrival of the Great Heathen Army. We will discuss this more thoroughly in the context of King Aelle‘s take on religion.
On the surface, however, the overall impression in Season 4B up to the point when King Aelle realizes the actual size of the Viking army is that he is so convinced of both, God‘s assistance and his own capability to deal with the situation appropriately, that the possibility of another defeat does not even cross his mind.
Limitations
King Aelle‘s main problem in dealing with the Vikings is a lack of imagination which prevents him from preparing for the unexpected. Conventional thinking and – based on this – predictable actions and reactions are not too helpful when facinf exceptional challenges.
His biggest problem in dealing with Ecbert, however, is his integrity and that he does not compromise his values – and the fact that Ecbert is allowed to triumph over him sends a very problematic message as many do not understand the extent of Ecbert’s failure (for which see the last chapter).
King Aelle is a king who might have been pretty successful in preserving his power and protecting his kingdom under normal circumstances – those he has been used to so far. And he actually manages to stay on the throne for an extended period of time which is an achievement in itself.
He thus is a fairly competent king who is just unfortunate that he lives at a time when an unusual challenge arises – the Vikings led by Ragnar – which he only manages to fend off in alliance with another challenge that calls for a devious approach: Ecbert.
After his coronation as King of Mercia, Ecbert further humiliates King Aelle by rubbing his superiority in and brings another aspect into play by telling King Aelle rather directly that he is unable to adapt quickly enough to new circumstances and to make his moves accordingly with the result that events overtake him – „justifiedly“ to be read between the lines.
Yet aside from his conventional way of thinking and acting which puts him into a place of disadvantage with regard to challenges posed by what is meant to be perceived as extraordinary minds, what Ecbert makes look like dull inflexibility here, in reality, is nothing else but honesty and trust in the honourable behaviour of an allied king.
This trust arises from an uncompromising adherence to values and principles. The main substantial impression resulting from this scene – except for the meannes of Ecbert’s character – is the subtext of a clash of personality types and the more than questionable message that dishonesty and treachery should be seen as “smart” and admirable.
Brutality and Courage
Less likeable is King Aelle‘s merciless attitude not only towards foes like Ragnar, but also towards his own underlings which becomes apparent in Season 1 when he gives order to toss one of his – unsuccessful – generals into his new snake pit.
The position in the story where this incident is placed suggests that the gruesome execution is not to be understood as a direct result of King Aelle‘s wrath about the disastrous first attempt to destroy a rather small Viking force and as a punishment for this failure, because this would have taken place much earlier shortly after the event.
Since it happens when King Aelle learns about the second return of the Vikings to his kingdom, it is rather likely that it is meant as a preventive measure and a lesson to his other generals and the soldiers to counter the horror the Vikings tend to induce in the Northumbrian troops by their appearance and fearless way of fighting.
King Aelle‘s aim seems to be to motivate his generals to fierce and self-sacrificial commitment in battle by demonstrating that the result of a failure will be an even more painful death than the one to be expected on the battlefield.
Yet there is a further aspect to this scene: It is at this point that the audience gets the signal that King Aelle is meant to be a villain inside the logic of the story since he looks like he is enjoying the whole procedure and especially the screams of pain when the snakes attack the general. (This will have to be revised in the light of Ivan’s explanations in an upcoming interview, 29 Dec 2020.)
This points to a taste for torturous deaths and the mere fact of having this kind of device for executions prepared is reminiscent of the typically sadistic villains in old sword-and-sandal or swashbuckler movies with their piranha pools and other imaginative instruments of torture.
However, this impression of a sadistic trait is not corroborated by the further development of the character in subsequent seasons and does not even show much when King Aelle finally gets the chance to torture Ragnar – the only moment of malicious joy being when the soldiers aim at Ragnar‘s feet with their spears from below the cage and King Aelle orders them to burn him with torches.
As for courage: King Aelle may not be the most courageous character in Vikings and he is certainly not the foolhardy type, but his presence on the battlefield not only in Season 2, but much more in Season 4B when facing the Great Heathen Army shows that he is brave enough.
In fact, at this point in the story, he is high in his fifties at the very least if not well into his sixties – which in those days was a very advanced age implying a considerably reduced ability to emerge successfully from a physical fight.
Nonetheless, he leads his army into battle in person – quite different from Ecbert, who cannot be much older (if at all), but always sends his son to fight his battles. Moreover, the scars on King Aelle‘s face show that he is a battle-hardened king who does not avoid fighting in person and has indeed done so successfully in the past as otherwise, he would not be still alive and king.
Finally, the fact that he does actually accept to go to the camp of the Vikings as a hostage in Season 2 shows his courage as well. He knows from experience that the Vikings will kill a hostage no matter how noble if negotiations or a bargain flop because that is exactly what has happened to King Aelle‘s brother in Season 1.
The pure fact that Ecbert proposes to make King Aelle hostage shows beyond doubt that Ecbert would not be too sad if he lost his unloved ally in this way – which does not exactly help to evoke trust that Ecbert is not going to jeopardize King Aelle‘s life.
From King Aelle‘s reaction, it is clear that he understands the implications of this proposal very well and feels concerned. But he still values his pride and dignity higher than his concerns and accepts his role.
Since courage is not defined as feeling no fear, but as acting despite of one‘s fear, King Aelle for all the moments when he shows concern must be regarded as considerably brave, because he never allows those concerns to determine his actions.
All the more stunning is his sudden breakdown in his penultimate scene when we are supposed to believe that King Aelle does not care the least bit about his dignity when his last hour is approaching – despite the fact that his dignity has been quite precious to him so far.
We will discuss the peculiarity of the situation and possibilities to make sense of his behaviour farther below. Please proceed for deeper analysis, more involved discussion and interpretation.
Analysis, Interpretation, and Appraisal
In this section, we will discuss a couple of more involved issues that are often perceived in an inadequate way or not taken into consideration at all.
King Aelle and his Subjects
Sadly the show does not offer much explicit insight into King Aelle‘s standing with his subjects and how he generally fares as a king. He is mostly shown as a guest at the court of Wessex in his capacity as Ecbert‘s ally and Judith‘s father, but very rarely as a king in his own right and ruler of his own dominion.
It is only in Season 1 when he is introduced to us as the main antagonist in Ragnar‘s story and in Season 4B when the main storyline is finally resumed that we get some glimpses into King Aelle‘s realm.
The only explicit description of the King of Northumbria is given by Athelstan in Season 1, episode 3 when he explains to Ragnar that Aelle is “a great king – a powerful king”.
Generally speaking, there are major differences between the fictional character King Aelle in the show and his historical counterpart.
For one, the show‘s King Aelle manages to stay in power and on the throne of Northumbria for an extended period of time stretching over at least twenty years and probably more since we encounter him as an established ruler in Season 1 already. In history, King Aelle‘s reign lasted only some three years.
Our fictional King Aelle, therefore, gives the impression of a fairly successful king: The pure fact of remaining in power for so long in those turbulent times despite the final breakup of his alliance with Ecbert is a sign of his competence as a ruler.
Secondly, the historical King Aelle seems to have gained power by usurpation and thus is portrayed as an unrightful king and tyrant – which, however, is not unlikely to be due to a bias or doctoring of what little sources we have along the lines of later rivalries as more recent research suggests. There is also a narrative to the effect that he was chosen over his predecessor who got deposed.
Throughout the show, however, there is no clue that anybody ever doubts the legitimacy of King Aelle‘s position as the King of Northumbria.
On the contrary, his authority is not challenged at all when the Viking aggression finally becomes a serious threat in Season 1 and he does not come across as a tyrant either – the only possible exception being when he has his general Wigea thrown into the snake pit.
But in the framework of the general brutality of those days, it is not a fair assessment to call him a tyrant because of this act and he has some legitimate reasons for it as argued above.
The overall impression, however, is rather positive. Aelle is a king who does consult his nobles in times of trouble and takes their advice into consideration as he is shown doing exactly that in Season 1. He has obviously been able to gain the loyalty of his nobles as they seem to back him under any circumstance (a major difference from Ecbert who constantly disregards his nobles’ concerns to the point where they disapprove of his decisions).
The council scene conveys the impression that King Aelle is fully respected but not overly feared as his nobles do not hesitate to voice their various opinions. And despite his explosive temperament, he is able to control himself when that is needed. He also acts in a rather restrained manner during negotiations with the Vikings.
Athelstan’s above-mentioned statement further corroborates that King Aelle is indeed respected as a king by his subjects as well.
Although we do not see much of King Aelle‘s treatment of his people he nonetheless does voice concern for their well-being or at least his responsibility to protect them when he refers to Ragnar‘s misdeeds against them before Ragnar‘s execution in Season 4B and when he demands they should be left in peace as part of the bargain in Season 1.
Interestingly it is precisely in the episode „All His Angels“ when Ragnar is finally delivered to King Aelle as a captive in a cage that we get a glimpse into the feelings of King Aelle‘s subjects. Not only his soldiers are full-heartedly cheering when Ragnar‘s cage is lifted up and passionately mistreat him later, but there are also a lot of civilian subjects, women as well as men, who come to witness the execution.
All of them seem to be quite relieved. This points to their perception of Ragnar as a serious threat to their security and property and as a culprit who gets his rightful punishment.
This and the fact that they are praying shortly before the execution shows that neither King Aelle‘s deep resentment and stern insistence to execute Ragnar nor his pervasive emphasis on religion is exceptional or weird in his environment. His subjects seem to be much in tune with his general mindset, his attitude towards the Vikings and his approach to dealing with Ragnar.
There is only one scene showing King Aelle‘s treatment of ordinary subjects: When one of his scouts brings the message of the arrival of the Great Heathen Army. It is particularly interesting to note that here, as always, a short and forceful outburst of anger about the disturbance is immediately followed by a regaining of self-control.
Far from some reviewers‘ accusations that he would be likely to act on the proverbial „killing of the messenger“ who brings bad news, he even musters the politeness to answer the messenger with a „Thank you“ before throwing him out. King Aelle, therefore, is treating his subjects with a degree of respect that is not self-evident in a monarch of these days at all.
If we finally take into consideration that he is still able to muster a relatively large force of loyal and obedient soldiers who follow him into battle in Season 4B and that he actually does lead them in person despite considerably advanced age we have to conclude that King Aelle seems to be respected if not loved as a king whose subjects are not opposed to him or his actions in any way and probably do acknowledge and appreciate his devotion to his duties.
King Aelle and his Family
There is slightly more, but less homogenous information to be gathered about King Aelle‘s relations to the members of his family. He is shown successively as a brother,
husband, and father.
As a Brother
As a brother, he seems to be quite cordial at least regarding the brother who has not deserted him in the face of the Viking threat. When he welcomes his brother Lord Aethelwulf, King Aelle looks and sounds genuinely happy.
This may in part be due to his relief about his brother‘s arrival because he is relying on him as his most capable general. But there seems to be a genuine bond between them. One could argue that his attempt to rescue his brother by force instead of sticking to the treaty with the Vikings shows that his concern for his brother‘s well-being is not great.
But we have to bear in mind that he is a king, not an ordinary man and, therefore, cannot let his acts be ruled by personal sentiments to the degree an ordinary man could do. As argued above he has to save face and to make an attempt to gain back control even if he has to risk his brother‘s life.
As a Husband
It is likewise problematic to get an impression of King Aelle as a husband. We do not see his wife often but when we do she is either concerned about the Viking threat like in her scenes in Season 1 and Season 4B or backing him like she does in Season 4B during the conversation with Judith who has come to warn her father.
The general impression is that she shares her husband‘s worldview and is content with her place and that he treats her well.
King Aelle does politely introduce her to Ragnar at the beginning of the dinner scene when they negotiate in Season 1 and he does take not only his son but also his wife and his daughter to Wessex in Season 2. In Season 4B, when King Aelle is preparing for war and trying to reassure wife and daughter who are fearful of the outcome of the battle, King Aelle‘s wife holds and kisses his hand at the beginning of the scene.
It is a small, yet touching gesture that indicates a certain measure of affection and also reveals the tragic dimension of their situation: wife and daughter relying upon King Aelle for their safety and the king himself having to protect his womenfolk who are helplessly clinging to him, a burden he has to bear alone for lack of a surviving son to assist him, and yet not being able to provide this much needed protection.
Some may think his behaviour is irresponsible, exactly because the safety of his family and people is at stake, but from his perspective, it is not. We will discuss this below.
As a Father
As a father, King Aelle has been subject to much criticism as, from the point of view of a modern audience, he is not treating his daughter Judith too nicely. What is true is that he is lacking the charm of an Ecbert who is able to manipulate everyone into doing whatever suits his plans.
King Aelle, for lack of charm, resorts to admonishing, threatening and expressing his anger directly which does not come across as too endearing. On the other hand, it is much more honest than Ecbert‘s behaviour and nothing he has to be blamed for in itself.
From the point of view of a Medieval king, he surely is fulfilling his duties towards his children by raising them in an appropriate way and selecting a suitable husband for his eldest daughter.
To marry children and especially daughters for the sake of alliances was common practice within the nobility for centuries – it basically was one of the main functions of a daughter, part of her role and her divinely ordained place in the world. In exchange, a noblewoman received the advantages of a privileged lifestyle at a time when many ordinary people ran the risk of starving to death every winter.
As for Judith, King Aelle could have married her to any suitable and powerful ally no matter how old and ugly he might have been. From this perspective, she could have been happy to find herself married to a young, handsome and brave prince, the sole heir to the throne of his kingly father, a husband who also treated her most considerately.
There is thus no reason to blame King Aelle for his behaviour towards his daughter since he does not fall short of his duties and he does not even do anything but scolding her when presented with the discovery that she is fornicating with her father-in-law! That is a huge transgression not only from a religious point of view – which is important to King Aelle – but also regarding the second major function of a princess: to bear legitimate children.
To jeopardize this, not to speak of the scandal and shame involved, would have called for a much harsher reaction – like Ecbert‘s /Aethelwulf’s when they had Judith‘s ear cut off. But her own father does not even raise his hand against her, let alone repudiate her as his child.
Considering that he depends on her for his alliance with Ecbert and for the continuation of his line and that she is meant to uphold her father’s and her family’s interests at Ecbert’s court, it is admirable that he does not give up on her and severes their bonds entirely when she lets him down not only by her sexual adventures but also by siding with Ecbert when he betrays her father and takes Mercia for himself.
This is a pretty dangerous development and instead of being loyal to her family and doing her job by using her influence at Ecbert‘s court to uphold friendly relations and her father’s interests, she goes over to the enemy.
Against this background, it is no wonder that King Aelle cannot be persuaded to follow her advice in Season 4B. In fact, after finding out about Judith‘s liaison with Ecbert, King Aelle calms down relatively quickly and by the time of leaving Wessex, his Goodbye to her is almost cordial if still showing his disapproval of her behaviour.
Yet there is a certain measure of resignation to be found in his tone and words already and he seems to attribute Judith‘s unacceptable behaviour to the moral weakness ascribed to women in those days and to blame Ecbert more than her.
As much as we as moderners and especially women can relate to Judith‘s desire for freedom and education and to the torment caused by the limitations she is facing, we still have to be fair enough to admit that it is not King Aelle‘s fault that she is feeling this way nor is he to be blamed for thinking like it was common in his days. We also have to acknowledge that, in the framework of her time, culture and position, her behaviour is extremely selfish.
King Aelle‘s relatively tempered reaction to Judith could be due to a surprisingly soft core inside the external hard shell and point to a not self-evident measure of fatherly affection. He clearly does feel genuine affection for family and friends even though he does not always show it openly.
In Season 1, when King Aelle introduces his family to Ragnar, he touches the head of his son in a light gesture of affection and we can even see his face lighten up despite the situation. In Season 2 and 3 he displays affection to his son-in-law Aethelwulf, warm embracements included, and even to Ecbert.
We get the impression that under more favourable circumstances – in a good mood – King Aelle is a jovial type and could be a rather pleasant if sometimes exuberant friend.
In Season 3, there is a scene that clearly shows his fatherly feelings for Judith as well. When Queen Kwenthrith has just killed her younger brother with poisoned wine, everyone starts pouring their wine out and throwing the cups away.
The first thing King Aelle does at this point is intuitively to take Judith‘s cup out of her hand and pour the wine out before doing the same with his own cup. This little protective gesture shows King Aelle‘s otherwise not easily discernible fatherly instincts.
As King Aelle‘s son Ecgberth only shows up very shortly in Season 2 and then disappears completely, we probably have to assume that he has died at some point in his youth and left King Aelle without an heir. Therefore, he has to rely on Judith even more because she is his only chance to have his bloodline continued in a royal dynasty.
It is clear at this point that Northumbria and Wessex will finally be merged into a larger kingdom under one of King Aelle’s grandsons. That could explain his emotional investment in his son-in-law Aethelwulf who also shares King Aelle‘s conventional thinking patterns albeit not his assertiveness.
Judith, on the other hand, has inherited this character trait from her father. Yet as Judith finally sides with Ecbert against her father, King Aelle, as a father, is undeservedly, hence tragically afflicted by experiences of loss and disappointment.
Since he cannot possibly accept Judith‘s relentless fight for freedom and as he has fulfilled his duties as a kingly father according to the norms of his times, he probably does not even have a clue what went wrong between them and why – aside from the option of blaming Ecbert for leading his daughter astray.
As a Grandfather
Finally, as a grandfather, King Aelle is at a disadvantage because he has no surviving son and therefore his only offspring are living far away in the custody of his rival Ecbert who always has been ill-disposed towards him despite their alliance.
By winning over King Aelle‘s daughter, Ecbert has achieved to deprive him of her loyalty which consequentially leads to a lack of contact and prevents any chance that King Aelle and his grandsons could grow on each other.
Otherwise, one or both of them could have been sent to his court for education during Season 4B. Nevertheless, it looks like King Aelle does feel affection for the children even though, as a rather rough type, he cannot be expected to be able to handle children well. Still, he does not just ignore them like adult men may have done in those days with small children but says Goodbye with a kiss and advice.
This may be a stereotypical way to behave as a royal grandfather, but the children seem to be comfortable around him, climbing into his carriage and staying there until they get their embracement and Goodbye kiss. Given how good King Aelle is at expressing affection towards men, he might have been a lovely grandfather to the boys, if he ever had gotten the chance to see them grow up.
Therefore, we can conclude that King Aelle is a fairly good husband to his well-behaved wife, an affectionate if unfortunate father and grandfather despite being a bit restrained in expression around women and children and a quite pleasurable friend, brother, and father-in-law.
King Aelle and Religion
Even more important is King Aelle‘s understanding of religion and the role it plays in his life and worldview as it is at the core of much of his behaviour.
Basically, King Aelle clings to a conservative and literal understanding of religious commandments and displays a rigid attitude when it comes to applying them.
This is matched well by the attitude of his bishop who, after the shattering defeat of King Aelle‘s brother by the Vikings, immediately suggests to regard them as God‘s punishment for the sins and transgressions of the Northumbrian people.
It is no wonder, then, that despite King Aelle‘s obvious conviction that he is following the one true God and adhering to the right religion, he never seems to be confident of God‘s favour until Ragnar finally falls into his hands.
It is safe to assume that his notion of God is that of a powerful, erratic and wrathful lord rather than that of a benign father. This can also be inferred from the fact that he always addresses God as „Lord“.
As King Aelle is shattered not only by the fact that his brother has been defeated – something he obviously did not expect to happen – but also by the fact that now, he is deprived of the forces necessary to fend off potential further attacks of the Vikings, he seeks refuge in prayer.
The two major prayer scenes are quite touching as they give some rare glimpses into King Aelle‘s soul and show his vulnerability. It is here where the three-dimensionality of his character and his relatable human traits are visible best.
In the first prayer scene in Season 1, he asks God for assistance with a tone of intense urgency, a moving struggle for inner strength and confidence in the face of a dangerous threat that he does not really know how to handle.
In both of the prayer scenes, it looks like King Aelle is trying to get through to a level of spiritual certainty which he still never seems to achieve. This may be due to the fact that his immersion always remains superficial as he attempts to force the effect by a combination of urging pleas and willpower.
He is a vigorous and energetic, very physical type of man, but does not have the patience and calmness of mind for immersive meditation.
Therefore, King Aelle sticks with observing the rules. This looks like outward piety but is rooted in the conviction that any aberration may have the consequence of losing God‘s favour.
In the absence of spiritual certainty and a feeling of an inner connection with God, King Aelle‘s notion of God is restricted to that of a punitive wrathful Lord which he has been taught by the clerical authorities.
Hence he depends on outward observance as a means to secure God‘s favour and assistance or at least to deflect his wrath. And as he is presented with a challenge he is not up to, a challenge that is new to his world and leaves him shattered and helpless, he feels an urgent need for God‘s assistance.
The fact that Ragnar is a superior mind and King Aelle does somehow sense it and that the heathens who, in his view, are clearly on the wrong side and not much more than wild animals evade their punishment time and again and are even empowered to torment good God-fearing people like his subjects and himself does not help to strengthen King Aelle‘s confidence.
On the contrary: In Season 1 his worldview is thoroughly shattered by his repeated defeats. For a Christian monarch who would naturally assume that God is on his side and that his Pagan foes, therefore, will be crushed in no time, this is a most unsettling, inexplicable and basically incomprehensible experience.
Throughout the whole show, King Aelle insists on strict observance of religious rules as his only hope to avoid sins and God‘s punishment and to win His favour and assistance. Against this background, Judith‘s liaison with her father-in-law which is – all the social and potential practical consequences aside – a major sin must be all the more repulsive and alarming for King Aelle.
She is his daughter and hence, he is responsible for her. Thus it is possible that her behaviour is not only embarrassing and humiliating for him but that there is a further dimension to it: Concern about the possible consequences for the whole family should God decide Judith‘s sin is severe enough to withdraw his favour from all of her kin.
Yet there are ups and downs in King Aelle‘s confidence in God‘s favour – like the Vikings‘ defeat in the battle with King Aelle‘s and Ecbert‘s allied forces which has taught him that they are not invincible.
Still, he seems to be aware on some level that Ragnar remains a major threat and it is only when the Viking falls into his hands that he comes to the conclusion that God has restored the order of the world by finally delivering the culprit to his rightful punishment and handing him over to King Aelle, God‘s loyal servant.
At this point in time and because of the effortless way Ragnar is given to him, this must have looked like a true miracle to King Aelle which led him to conclude that God himself had intervened and brought Ragnar down.
We may think it idiotic to not suspect ulterior motives when getting such a present from Ecbert but in an epoch when divine intervention was regarded as an actual possibility, for a man with such an ingrained tendency to think in religious terms as King Aelle, it would have been logical to conclude that this was a sign of exceptional divine favour.
This is especially understandable as he probably has no idea of the degree to which Ecbert is intrigued by Ragnar and, in spite of all his treachery, still regards the King of Wessex as a fellow Saxon who would rather further their common interest in removing their most dangerous Viking foe instead of playing said foe‘s game.
The way King Aelle perceives of Ecbert‘s gift to him is quite clear from his speech to Ragnar where he states that God must have chosen him as the instrument of His judgements and that Ragnar now will atone for his sins against the Northumbrian people – or the people of England in general.
It also makes pretty clear how King Aelle perceives divine interventions. He is a very practically-thinking man who has never believed in supernatural forces working directly on earth without the mediation of man.
He rather seems to believe that God has a habit to use men’s own desires to lead them to actions according to His will. This is clear in the scene with his council in Season 1 already where he sides with the idea that the Vikings may have come for booty but still seems to accept his bishop’s suggestion to perceive them as God’s punishment.
Hence the Vikings can be seen as God’s instrument to punish his servants for their sins by using their greed for booty and he himself can function as God’s instrument to punish Ragnar for his misdeeds by using King Aelle’s own thirst for vengeance. This is important to note in order to understand his reaction to the sight of the Great Heathen Army later on.
Yet King Aelle‘s joy about having received the gift to act as an instrument for Ragnar’s punishment is quickly reduced by Ragnar‘s mental strength and the fact that King Aelle cannot make him repent despite all kinds of torture like beating, burning and cutting the Viking.
King Aelle‘s helplessness and disappointment are visible and it looks like a last desperate attempt to either break Ragnar or secure some measure of triumph when he finally cuts the sign of a cross in the Viking‘s forehead.
It is true that King Aelle has Ragnar treated brutally and even tortures him personally. And his initial joyful satisfaction may give the impression that Ragnar‘s treatment is motivated more by King Aelle‘s personal thirst for revenge than by any considerations of justice and responsibilities of a king. Yet when he tortures Ragnar, King Aelle does not give the impression that he enjoys the process at all.
The torture is nothing but a means to an end for him: to make Ragnar repent. And as this does not work, it is rather frustrating for the king than enjoyable which is clearly visible. The result is that King Aelle‘s worldview is shattered once more. He is totally flabbergasted if not appalled and deeply shaken by Ragnar‘s stamina. Again he resorts to prayer in order to get rid of his renewed doubts.
If Ragnar can resist torture like that, does that mean that Aelle is mistaken in regarding him as a mere savage, as an enemy of God and the divine order of the world? From where does he take his strength if he is on the wrong side and condemned to death by God himself? If God wants to restore order by helping his loyal servants to overcome his enemies why does he not make this man break down, then?
Is it because Aelle has been too proud and self-confident in calling himself God‘s instrument? But Ragnar is a heathen and a wrongdoer, a savage and brutal killer while Aelle is doing the right thing and God‘s will in executing him!
This or something similar seems to be the thought process underlying Aelle‘s prayer at this point. He tries to reassure himself that his perception of Ragnar and the latter’s execution are right and strives to regain his balance and the certainty he had finally found and now lost again.
It is at this point where Aelle‘s vulnerability – his uncertainty, his doubts, and his deeply shaken worldview – show most clearly.
His voice sounds almost breathless and imploring. It is a very intense scene that demonstrates how, at the height of his triumph, King Aelle for all his outward strength and willpower and for all his physical force and energy is still vulnerable at his core and tormented by the existential uncertainty that has haunted him at least since his brother‘s defeat by the Vikings if not for his entire life and that he has never been able to overcome by all his striving.
The prayer scenes are truly the keys to the deeper layers of this character which have, unfortunately, not been duly explored over the long runtime of the show.
In fact, the prayer seems to work and to give King Aelle back his inner balance and previous certainty and thus has empowered him to proceed with Ragnar‘s execution. At the end, he looks quite satisfied despite the major curtailment effected by Ragnar‘s inner strength and resistance.
It seems that after the removal of the threat Ragnar has posed in King Aelle‘s mind, his certainty that God has finally decided to restore the order of the world by giving his servants the victory over the heathens is growing stronger. This is what makes him so intolerably arrogant in the following scenes.
He is convinced that the conflict with the Vikings has been decided in favour of the Saxons once and for all and that he cannot be defeated anymore, now that God has clearly taken his side. And as there are no humans left whom he could trust, he has to take his chances by fully trusting in God anyway. Some additional considerations will be addressed in the discussion below on King Aelle‘s relation to the Vikings in general and Ragnar in particular.
On the other hand, King Aelle‘s doubts are persistent enough to resurface shortly when he gets the message of the arrival of the Great Heathen Army. He behaves and sounds firmly enough, but he looks slightly uncomfortable as if he was not totally certain that he will be able to handle this new challenge.
And how should he be as he does not believe that God would ever intercede directly, hence even with God’s favour it will be up to himself to fend Ragnar’s sons off.
And King Aelle is not happy about this prospect which is understandable enough. He makes the overall impression of a monarch who would have been totally content ruling his small kingdom in peace and only having to fend off the usual attacks of greedy neighbours.
Alas, that is not what fate had in store for him.
In spite of all his doubts and uncertainty, it still looks like King Aelle is firmly convinced of the truth and superiority of his religion over any heathen beliefs. Therefore, it is most stunning that when he realizes the actual size of the Great Heathen Army, he replies to the bishop‘s desperate „God help us!“ by an even more desperate: „I don‘t think He can.“
As understandable as it would have been if, at the realization of his certain and final defeat, he had come to the conclusion that he had been wrong in assuming that God was with him, it is quite unexpected to have him state that he has lost faith in the power of God.
Since what he says is not that he thinks he has lost God‘s favour. He does not think God has deserted him. He still thinks God is – or must by all logical means be – on his side. Yet he thinks that God is, obviously, not able to help him.
It is one of three possible solutions to the dilemma of theodicy: Why bad things happen to people who play by the rules if good is benevolent and almighty? King Aelle embodies this dilemma and its effects throughout the show and, while he had initially chosen to believe that he had lost God’s favour because he and his people did not adhere to the rules well enough, he now comes to the conclusion that God, in fact, cannot be almighty.
That is much more devastating than the mere thought of having fallen from divine grace. It is a confession of complete failure as he has been clinging to a faith and a God too weak to save him in the hour of his greatest distress.
All of his striving, his adherence to rules, his prayers and his faith have been in vain, the fundament of his whole life is not more than a pile of sand that is crumbling away under his feet now – because even if all of it has had the desired effect and won him God‘s favour, it is still of no use to him now that he is in urgent need of divine assistance: God does not have the power to help him.
And he can only come to this conclusion at this point already because King Aelle is too practical-minded to expect a miracle by God’s direct intervention or that of angels or other supernatural forces on his behalf. Hence it is clear to him that for lack of physical means to overcome the Viking force, God has no power to help him out of this situation.
Bearing the devastating effect of this moment in mind, we may be able to make at least some sense of the following scene at the pit and to start to sense the inherent tragedy of this most unfortunate character.
King Aelle and the Vikings
But before we start the discussion of King Aelle‘s last scenes, it is important to get a clear picture of the ways he perceives the Vikings in general and Ragnar in particular throughout the show and which changes have taken place between Season 1 and Season 4B to make King Aelle’s seemingly idiotic behaviour in Season 4B more intelligible.
As stated above, the Vikings are an unexpected challenge, a menace King Aelle is not prepared for. Throughout most of Season 1, he tries to figure out what kind of men they are, where they come from and what they want.
From what he learns about their actions he concludes that they are savages and heathens. This means mainly two things: That they are „not much more than wild beasts“ as his brother states, basically inferior beings, and that they cannot count on God‘s help but – based on their blasphemous actions in Lindisfarne – must rather be regarded as God‘s enemies.
Under these circumstances, for a God-fearing medieval Christian, it was natural to think that God would be with the Saxons and that their cause was basically His cause as well, so He would destroy the heathens. Their essential inferiority based mainly on their status as pagans but also on their uncultured behaviour which King Aelle gets to witness himself during negotiations in the dinner scene prevents the king from seeing them as equals.
This inability to regard them as equal human beings is one of his major impediments because it leads to his disinterest in their way of thinking which results in his lack of success in finding effective ways to defend his kingdom against them. Even the major shock about being defeated by animal-like heathens as a God-fearing Christian king does not change this attitude much.
However, after his failed surprise attack on the Vikings‘ camp and the necessity to pay the Vikings off to leave his kingdom, King Aelle must have recognized Ragnar as a superior mind if only half- or subconsciously. He understands well that Ragnar is dangerous and that he himself may not be capable of defeating him alone.
We can see this in Season 2 when he talks to Ecbert referring to Ragnar as „the greatest disturbance to our world“ and we can gather it from his willingness to ally with Ecbert who is a rival king and whom King Aelle regards – very rightly so – as a menace to his own power which is not less than the threat posed by the Vikings.
It is also obvious in Season 4B when Judith wants to see the pit where Ragnar died and King Aelle confirms the place: His phrasing and the way he delivers the lines make clear that he feels greatly relieved by Ragnar‘s death which points to a deep-rooted fear at the bottom of his grim hatred.
King Aelle has many reasons to hate Ragnar and to feel embittered: the unjustified Viking attacks upon his kingdom, the death of his brother and his own humiliation. And his wounded pride is definitely not healed by the subsequent setbacks he has to endure at the hands of Ecbert.
Therefore, his sustained fervent hatred for Ragnar may in part have to do with an increasing general bitterness regarding a world that is treating him unfairly to a degree that is beyond his understanding.
Yet it is more probable to assume that it is a constant fear and a feeling of being threatened which is provoked by Ragnar‘s superior mind and King Aelle‘s humiliating helplessness against it that accounts for the king‘s glowing hatred and his thirst for revenge. A constant fear of this kind and the accompanying feeling of inferiority even if unacknowledged on a conscious level is a most humiliating experience.
It is a pity that the relationship between Ragnar and King Aelle has never been explored. In spite of their initial mutual disdain for each other – King Aelle‘s for the savage heathen and plunderer who has raided his lands without provocation and Ragnar‘s for the extremely pious Saxon king who has sent his brother into battle – it could have developed very differently over time once they would have recognized their respective determination and personal virtues as something to be respected in an enemy.
They would always have been bitter enemies and the nemesis for each other, but there could have been more depth and dignity to it and as they were like fire and water, it might have turned out to be very entertaining with multiple encounters until the final showdown. We will, however, never get to witness how this would have developed.
Resuming our main line of reasoning: When the alliance with Ecbert bears its first fruit, the defeat of the Vikings‘ forces, King Aelle learns that the Northmen indeed can be defeated. It is not fully clear how conscious he is of the fact that Ecbert‘s likewise superior mind was needed to accomplish that. Yet King Aelle‘s relief after Ragnar‘s death indicates that he had been aware of it at least on a subconscious level.
His satisfaction at Ragnar‘s death may be restrained by the fact that the Viking could not be broken and did not repent, but it is visible still. Now the situation presents itself to King Aelle in a totally different light than before: Without the greatest danger in the lines of the Northmen, Ragnar, he will not need Ecbert anymore to defeat any further Viking force that may attempt to invade his kingdom.
All he has to do now is to muster a greater force than the Vikings have ever brought to England and to defeat them just by numbers and common strategic devices. He still sees the Vikings as savages and enemies of God. They may have produced an exceptional leader but without him and with God finally evidently on King Aelle‘s side in his view, it will be almost impossible for them to defeat his supposedly superior force.
When discussing his last scenes, we will see that King Aelle, actually, had no way to recognize his error before it was too late.
Making Sense of King Aelle’s Last Scenes: King Aelle as a Tragic Figure
To complete our discussion of King Aelle‘s character and to try to make sense of what looked like idiotic behaviour at first sight and of his surprisingly quick and utter final breakdown we have to revisit the events following Ragnar‘s death.
Ragnar‘s sons get informed about the death of their father by Odin himself and start gathering an army. We have to bear in mind, however, that the large force they are able to muster does exhaust the complete manpower available – which is why Lagertha states that a failure would be a disaster for their people.
It is also clear from the discussions of the brothers that, before they make plans to muster an army larger than ever before, they do NOT have a clearly overwhelming number of warriors – even though they believe that they are sufficient to defeat King Aelle’s smaller forces but that is just their estimate. He might actually have stood a fair chance with his preparations if they had attacked him with their men.
So it cannot, by any means, be regarded as self-evident for any of the characters in the story that the Great Heathen Army is going to be a reality.
Judith’s Warning
Meanwhile, Judith decides to go and visit her family in Northumbria and to warn her father about the fears she and Ecbert share regarding the revenge of Ragnar‘s sons.
If we assume that Ecbert knows pretty well how King Aelle thinks about the worth of women‘s reasoning in general and about his daughter Judith in particular after discovering that she has a liaison with her father-in-law and that she is totally on his side, it would not be the smartest move ever to send Judith of all people to induce King Aelle to reinstate their alliance – at least IF Ecbert really wanted him to do that.
Therefore, it may well be true that it is Judith‘s own idea to come because she is actually worried about the fate of her home and at least about part of her family (probably her younger sister).
Or else, Ecbert still thinks that Wessex either will be spared or that he can handle the Vikings on his own despite his concern of the scale of their retribution. That, in turn, would mean that the size of the Great Heathen Army is, in fact, so outside of imagination that it is hardly proof of any shortcoming on King Aelle’s part not to expect it.
Otherwise, it would be prudent of Ecbert to either send Aethelwulf who is the only adult in Wessex who has not betrayed King Aelle or else, to come in person in order to clear the animosity Ecbert himself has produced by his betrayal of King Aelle over Mercia.
In any case, it is no wonder that King Aelle does not want to team up with Ecbert again: He has had his experience and it is more than understandable and actually only wise that he does not trust Ecbert anymore after his betrayal.
It is also probable that he would have expected some kind of apology and compensation from Ecbert to gain his trust again before he would have been able to consider a renewal of their alliance. But even then, it is doubtful that King Aelle would have agreed since Ecbert, on top of outright betrayal and breach of agreement, has treated him disrespectfully – and as we know very well, King Aelle does not tend to take offenses and humiliation lightly.
Moreover, as argued above, King Aelle does not think he will need Ecbert‘s help to deal with the Vikings. He has no idea of the size of their army – and in fact, Ecbert and Judith cannot know about that either. All they can possibly have at this point is rumours which could well have been spread by the Ragnarssons deliberately in order to induce fear in their opponents.
And if King Aelle is good at anything, then at understanding the psychological mechanisms of warfare. So, he has no reason to assume that Ecbert and Judith KNOW more than himself.
The only difference between them is that Ecbert is not only aware of Ragnar‘s significance amongst his people but also has the advantage that Ragnar has told him exactly what he expects to happen and that it is actually his plan to get himself killed in England in order to incite his sons to attack the Saxons. Therefore, Ecbert is expecting a major backlash.
He does not, however, do King Aelle the courtesy of sharing this piece of information with him which, again, shows the insincerity of his offer to reinstate their alliance as he obviously has no scruples to sacrifice the grandfather of his grandsons to the Vikings – and Northumbria along with him.
Left with nothing more than Judith’s remark about Ragnar’s significance amongst his people, King Aelle has more than enough reason to dismiss this hint as unconvincing (see below).
So, what Judith tells her father is nothing but rumours and fearful guesses. She does not present any real information and lacks any proofs. The audience knows that these guesses are correct, but from the Saxon perspective, these are still nothing more than guesses. And King Aelle knows that.
Furthermore, while Ragnar was still alive, he himself has obviously not been able to raise a large army or to persuade any of his able-bodied sons to follow him to England, so it is understandable that King Aelle would not expect these same sons to be interested and able to raise a huge army just to avenge Ragnar now that he is dead.
Yet King Aelle is still cautious enough to prepare for a revenge expedition, he just does not expect it to be anywhere nearly as huge as it is – and not because he is an idiot but because his expectation is based on the data available to him at this point and on a totally logical if incorrect line of reasoning.
Therefore, it is probable that he takes Judith‘s warnings just as a sign of female weakness and fear in combination with some ulterior motives of Ecbert that will, of course, prove detrimental to Aelle if he makes the mistake to trust Ecbert again.
King Aelle also feels morally superior because of Ecbert’s scandalous and sinful liaison with Judith and, therefore, he probably does regard himself as more favoured by God than Ecbert ever could be. Against this background, it could even jeopardize King Aelle‘s current position of favour with God if he allied with Ecbert again.
This last aspect, the favour of God and the reasons why King Aelle assumes that he has eventually managed to gain it back, should not be underestimated as a factor in his decision-making and it should also not be dismissed as idiotic because that would mean to impose modern convictions which is entirely unfitting when evaluating a medieval mindset.
King Aelle does prepare for any potential incursions according to his best knowledge AND he trusts in God. There is no way how he could have been expected to act differently except if he had been impressed by untrustworthy rumours and fearful talk and that is just not how his mindset works and it also would not be more reasonable than his attitude anyway.
To sum it up:
King Aelle does not dismiss Judith’s warning because he is an idiot or does not listen to reason – he has proven the contrary more than once when he listened to Ecbert’s reasoning (even though Ecbert turned out to be wrong in the end).
He does so for several reasons that make perfect sense from his perspective:
- He is convinced at this point that God has finally decided to intervene and will assist him. He IS, in fact, well-prepared for any Viking force within his imagination (for which see 2.) and he does not have to fear the menace of Ragnar‘s superior mind anymore. Therefore, he has every reason to be confident that he will be able to deal with the Vikings on his own.
- He also knows that the Vikings can be defeated and he has prior experience with Viking attacks and recalls the size of a major Viking force, the allied Viking army of two jarls and a king (Season 2).
- Ecbert has betrayed him once and does not show any change of mind or new respect that could induce King Aelle to trust him again.
- Judith has let him down in favour of Ecbert, so he cannot trust her either. Besides, she is only a woman and King Aelle is completely in tune with the opinions of much greater intellectual capacities of his times in thinking that women are weak, ruled by irrational emotions, hence unreasonable.
- This is only confirmed by the fact that she has no arguments but only unreliable rumours (which could as well be a part of the Ragnarssons’ stratagem) and fears to convince him of the necessity of reinstating the alliance with Ecbert. The only actual argument she puts forward is Ragnar‘s significance for his people and this is more than dubitable given that Ragnar had not come with a strong force to England on his last journey himself.
- From this point of view, it would actually be idiotic to accept and get lured into a new trap of Ecbert – which King Aelle has learned to expect the hard way by painful experience.
Hence, as King Aelle states himself most clearly, he has no wish to ally with Ecbert again and he sees no need either.
As idiotic to the point of comical as all his utterances in this scene may sound to an audience with background knowledge about the gathering of the Great Heathen Army, if we put ourselves into King Aelle‘s shoes just for a moment, there actually is no sensible reason for him to ally with Ecbert again.
Let us not forget that King Aelle has allied with Ecbert before despite his very justified suspicions about Ecbert‘s real plans – because there was a necessity and it was the smaller evil and because Ecbert had managed to convince him that he could be trusted. That is another proof of King Aelle’s principal readiness to bow to reason and necessities.
But neither of these is the case now. Given his overall way of thinking and the situation presenting itself as outlined above, King Aelle has no way to know what is going to befall him and there is not much he could have done or been expected to do differently.
As comical as it may look at first sight, in reality, King Aelle‘s reaction is totally understandable, even reasonable, and at the same time part of his personal tragedy as it leads him inevitably into certain doom.
It does not help the situation either that Judith, for all her alleged intelligence, has to fight out her personal battle with her parents instead of focussing on the task at hand: trying to convince her father of the necessity of an alliance and of Ecbert‘s trustworthiness.
There may not be much hope to succeed, but what she does is at best a half-hearted attempt – which may indicate that in reality, she has not come to warn her father or to see her family or even to carry out a mission assigned to her by Ecbert, but rather to see the site of Ragnar‘s execution.
In any case, she proves to be King Aelle‘s true daughter at this point by confronting her father with the same arrogant disdain he exudes himself.
That is an understandable reaction, but not helpful at all since – aside from being enraging in itself and reminding her parents once more of her moral crookedness – it results in offending her father by giving him the impression that she does not take him seriously and has no trust in his capabilities. Judith does not prove much diplomatic talent here.
As stated above, one might also have serious doubts if her and Ecbert’s fears even are as profound and far-sighted as we are supposed to believe. It may well be that they have fallen victim to the delusion that the real danger is imminent only for Northumbria because Ragnar has promised Ecbert that his sons will take revenge on King Aelle only.
Ecbert has stated clearly before that he trusts Ragnar. Therefore, this might be just an attempt to play it safe if possible but nothing that is worth a lot of effort to them.
This would mean that Ecbert finally has lost all sense for friend and enemy and that King Aelle is actually the one with the clearest vision as he sees Ragnar as the deadly enemy of his people that he really is.
On the other hand, there are more than enough signs that both, Ecbert and Judith, are rather mistaking him for a real friend and have established some weirdly absurd sort of cult of saints around him. No wonder King Aelle asks Judith at the pit if she has gone mad.
War Preparations
As already mentioned above, the next thing we see is King Aelle receiving the message about the arrival of the Great Heathen Army. Although he gives the general impression of determination and calmness, he does not look too happy and possibly slightly disturbed.
But he seems to have succeeded at re-balancing himself in the next scene as he is totally confident when he is being prepared for going into battle. He even tries to reassure his wife and his younger daughter who are both expressing concern and fear about the Viking menace.
A reviewer has stated that in this scene, King Aelle declares the Vikings‘ strength to be all about marketing which then proves to be another one of his persistent misconceptions. But in reality, he says:
It is in the interests of the Northmen to have a reputation as great warriors. It‘s half the battle. It sows the seeds of fear in those who oppose them.
That does not mean that they are not to be taken seriously. Rather, it is an insight into the psychological aspect of their success:
The Vikings do not fear death and look wild and intimidating and they fight accordingly. This does have a daunting effect on their Saxon adversaries and has been a problem for their fighting morale all along – which King Aelle has experienced much to his displeasure in Season 1 already.
It is true that King Aelle has been refusing to accept the panic-like horror of his soldiers at the experience of the Viking fighting style from the beginning. But meanwhile, he has first come to the realization that the Vikings pose a more serious threat than he had thought in the beginning and then, he has witnessed that they can be defeated nonetheless.
All he says here is that there is no reason for an undue amount of fear because he is well-prepared to deal with them successfully this time and that it is not wise to succumb to their general psychological strategy and get paralyzed by fear because this would result in exactly the attitude that enables them to defeat even a superior Saxon force.
Therefore, his statement is not dumb at all.
Facing the Great Heathen Army
The actual reason why King Aelle is defeated in his last battle is that he disastrously underestimates the Vikings‘ numbers. They do not win the battle because of some superior strategy or better fighting skills. They simply outnumber the Northumbrian army by a multiple.
And that is the one point in the story where we are actually presented with idiocy on King Aelle‘s part which does not dissolve at a closer look:
He does not send out scouts to learn about the strength of the Viking army and hence, he is totally taken by surprise on the battlefield. As the sending of scouts is part of the basics of warfare and King Aelle must have fought successful battles in the past – otherwise, he would not have lasted as a king (or even have become one) – we have to assume that he would do that without even the need to think about it.
It may have been too late to muster more soldiers at that point even if he had learned about the size of the Great Heathen Army before going into battle. But there still would have been the option to devise another strategy and even to prepare for an ordered retreat and a siege.
He also could have sent messengers to Wessex for relief troops. Ecbert owed him assistance in a battle anyway and it would have been in his own interest to help King Aelle to stop the Vikings‘ advance right in the beginning.
So why did King Aelle not send out scouts?
This is the point where interpretation cannot be stretched enough to explain the actions (or in this case: lack of actions) of a character. It cannot be solved on the narratological level because it makes no sense inside the framework of the story.
Yet it does make sense if we take into consideration the dramatic effect reached in this way in the scene when the Great Heathen Army rolls up vis-à-vis King Aelle‘s force:
First King Aelle‘s triumphing, then his face falling down when Floki comes into sight and then the king‘s apparent horror when he realizes that he has already lost the battle before it has even begun – this scene was a first climax of the episode and the bad surprise for King Aelle and the way it showed on his face were a real highlight both from the point of view of dramatic structure and of acting.
So the only intelligible solution to the puzzle why King Aelle would not send out scouts to spy on the Viking forces is that the writer sacrificed his intelligence here in favour of the dramatic effect.
Yet it seems that the writer somehow did not have too high an opinion of the audience’s intelligence either (or this really escaped him):
The soldier who brought the news about the landing of the Great Heathen Army to his king in the first place had seen them with his own eyes already. Even if he had not been able to count them, he would have realized and reported that it was a huge force, much bigger than that of the Northumbrians. So who would believe that King Aelle had no idea of the size of their army?
Something else is noteworthy about this pre-battle scene: Even at the realization that he has lost – which also undeniably means he will die one way or the other – King Aelle does not panic.
He does look horrified, no doubt, and he has every reason for that. But even though his voice is pressed, it does not shake when he answers his bishop‘s terrified exclamation „God help us!“ by dryly remarking: „I don‘t think He can.“
Given that, as argued above, in this sentence lies the breakdown of his whole world and the final destruction of everything he has regarded as true and good and safe so far, he stays admirably composed. A comparison with how the bishop looks and sounds underlines this most impressively.
The Miserable Pit Scene
Therefore, what happens in the next scene at the snake pit is an even greater puzzle than the question of scouts:
After having been dragged to the site of the pit, King Aelle is completely broken already. It is not just the physical weakness that has been produced by the dragging and whatever has happened before. He does not have any inner resistance left either.
Björn‘s slap makes him whimper and obey in a manner that makes him appear so intimidated and miserable that it is barely believable and he stays that way for the rest of the scene until the blood eagle procedure sets in.
How is that possible? How has this energetic, determined and strong-willed man, this king who, in all his justified horror, still stayed composed mere moments before been broken so thoroughly?
Why does he try to bargain for his life with the men whose father he has killed? And why at this weirdly late point when it is obvious to the audience that there is no chance left for him to succeed with it?
How can he appear so extremely weak and pitiful so fast? When and how has he reached his breaking point? The scene itself does not give an answer to these questions.
Although it was to be expected that King Aelle would be broken in the end as there was the very human weakness of existential uncertainty in his nature all along (which also makes him so relatable), the change in his character is so striking here and comes so abruptly that it calls for an explanation. He had been just too tough throughout Season 4B to give up so quickly and easily.
In fact, it is the most important, most interesting, psychologically most insightful and therefore most artistic part of a story to comprehensibly show how a strong major antagonist can be broken – how basically all of us can be broken.
It is the part that reveals the antagonist‘s essential humanity, the part where he is connected to all of us, the part that can teach a moral, the part that deepens thoughts and feelings and turns the character and in the best case the feelings of the audience around and makes them relate to him and sense the bitterness of his end, no matter what has happened before.
It is the part where an antagonist, defeated, broken and finally destroyed, through his very humanity, can preserve his dignity even if it is outwardly taken away from him. It is the part where we can take a lesson away from fiction because we are enabled to transcend our usual framework of thinking and feeling.
Considering the extent of the writer‘s talent and the range and skills and charisma of the actor, these expectations were justified in the case of King Aelle. Instead, a decision was made to withhold any redemption arc from the character despite the fact that he was not a villain.
There is no deeper-reaching Goodbye scene with his family, no scenes showing growing concern and unresolved struggle with moral and spiritual insecurities that might explain his later breakdown better, no look into his soul that would bring him closer to the audience in order to make the tragedy of his fate felt more clearly.
There is not even a scene showing his initial pride and brave resistance being broken down by whatever measures of violence have caused the wounds in his face and on his head even though it is completely unthinkable for his character to break down right away with any resistance. (So much so that the present author was convinced over weeks after watching it that an important scene had ill-advisedly been cut out.)
Instead, a decision was made to make King Aelle look like an idiot and a coward. He may not have been mentally strong enough to resist for a long time if tormented enough and he certainly was not into mind control, so he would have expressed all of his feelings as unfiltered as he always used to do.
But he was neither an idiot nor a coward. He deserved better than a destruction with such an incredible amount of contempt.
As the opportunity to show how King Aelle‘s breakdown could happen so quickly was missed, we need to look at what must have happened immediately before that to make some sense of it.
And as the battle and the way King Aelle has fallen into the hands of the Vikings has not been shown and the view of the Vikings storming towards King Aelle‘s relatively small army is directly followed by the sight of the king being dragged behind Ivar‘s chariot there is something missing in between.
Let us see what this could be: Before the battle in the scene when King Aelle and Bishop Unwin ride at the head of the army we get a glimpse at King Aelle‘s full outfit. He is wearing a helmet, body and forearm armour, his sword including swordbelt and sheath, rings on both hands and his heavy cloak.
When he is being dragged he is only clothed in his shirt, trousers, and boots. Everything else has been taken away. Considering his general temperament and the fact that most of his outfit has been pretty tightly fit to his body, there must have been some major violence involved in the process of taking it off.
Aside from that, they would have needed him to give them basic directions where to look for the place of their father’s execution. It is highly improbable that King Aelle would have willingly cooperated.
We, therefore, have to assume that they forced him to reveal the information and there is no way how that would have been possible without a great deal of violence either. In other words: There must have been some form of torture involved.
Indeed, there are hints to violence exerted on King Aelle before the dragging and probably after capture in some of his facial injuries:
While the heavily bleeding head injuries on the forehead at the hairline and on the temple may have been caused during the battle (which, however, means that he would have lost his helmet previously or in the process), there is a laceration on the left brow and his nose and his lip is bleeding even before Björn‘s slap.
Therefore, it is probable that he has been beaten. They also must have knocked him to the ground in order to tie him to the chariot.
Moreover, we should take into consideration that being stripped not only of the external signs of power and dignity but of major parts of clothing generally is a humiliating experience in itself.
Depending on the situation as a whole – e.g. what measure of abuse and further humiliation has accompanied the beating – and the nature of the beating this might have led King Aelle close to his breaking point. This is a possibility as his pride and sensitivity towards humiliation point to a vulnerability in that area, possibly some sort of trauma dating back to his childhood or adolescence.
As he has the air of a mistreated and intimidated child around him after having been slapped at the pit, this might be a sign of a psychological regression having taken place, potentially induced by the unusual experience of being helplessly exposed to physical violence and beating that might have triggered a much earlier traumatic experience.
Coming back to the potential events, it is also not totally clear how King Aelle could have been captured without serious injuries while the bishop who has fought at his side has been badly wounded.
This is all the more surprising as the king must have been aware that he would have to face a gruesome execution if he fell into the hands of his foes alive – which means he must have fought most fiercely and desperately since the best he could have hoped for at this point would have been to die in battle.
The most probable explanation would thus be that King Aelle got a blow to the head relatively early on, lost control of his horse and fell to the ground, thereby losing his helmet and possibly consciousness at least for a short span of time. If we assume this to be what happened, King Aelle would probably have suffered from a concussion even before being captured.
This would mean a serious headache and possibly numbness and dizziness, maybe nausea and probably a memory gap regarding the event. Therefore, King Aelle would have been in a state of physical weakness and vulnerability and possibly slightly disoriented when he had to face the bitter reality of being a helpless captive of his worst enemies.
Even if he has not been in this state before the dragging – which, however, is probable given that he suffered additional blows to the head -, then he probably was afterward. Since he has been dragged in the worst position possible – on his back, tied to the chariot by his feet – he has not had any chance to improve his situation by lifting his body or even shielding his head against thudding to the ground at every unevenness.
Basically, the full weight of his body is working against him during the dragging and inflicting injuries and his head is exposed to multiple major blows from being smashed against the ground and against every obstacle on the path. If we imagine that what we have seen only for a couple of seconds and meters has happened over miles, we get a picture of the severe physical effects of this treatment.
So the dragging in itself is torture but not only with regard to its physical effects. It is also another pretty humiliating experience to be treated worse than a piece of baggage and having your whole upper body and head being dragged through the dirt. That certainly can lead to a serious loss of self-confidence.
All of this happens in addition to King Aelle‘s previous loss of faith in the power of his God, basically the breakdown of his whole world, of everything he has trusted in for his entire life, the loss of what seems to have been his main source of mental strength.
This means he is not only physically exposed to mistreatment and helpless in a way he never has been before. He is probably still in some sort of psychological shock state in this regard as well, re-traumatized by the rough treatment and completely stripped of any device that could have helped him to keep his spirit up – or at least to preserve a decent measure of composure.
Add to all of this the prospect of his imminent death – and King Aelle certainly knows that it will be a nasty one. Death in battle is one thing. Death by torture is quite another thing, especially when there has not been an opportunity to prepare for it and your main source of mental strength has just been taken away from you.
It is also unclear what the realization that God is unable to help him means with regard to King Aelle’s expectation for life after death. He might have faced a whole new horrific prospect and could actually have started to fear death more than he had ever before – if he had at all.
All in all, King Aelle is living through the realization of his worst nightmares from the moment he understands that he has lost the battle. There is thus the option to explain his apparent numbness after the dragging not only by a probable concussion but also by a psychological state of shock.
Considering everything he has been through at this point AND the fact that he obviously had not prepared himself for being captured, it may be more understandable that he does not have any resistance left in the scene at the pit.
Being a king for decades has the downside that King Aelle has been used to an especially considerate treatment and his fall from the height of power to the deepest abyss of humiliation by being made a captive – especially by people who both hate and despise him – is dramatic.
And STILL, it is a far stretch to explain without clear proof of major acts of torture before the dragging how a tough warrior king of those times with a well-developed sense of pride can be turned into a whimpering wretch who does not care the least for his dignity within a small span of time.
The fact that he does not pass out during the blood eagle procedure in itself is proof to the incredible strength of his body. People in those days were used to much more physical hardships than we are and therefore considerably less sensitive to them.
One would, therefore, expect the Vikings to need a considerable amount of quite torturous violence and certainly more than a couple of hours to break King Aelle so thoroughly.
As for King Aelle‘s attempt to bargain for his life, one could say he is just a coward who starts begging out of fear. Yet he has not been a coward up to this point, as argued above, so this looks somewhat out of character again. Besides, it looks idiotic of him to do it at such a late point in time when the audience can clearly see the rage and bloodlust of his enemies.
But does he actually beg? It is true that he is thoroughly intimidated at this point and certainly does not want to die – let alone in a nasty way which is what he must be expecting from Ragnar‘s sons. And his words do sound much like begging indeed.
Yet it still makes a difference if you are begging for mercy – which would have been outright idiotic and completely futile in this situation – or if you are offering something of value in exchange for something valuable.
Offering gold and silver in exchange for his life while Ragnar‘s sons want revenge for their father‘s death may look as idiotic as begging for mercy at first sight. They have already defeated King Aelle‘s army and captured himself, the king. If they had come for bounty who would prevent them from just taking it? And if they do not care about riches would it not insult and enrage them even more to be offered money as appeasement for their rage about their father‘s death?
But let us have a closer look: For once, we have to grant that King Aelle is not exactly in the best shape for clear thought. But he is NOT an idiot as we have already seen, so he knows pretty well that there is no chance they would show him mercy even if he begged for it. And it would mean to sacrifice the rest of what little dignity he has left. Therefore, he does NOT beg for mercy.
On the other hand, his prior experience has taught him that the Northmen do love riches and may prefer the easy way: being paid off instead of having to pillage. And as he never really has understood them, he may be thinking that greed is their main motivation.
He might have come to this conclusion when realizing the size of their army. That was not just a force for a mere punitive expedition, that was an invasion army. Besides, Ragnar’s sons had not accompanied their father on his last journey to England, so King Aelle would not believe that they would be THAT intent to avenge him.
The most logical explanation for King Aelle would be that they had ulterior motives, that they had come mainly for material gain, be it riches or land. And he could give them that the easy way as he would probably have agreed to a tributary vassal status as well in this situation.
At least, it probably looks to him like it would be worth a try as it is the only ass he has left in his sleeve, the only weapon he has left to fight with. And he has always been a fighter, pulling himself up again after every setback and shattering experience.
As a warrior, of course, King Aelle also would know that men right after a battle are not in a peaceful state of mind, especially not if there has not been much opportunity for plundering and if there are no women around. He has probably been surprised by the extent of the rage of the Ragnarssons but they have made him feel it physically.
So he might have found it advisable to let them take their rage out on him for a while as long as they would not start his execution in the hopes that they might cool down enough to give him a chance to make his offer.
By the time King Aelle starts to bargain at the pit, he has probably come to the conclusion that this hope has been in vain. But he just gives it a try nonetheless as he has nothing to lose anymore and he has no other option left.
King Aelle really is in a bad situation: There is no hope for any assistance from God or men at this point. He is all alone and has to deal on his own with an overpowering number of enraged, armed and mostly strong, young men while he himself is unarmed and unshielded, bodily weakened from mistreatment, mentally unprepared for what he is going through and facing a cruel death in the immediate future.
He is completely desperate at this point and all he can lose now his dignity. Given the choice, he obviously values life higher. So, in his helplessness and desperation, he does the only thing he can think of, the only thing left to do: He offers them something he knows they value – gold and silver – in exchange for something he values above anything else – his life.
Giving away riches has saved him once, so it could save him again. And if it does not he will not be worse off than before. He does not even sacrifice his dignity by offering a bargain.
That’s because, basically, what he does here really is fighting for his life with the only weapon he has left – an offer to strike a bargain that may be attractive for them. The only thing that makes it look indignified and not like a warrior’s last attempt to fight for his life is that it comes across like fearful begging. King Aelle has more than enough reason to be fearful and it is more than human to sound miserable in his situation.
It is probably impossible to imagine how it feels to face torturous death within the immediate future if one has never been in this situation and it is clear that it is no joking matter.
But the way King Aelle’s offer sounds and what follows is also the main reason why it is impossible to fully reconcile his behaviour at the pit with his character traits up to this point, why there remains a continuity gap caused by the writing that cannot be filled by interpretation.
Even if we assume that King Aelle has indeed been subjected to severe torture after his capture and even if we take into consideration the toll on him of all the physical and psychological hardships he has gone through up to this point, it is still not in tune with his character that he should have been broken so utterly with such ease.
But we have to accept that somehow King Aelle has been broken already when reaching the pit. At this point, we should acknowledge that we all can be broken and that there is no reason to feel contempt for anyone who has been unfortunate enough to experience that. The aim cannot be to be unbreakable because that is not possible. If we die without having been broken, it is just due to the good luck of not having found our master.
Many have judged King Aelle‘s behaviour in the scene at the pit and even his screams during the blood eagle torture by Viking standards and, therefore, do scorn him. But he is not a Viking, so that is not really a fair measure. He does not even attempt to behave like a Viking and why should he? And he has never been much into self-control as to expressing his feelings, let alone into attempting to practise mind control.
It is not in his nature and he obviously has not seen a need to train it to any significant level. Whenever we have seen him, his emotions tended to burst out of him like the lava bursts out of a volcano. Therefore it is no wonder that he does not mask his feelings in this scene.
Yes, he is afraid (and he has reason to be) and he shows it. Yes, he does cry after his offer to bargain has been rejected. He is desperate and he has reason to be. His last hope to avoid being tortured to death has just been shattered and he has already lost his confidence in his God, so he must be totally clueless and therefore deeply terrified with regard to what is going to await him in the hereafter as well.
He has followed the wrong path for his entire life and now it is too late to change anything. If all of that is not a reason to hit the ground of the abyss of despair, then what is?
So instead of following instinctive reactions and feeling contempt for a man in extreme misery who cannot stay strong while living through an experience he could not prepare for properly inside the framework of his thinking, it might be more fruitful to look at it from a different angle:
Having emotions is human. To be weak and in pain and intimidated in a situation like this is human. To become desperate in the face of a certain and painful death without the comfort of firm faith and without the chance to accommodate oneself to its loss is human.
Showing all of this, not masking it up, is even more human and in the case of King Aelle means remaining true to himself, to his nature.
Now, who of us would have fared better if we had been in King Aelle’s place? And if we had not fared better because we are human, is it helpful to despise ourselves for being what we factually are: human? Is it not dignified to be human? Is it not dignified to be true to yourself and not to mask your feelings?
There is a special form of courage involved in setting all your pride aside and instead being true, showing your fellow humans what they are doing to you, what the results of their deeds are even though it may be satisfying for them in their current state. It is dignified to put down your shield when the fighting is over and there is no more sense in holding it up and hiding behind it
There is dignity to presenting yourself in your full human vulnerability, even misery. Because it is not a sign of individual weakness to be broken – everybody can be broken, the difference is only by which means and how long it takes. Everybody has their own threshold and there is no reason to feel contempt for anybody who has reached theirs – even less if you have not been brought to your own breaking point yet.
As for King Aelle, what could he have gained by controlling his emotions and not showing his weakness? He was exposed anyway. There was nobody coming to his rescue. They would have succeeded to pull his mask, his shield down sooner or later. It would just have taken longer and meant more torture. So why play a game? Especially a game that would have gone against his nature?
It is not in tune with his character that King Aelle should have been broken so utterly with such ease and in such a small span of time. But once he was broken, in a way, he stayed true to himself in showing his misery. And that is how this character finally touched some people despite the fact that it was probably not intended when they decided to make him go down in such an inglorious way.
This impact is due to Ivan’s very convincing, breathtaking acting. He made it work against the odds and gave us a deep, shattering experience of a tragedy: of a fellow human being miserably broken.
The Blood Eagle
What follows the pit scene finally makes up for the continuity gap produced by a lack of preparation for the pit scene. It does, in fact, more than one thing at a time:
First of all, the blood eagle procedure gives King Aelle back at least part of his dignity. His suffering is epic. It transforms him into a legend as much as his snake pit has given Ragnar immortality by a memorable death. Here, King Aelle is back one last time.
His screams are as monumental as the whole scene, simply blood-curdling and it is nothing less than disdainful weakness. It is rather King Aelle‘s usual force erupting at the edge of what is humanly bearable. He goes through this ordeal with the full force of his mighty personality and his powerful body, rearing up time and again in agony until he is too weakened to even lift his head.
When reaching this point the opportunity missed before when omitting the process of how he was broken is finally realized, the chance to give the character depth in suffering, to show him as a fellow human being who is just unfortunate and happens to live under less favourable circumstances than we do, the facility to establish a connection with him and to teach us a lesson:
King Aelle is dignified in his dying moments by the bare humanity we all share, he is dignified by a measure of suffering that transcends by far whatever he could have been blamed for. Feelings of contempt and pity simply dissolve as he is crossing the border between this world of bodies and separation and the realm where we are all one and the same.
It makes up for what has been missed and it is Ivan’s stunning acting that is responsible for this consoling aspect of his gruesome death.
Secondly, King Aelle‘s excruciating death only highlights his general tragedy: He was a king who, from his perspective, had no other options but to act as he did and yet went into disaster step by step without standing a chance to avoid it.
He earned a brutal and lonesome death in agony and despair. He went despised and unmourned, his mutilated body unburied and treated with utter disrespect, having sacrificed his whole existence in the unavailing attempt to protect his honour, his family, his people, and his kingdom as it was his duty.
As it was beyond his capability to master the task assigned to him by an inclement fate, he ended up as a tragic figure. He was unfortunate enough to be deprived of his dignity and mocked even before his end and a human being miserably broken is always a tragedy. He deserved better than disdain and derision and joy over his suffering and thus his fate is a tragedy.
There are people who say he should not have killed Ragnar – but he could not just set him free. He had to eliminate the threat he was posing, he had to punish him for his evil deeds, he had to regain his own honour, he had to keep his oath, he had to avenge his brother.
If we want to be fair we have to admit that, as King Aelle had not been the aggressor, he and Ragnar had been even after Ragnar‘s death. Ragnar had done wrong and had paid for it and he even had been able to choose when and how. From the point of view of fairness, Ragnar‘s sons were not entitled to revenge as their father‘s death had been the consequence of his own deeds and in itself been the result of blood vengeance.
Yet there is an inherent sequence of events springing from every action and the concept of blood vengeance by its very nature leads to an endless vicious circle of bloodshed. Thus Ragnar‘s sons came for revenge and King Aelle knew they would even if he might have hoped they might not be interested enough to do so as they had not been with their father on his last journey.
There are people who say King Aelle should have listened to Judith. But what proof did she bring? And how could he have trusted her and Ecbert again? And why should he have thought that he needed an alliance? King Aelle had not chosen his fate like Ragnar and Ecbert did.
He had not chosen to be attacked in the beginning, he had not chosen to be humiliated, he had not chosen to be used and betrayed by Ecbert and to be let down by his own child, he had not chosen to be played by Ragnar and Ecbert again when Ragnar was presented to him on a silver platter.
He had not chosen to be a conventional thinker with a limited horizon confronted with exceptional thinkers for whom he was no match. All he did was trying to defend his kingdom, his people, his family, and his honour in the way he had learned and that had worked for him in other circumstances.
All he did was doing his duty and what he regarded to be right. He had to lead his troops into battle because he had no surviving son, no heir to send. He had to do it because he had no choice and because it was his kingdom and his life-long cause and his final decisive battle to fight even though he was not in the shape to face a Viking warrior in a hand-to-hand combat.
The result of his courage and his sense of duty and honour and his determination was to lose everything, his whole confidence, his source of strength and finally his life. He lost his faith and his notion of the afterlife which made him afraid of death right when it was around the corner.
And after that, he was stripped of everything else he could have relied on, of all his soldiers, of his insignia of power, of his armour and weapons, physically and psychologically, of his bodily integrity, of his pride and self-confidence, of his power over his body, of his force, for a while even of his ability to stand upright without help.
Then, when he was broken and frightened to death and totally desperate for this life and the hereafter, Floki in utmost cruelty mocked his faith – the faith he just had lost and the loss of which was one of the major reasons for his miserable state – and scared him even more.
Finally, the mocking was continued in the most brutal way by nailing his hands to a trunk – mocking his faith, mocking the crucifixion of the saviour who had not had the power to save him and at the same time inflicting extreme pain already in the mere process of immobilizing him to make him unable to escape the greater pain that was coming.
He was tortured to death leaning forward, with his face turned to the ground, helplessly suffering utmost pain, desperately rearing up despite his restraints, growing weaker and weaker – all of this without a chance to escape the view of a sadistic brat staring into his breaking eyes and rejoicing over his torment.
And when he was gone in unspeakable agony, a magnificent body savagely butchered and a powerful personality miserably destroyed, he was still being mocked – Floki making the sign of the cross over his dead body and then his corpse being hung into the trees like a trophy signaling both crucifixion and blood eagle and at the same time hinting at the figure of an angel.
King Aelle was made an example in the cruelest way despite the fact that his only crimes were to have a less charming personality than the other kings and to be unfortunate enough to live at a time and in a place of extraordinary challenges while being an ordinary man of his time. He was at the wrong time in the wrong place for his capabilities.
Yet if he had not faced an extraordinary challenge like Ragnar and the Vikings, he probably would have had a chance to live, reign and die in relative peace.
One of the most tragic aspects of his downfall and end is that he embodies the common dilemma of theodicy as he relies on the concept that he just has to obey religious regulations in order to secure the protection of an almighty God. But once he has done so and believes that he will be protected, he suddenly realizes in the hour of his greatest need for divine assistance that the equation does not work.
After decades of making sure that the almighty and just God will not have a reason to punish him, he comes to the conclusion that his doom is rooted in the fact that God may be just and King Aelle himself righteous, yet it does not make any difference if God is not almighty.
And that leaves him in the horrible situation of existential shock and despair with nowhere to turn and nothing left to cling to save him from drowning in horror – right in the moment when he needs his faith more than at any other time in his life.
Had he not lost his main source of strength when he had to face his worst nightmare, he could at least have preserved his dignity even in the face of a horrific and torturous death.
If this king is not a tragic figure, then who is?
Excursus: King Aelle and King Ecbert
The show seems to suggest more or less directly that King Aelle is dumb or even an idiot when compared to Ecbert but that is, in fact, not the case.
It is true that ‘Vikings’ frequently uses the technique of making certain characters look dumber than they are in specific situations in order to make other characters look especially smart (or, in King Aelle’s case, even just for a dramatic effect). And King Aelle is certainly one of the victims of this technique if not the only one.
But when faced with Ecbert, King Aelle falls victim not to a lack of intelligence but to his own integrity and, at the start, to his readiness to accommodate his ally.
Why King Aelle Was Right All Along and Ecbert Was Wrong
Looking at the course of events from Season 2 to 4B and the final outcome, it is most striking that anyone would think of Ecbert as especially smart because it is so obvious that he makes one fatal decision after the other.
Let us start with the moment when the united forces of the Saxon kings defeat the Vikings and King Aelle suggests to annihilate them while they are still weak. Ecbert talks to him as if he were a child while persuading him to make a deal with them and use them as mercenaries instead. Yet King Aelle’s suggestion turns out to be a much better idea. Why is that?
Well, first of all, have a look at the consequences of Ecbert’s “brilliant” idea:
- The deal with the Vikings includes setting up a settlement for them in Wessex – despite the fact that Ecbert knows that this will not go well in the long run as his nobles and the people of Wessex are, understandably, not ready to accept Vikings in their neighbourhood shortly after suffering from their last raid.
- By making a deal with the Vikings, Ecbert also obscures the fact that Ragnar and his allies have suffered a crushing defeat and enables them to sail home with bounty and good news instead. This gives Ragnar the opportunity to get an even bigger reputation and it makes raiding England look like a worthwhile endeavour from the Viking perspective.
- As Ecbert disregards the justified concerns and interests of his own people in order to satisfy his greed, assuming that his brain power and personal authority are enough to make the arrangement work, he then, in order to preserve peace in his own kingdom, has to accept that the settlement must be destroyed.
- By this move, he breaks the treaty with Ragnar (as he always does) and that is what finally brings Ragnar back to England with the intention to take revenge on Ecbert.
This means Ecbert and his decisions are the main reason why the Great Heathen Army could conquer England in the end.
Now, let us see what would most likely have happened if they had done as King Aelle suggested – wiping the Vikings out right after their defeat:
- All of the Vikings would have been dead: Ragnar, Rollo, Lagertha, Bjorn, Floki, Horik, Horik’s son Erlendur. Who would have been left with an interest to avenge any of them? No adult.
- Ragnar’s other sons were still little children and Aslaug was not a warrior, so it is most likely that some other jarl or king would have conquered Kattegat after hearing of Ragnar’s death. The smart solution would have been to kill Ragnar’s little sons, so they would not have avenged him either.
- Let us assume they had survived into adulthood, then it would have taken over ten years for them to grow up and seek revenge.
- Then, they would not have had any force and as Ragnar would have gone down in memory not as a legendary hero but as the failure who led a big Viking army of two jarls and one king into destruction, nobody would have cared about their father and they would not have been able to assemble a huge army.
- The crushing defeat of Ragnar and his allies would have shown the other Vikings that his idea to start sailing West and raiding England was not necessarily a good one and came with high risks. So, they might even have dropped these endeavours altogether and gone back to raiding in the East.
- But even if the Vikings had decided to continue the raids, for all the reasons above they would probably have come with smaller forces, not as big as the army in Season 2 or that size at most and the allied Saxon kings would have been able to defend themselves and defeat them just like they did with this force. There would most likely never have been anything like the Great Heathen Army.
Bottom line: King Aelle’s idea here in Season 2 was much better than that of Ecbert inside the logic of the show as in the show the whole raiding on England had been entirely based on Ragnar’s vision and tied to his successes.
The only reason why one might think that Ecbert is right at that point is the development in actual history. But that is different from the show (yet also seems to have had to do with an inability of the Saxon kingdoms to form functional alliances due to the same partisan spirit Ecbert displays and King Aelle in his integrity heroically refuses to adopt).
In the show, King Aelle was right all along and Ecbert was wrong and made mistake after mistake, bringing about a full-fledged invasion in the end.
The latter is true because the fact that Ecbert first made a treaty with Ragnar and then broke it was the sole reason why Ragnar wanted revenge and came back to die in England.
When that point was reached, he certainly would have found a way to get himself killed or simply die in England anyway, no matter what the Saxon kings would have done. And that would have brought about his sons’ revenge in any case.
Therefore, it cannot be blamed on King Aelle but it is correctly to be blamed on Ecbert. That does not diminish King Aelle’s importance as the only significant force to ever really oppose the Vikings: He had the necessary spirit and would have prevailed with a better ally. It was Ecbert who idiotically and unnecessarily destroyed the alliance between Wessex and Northumbria beyond repair, again due to his arrogance and greed.
If it had been about some vision for the future after him, his heirs would have inherited King Aelle’s part of Mercia anyway – or a large part of it. It was thus completely unnecessary to break the alliance by betraying King Aelle over Mercia – but Ecbert wanted all the power for himself immediately.
And while King Aelle understood both, the necessity of the alliance and the importance of not jeopardizing the only halfway trustworthy bond, a marriage alliance, Ecbert in his arrogance assumed he would not be in need of an alliance ever again.
So, King Aelle had a better understanding than Ecbert of the essential philosophical truth that trust is crucial for relationships to function – it has been argued that even criminals who work together have to trust each other for the time of their cooperation if it is meant to be functional. Yet it totally escaped oh-so-intelligent Ecbert that cooperation is essential to the success of any given human being at any time and trust is the glue to it (and to society as a whole).
Therefore, Ecbert made it not only impossible for King Aelle to reinstate the alliance but also showed repeatedly to the whole world that he was unreliable. Nobody else would have allied with him either. However, with a strong and reliable alliance, the Saxon kings might have had a chance to defend themselves more effectively against the Great Heathen Army.
Ecbert is anything but a success story. If his behaviour is that of an intelligent monarch, how does a dumb one act?
Ivan Kaye Source 
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