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Alfred the Great: Difference between revisions
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* [[Determinator]]
* [[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
* [[Easily Forgiven]]: Alfred showed remarkable magnanimity to the Danes once ''he'' had the upper hand. Not all [[Anglo Saxons]] were of his mind for obvious reasons.
* [[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.
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* [[Kick the Son of A Bitch]]: The normal fate of a viking captured alive was to have his skin nailed to the church door. For some reason Saxons did not take kindly to having their children taken for slaves.
* [[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
* [[The Magnificent]]: Alfred is the ''only'' English monarch to be called "the Great". He deserved it more than almost any other English monarch in history.
* [[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]].
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* [[La Résistance]]
* [[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]].
** Alfred's law code has a lot of curious [[Values Dissonance]] that reflects a society that was in many ways a tribal one. For instance, a lot of it was about standardizing the ''wergild'' (blood price) for preventing feuds. The amount of wergild was rated according to the status or even (with a rather creepy sort of logic) the economic value of a given victim. Another curiousity is that the crown's protection was mainly over [[Sacred Hospitality|travellers]]. This in fact also has a weird sort of logic: people from nearby had their kin to [[Vigilante Man|look after them]]. In essence the laws were not new laws but the writing down and reconciling of [[Good Old Ways|old ones]].
*** 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]].
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