“ ‘Mother and child’, Aethelflaed said very softly.”

Uhtred’s son dies in childbirth along with Gisela In season two of the TV series, Aethelflaed is given the task of killing Sigefrid in revenge for him having killed his brother (and her lover) Erik. “All were behind Sigefrid, and he turned, astonished, and just then Osferth, Alfred’s bastard son, jumped from the gate’s top.” In the third book of the series, The Lords Of The North, it’s Uhtred’s swordsman Finan the Agile who first fights off Sven’s defenders and knocks him over a rampart where Thyra then instructs the dogs to savage him to death. In the TV series, Thyra gets a triumphant revenge on her kidnapper and serial abuser Sven the One-Eyed when, at her command, her pack of hounds maul him to death during Ragnar and Uhtred’s attack on Dunholm. “Finan crouched, still grinning, ready to drive his long sword into Sven’s exposed belly.” Uhtred and Brida however, not wanting to remain with the Saxons, escape from Alfred’s wife Aelswith and return to their people. He arranges for young Uhtred and Brida to be knocked unconscious and taken from their Danish ‘captors’ in what he supposes is a rescue mission. In book one, when Uhtred’s captor (and now adopted father) Ragnar treats with King Alfred, the young Uhtred encounters the priest who baptised him at Bebbanburg, Father Beocca. “ ‘You are rescued, lord,’ he said to me, ‘praise Almighty God, you are rescued!’ “ Here’s that and ten other The Last Kingdom book events that didn’t make it onto the screen… Uhtred is kidnapped by Father Beocca That said, those changes do mean that we’ve been denied the sight of Father Pyrlig lobbing beehives over a fort wall mid-battle, so it’s not all progress.

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