Alfred the Great: Difference between revisions

=== This king provided examples of ===

* [[A Father to His Men]]

* [[Back From the Brink]]: By the time Alfred came to power, Wessex was the last Anglo-Saxon kingdom left in England, the others having already been conquered by the Vikings, and he was forced to flee into the swamps and carry out a guerrilla campaign. By the time of his death, England was a united kingdom that would manage to resist the Vikings for another hundred years.

* [[Badass Bureaucrat]]: Like most effective rulers he was this. Except he had too little rather than too much bureaucracy to deal with. In fact he practically had to invent his own bureaucracy.

* [[Badass Family]] : Being an early Middle Ages royal family almost demands this as those who are not badass don't rule. However Alfred's family were unusual for this. His father and brothers were certainly not wusses and his son and his ''daughter''(in a non-feminist society obviously) were [[Badass]] s in their own right. Not to mention his grandson Athelstan who became the first true king of England. And of course [[The Kingdom]] Alfred's family founded went on to become [[The British Empire]], so in a sense Alfred's family really did manage to [[Take Over the World]].

* [[Didn't See That Coming]]: One for Alfred and then his Viking foes. When trying to impose a peace treaty in order to get some breathing space, Alfred realised that the usual oaths on the Christian God would mean little to those who worshipped the Norse Gods. To counter this, he got them to swear an oath on Thor instead, only for them to break their oaths once more and a fleet attacked Wessex. Things seemed bleak for Alfred until a sudden storm hit the Viking fleet, destroying it utterly and forcing them to agree to the peace treaty. Unexpected events all round.

* [[Doting Parent]] / [[Happily Married]] : Alfred had a happy family and an affectionate relationship with his wife and children. Rather unusually for royalty which often has a tendency toward fratricide, adultery, and [[Big Screwed-Up Family|general unpleasantness]].

* [[Folk Hero]]: According to legend, Alfred agreed to watch the cakes of a peasant woman as they cooked as a payment for [[Sacred Hospitality]]. When they burnt because of his inattention, he [[Modest Royalty|listened meekly]] while she berated him.

* [[Foreshadowing]]: He made an attempt to build ships to pursue the [[Horny Vikings|Vikings]] and crewed them with mercenaries. This had limited success and was rather pitiful. But because of this, some credit him as the founder of the [[Brits With Battleships|Royal Navy]] which was later to [[Take Over the World|Take Over the Ocean]].

* [[The Good King]]

* [[Hope Bringer]]

* [[King Incognito]]: Would disguise himself as a minstrel and infiltrate Viking camps to learn their plans. The 'burnt cakes' story supposedly happened while he was in disguise for this purpose.

* [[Like Father, Like Son]]: Alfred's [[Brother-Sister Team|son and his daughter]] jointly won a [[Curb Stomp Battle]] over the Danes themselves, thus making Alfred's line a [[Badass Family]]. Plus his grandson Athelstan (who often gets the title 'of England' finally united all of England.

* [[Magnetic Hero]] : This was back when government was barely above the [[Asskicking Equals Authority]] level and only kept there by strenuous effort even at times when there ''wasnt'' a great foreign invasion going on. Any king who wished to even survive under such circumstances was a [[Magnetic Hero]].

* [[Noble Fugitive]]: When he was hiding in the swamp and conducting [[La Résistance]].

* [[One of Us]]: Alfred was a nerd before the word existed. That did not stop him from being as ferocious a [[Warrior Prince]] as was seen in his time.

* [[Overshadowed by Awesome]]: Tends to get overshadowed by [[King Arthur]] a lot, despite the seeming advantage of actually existing.

* [[Rightful King Returns]]: When he left the swamp to engage the [[Horny Vikings|Vikings]] in a [[Final Battle]].

* [[Royals Who Actually Do Something]]: Besides [[Warrior Prince|fighting with a sword personally]], he helped standardize the local law (which was contradictory, full of holes, and varying from place to place; just getting it to make sense was a ''lot'' of work) and encouraged scholarship and the recovery of lost writings (all of England at the time had just gone through many a year of [[Rape, Pillage and Burn]]). He even personally wrote [[Gentleman and a Scholar|scholarly works]].

*** Lest one think people of old (and people in many places today) think of their reliatives only in terms of economic value, one should remember that blood-price is a face-saver. Without reliable government (or with a government like Alfred's that is just being built) each [[The Patriarch|Patriarch]] is pressured to provide his tribe's deterrent by [[Papa Wolf|self-defense]] needs, and letting it be known that a tribe will [[Turn the Other Cheek]] implies that it is an easy mark. Taking blood-price is not an ideal form of justice, but is better than a [[Cycle of Revenge]].

** Alfred also demanded that every noble learn to read personally in vernacular. This not only helped found England's administrative system, which outlasted the Conquest, but perhaps helped lay a foundation for England's literary tradition.

* [[The Storyteller]]: According to legend, he personally disguised himself as a bard and wandered into enemy camps to find information.

* [[Unexpected Successor]]: Alfred's was his father's youngest son, with four older brothers. Three of those brothers inherited the throne before him, and all of them died within the space of roughly ten years, fighting against the Vikings.

* [[Warrior Prince]]

* [[The Wise Prince]]