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The Saxon Secret to Avoiding a Bad Ruler
What if the worst rulers in English history didn't have to happen?
Bad kings - the weak, the cruel, the catastrophically incompetent - weren't inevitable. They were the consequence of a system that handed the most powerful job in the kingdom to whoever happened to emerge from the right womb in the right order!
Primogeniture, succession by (male) birth order, gave England Edward II, whose personal failings and political incompetence ended in his deposition and probable murder. It gave England Richard II, whose erratic tyranny triggered a constitutional crisis and cost him his throne. It gave England Henry VI, whose mental collapse plunged the country into thirty years of civil war. These weren't accidents of fate. They were what happens when a system prioritises birth order over every other human quality.
But before the Normans locked this system in place, the Anglo-Saxons did something far more interesting.
The Aetheling System: Choose the Best, Not the First
Book Review: Ripples Through Time by Christina Courtenay
A fun timeslip modern-day and Viking era set romance novel, Christina Courtney’s tale ticks all the right boxes.
An attractive man and woman in modern day England, brought together by unhappy circumstances. An attractive Viking (Norse) man and a Saxon woman in England, brought together by unhappy circumstances.
There are family betrayals and jealousy, buried treasure, and two kind people, attracted to each other—in both timelines!
And did I mention the fantastic setting—Viking invaded Saxon England? Swords and axes, healing herbs, and ancient stone monuments to the dead...