C.J. Adrien's Blog

What happens when there’s a madman in the highest office? A man who is impossibly fragile, a creature who is made of delicate, transparent glass, whose loyal handlers are convinced that a single unscripted touch from the world might shatter his porcelain ego into a thousand jagged diamonds? A man who stalks the gilded corridors of his residence like a ghost in a silk shroud, lashing out at the people sworn to his service because he sees in them shadows sharpening knives where there are only loyalists? A man who whispers in the night about his will to muster the might of his resources to annihilate civilization, should he fall?

What happens when the most powerful man in the land begins to lose grip on his own story? When he looks at his kin and sees strangers, his mind a watercolor blur where names and faces fade into a gray mist of unrecognition? When he abandons the dignity of his seat, sinking into neglect, refusing the basic rituals of his office while he trudges through a maze of lies of his own making? When he becomes a hollowed-out shell of a man who has checked out of reality but still, with the support of his unwavering, self-interested, sycophantic followers, holds the heavy, golden levers of the world in his trembling, failing hands?

I am, of course, referring to Charles VI of France, known as ‘The Mad King.’ His story is a cautionary tale that, like many aspects of the Hundred Years’ War, offers lessons that remain relevant today. This topic came to mind while I was preparing my Hundred Years’ War course for Medievalists.net, and I thought it would be timely to share here. Charles became king of France at the age of six, under the co-regency of his four uncles, known as the “Dukes of the Lilies.” These four brothers of the late Charles V were Louis of Anjou, John of Berry, Philip the Bold of Burgundy, and Louis of Bourbon, the king’s brother-in-law.

Photo credit: The Collector

Charles VI inherited a fortunate situation. His father, Charles V, along with his constable Bertrand du Guesclin, had reconquered most of the territories taken by Edward III and his son, the Black Prince, earlier in the century. France had regained nearly all of its lost demographic and economic strength following the devastating battles of Crécy and Poitiers, as well as the unfavorable terms of the Treaty of Brétigny. Charles V had built a powerful bureaucratic state that became a dominant force of its time, and the nation had become so wealthy that it invested large sums into constructing a “Great Armada”—possibly the most expensive project of the Middle Ages—to invade England (the armada never sailed, as Jean de Berry arrived late, causing them to miss the favorable winds).

Charles VI’s kingdom was the leading superpower of the time. His reign should have been celebrated for triumph and prestige; a great chapter in history. While he indeed made history, however, it was for all the wrong reasons.

From an unknown cause, the young king suddenly spiraled out of control into madness. Historians have proposed numerous hypotheses to explain his condition. The most widely accepted theory is that Charles suffered from a form of genetic psychosis, likely Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder. It was certainly a widely discussed topic of the day among the people of France. Whatever it was, it caused him to lose touch with reality.

The tragedy was not that the King had lost his mind, but that those closest to him who could do anything about it ignored it. The Dukes and high bureaucrats watched the King’s eyes go vacant and yet refused to act. To admit the King was unfit was to admit the system and their way of life were broken, so they clung to his fraying robes with white-knuckled desperation. They had spent decades consolidating power after the English invasion, the Black Death, and the peasant rebellion of the Jacquerie; they had built a fortress of statecraft, and they were not about to let the truth disrupt it. All because they feared that if the crown fell, their own titles and stations would be swept away and replaced by their rivals.

Thus, they propped him up like a grotesque puppet, whispering that he was just tired, misunderstood, or weighed down by his own brilliance. They ignored the stench of his self-neglect and the fragility of his mind because a mad King cannot say “no” to his handlers.

But madness was a contagion that did not stay confined to the palace. It seeped through the floorboards and into the soil of France. The court split into two warring factions: the Armagnacs and the Burgundians. Charles, in his rare moments of flickering lucidity, fueled the chaos. His paranoia became the realm’s paranoia; his inability to tell friend from foe became the national policy. He would sign a decree for one faction in the morning and a death warrant for them by evening, pitting his own people against each other until the nobility was caught in a vicious cycle of vengeance. It was as if the sickness at the top had become a miasma, a “madness of the realm” that stripped away the common sense of an entire nation.

The kingdom became a house divided, so busy burning its own curtains that it failed to hear the boots on the porch. While the sycophants scrambled to protect their positions and the dukes fought over the scraps of a dying reign, a familiar rival watched from across the water. Henry V of England saw a superpower made soft by delusion and fractured by ego. He did not have to break the door down; the madman and his enablers had left it unlatched.

The lesson was etched in the mud of Agincourt: when a governing faction decides that the preservation of their own power is worth the price of a madman’s vanity, they invite a chaos they cannot control. They believe they are managing the situation, but they are actually inviting ruin. It’s a good thing they learned that lesson for us, right?

Comedy has a way of shining a light on the absurdity of our shared belief systems, whether those be social, political, or even spiritual. And Monty Python's Life of Brian is a masterclass. It takes the story of Jesus’ death and demonstrates that the literal, physical aspects of it are hardly worth celebrating. Filled to the brim with social commentary scantily dressed as well-worn tropes, the film eviscerates the human tendency to seek external solutions to our internal condition, warning that messianic thinking is little more than an accident born of our desire to blame someone else for our own bad behavior.

I found myself thinking about this film as I woke up to all manner of ill news around the world on this overcast Easter morning. The American military is engaged in a war in Iran that is, on its face, a war over resources, but has of late taken on the curious dimension of being elevated in certain circles to a holy war that may usher in the second coming of Christ. At least, that’s what the freshly re-named Secretary of War has touted, and whistleblowers inside the military have confirmed. The question I found myself asking is: why, and why now?

While history certainly has plenty to say about this moment, I believe the answer lies not in history, but in myth. Specifically, I believe our best answers lie in myths about death and rebirth. In every world mythology and in every hero story, the motif of death and rebirth appears at a common juncture in the narrative. Renowned psychologist C.G. Jung identified this commonality in myths as a symbolic representation of the death of the ego and the process of individuation—that is, the lifelong psychological process of integrating the conscious and unconscious minds to become the unique, whole person one was always meant to be. To Jung, the hero serves as a metaphor for the human psyche. He explicitly identified the story of Jesus as perhaps the most complete, well-formed process of psychic individuation among all of humanity’s mythologies.

It is a matter of historical irony, therefore, that the narrative providing the most complete ‘set of instructions’ for individuation has been weaponized to fuel behaviors used to avoid inner reflection. But to get at the core of why this is the case, I look not to the history books, to the deeds of great men, or even the reflective writings of medieval theologians. I look instead to my lived experience and my work on my novels.

From the outset, I created the character of Hasting to be a morally and spiritually bankrupt man. He was, after all, attested in the sources as ‘The Scourge of the Somme and Loire.’ I wrote him with the idea that he was the Big Bad Wolf telling his side of the story of The Three Little Pigs. He is an unreliable narrator who tries to justify to you, the reader, why he’s doing what he shouldn’t be doing, or better yet, not doing what he should.

None of this is his fault, mind you, as he lived a very hard life during his childhood, in which he had to become exceptionally self-centered and self-seeking to survive. Indeed, those behaviors and later character traits did help to protect him as a child, but as he grows older and gains power and influence, they start to get in the way of his ambitions. They make him rash, volatile, unpredictable, and worse, unlikable to his peers to a degree that it affects his reputation (and to him, reputation is EVERYTHING). By the end of book one, he begins to realize all of this.

How then, you might ask, was I able to take such a villainous, wretched creature and make him likable enough that readers want to keep following his story (my series has a 75% read-through rate, according to my publisher)? All I did was follow Jesus’ lead.

I am not a particularly religious person, but I do believe in Jesus. To be more precise, I believe in the power of Jesus' story. Whether he was a flesh-and-blood man is entirely beside the point. He’s very real insofar as his story is OUR story. His life, death, and rebirth are an archetypal process of change we all recognize, experience, and share with our fellow humans. We recognize when this story is playing out in another person—whether consciously or unconsciously—and when we do, we cannot help but root for that person. Why? Because it is a common struggle we all know and understand on a fundamental level. It is a process that unites us all because we all share a common, deadly enemy: ourselves.

I have heard it said that inside each and every one of us is the fundamental concept of God. And while that may be true, I think it is also appropriate to say that inside each and every one of us is a fundamental understanding of the process of individuation. You need look no further than the Disney Corporation to know this to be true, for they have used the Hero’s Journey story structure to great commercial success. What’s essential to understand is that, no matter how far down the scale we have gone, we are redeemable if we become willing to change.

For Hasting, all I had to do was to instill in him that willingness to change. That’s it. And he’s not always willing. He has to come back to it, over and over, just as we all must recommit to our own willingness to learn and to grow at regular intervals. But so long as Hasting is willing, I can put him through the sequence of internal and external circumstances that lead to psychic change over time.

I don’t do this with him all at once, either. With the story of Jesus, we see the process of death and rebirth play out once. That’s all the story needs. But for we mere mortals who must continue to live in a world of frequent and persistent temptations and distractions, it is an internal process that must continue for our lifetime. For Hasting, it means that every novel I write, he goes through a separate process of individuation, whereby by the end of the novel, he comes away with a little more wisdom. Each new novel, however, confronts him with a new set of circumstances that reinitiates the process. Never does he re-emerge from a novel a perfectly individuated man, but rather a slightly better one.

That’s the secret sauce for Hasting. Readers root for him because he’s living the same struggle they have lived or are living. He is a mirror for the internal process of change we must all go through when confronted with major external and internal challenges. His life, as written in my novels, is as much a story of adventure and triumph as it is a companion for those who have embarked on their own quest for the ultimate boon of spiritual growth.

Hasting is a fiction. He’s not real. He’s inspired by a real person, or at least someone we believe was real. And if someone were to take his story literally, they would miss the true value behind his experiences. All they would see is the inherent violent horror of the age Hasting lived in, upon which they would project their worst impulses, breeding within them a deepening cynicism over the value and virtue of humanity.

It is here that I return to the odd things happening on the global stage on this Easter Sunday morning. To me, it appears to be an expression of a society that has missed the point of Jesus’ story. The ‘second coming’ narrative demonstrates the deep cynicism that has taken over modern [American] Christianity, many of whom, particularly evangelicals, have interpreted Jesus’ story in a literal sense. The ‘Second Coming’ narrative is not a story of death and rebirth, but of vengeance and retribution. Its adherents desire an ‘End Times’ to bring an end to their perceived worsening external condition that began after the Romans nailed their messiah to the cross. There’s no rebirth in such a narrative, only death. They may say ‘he is risen,’ but what they really mean is that he’ll be back to destroy their perceived enemies. Like the Terminator, “I’ll be back.”

I’ve heard it said that people won’t be willing to change until the pain of staying the same exceeds the perceived pain of changing. That’s what it took for me. It took the disease of alcoholism to bring me to my knees. I nearly lost it all, including my life. In the wreckage of my disease, I found hope. Once a staunch atheist, I opened up to the universe, offering myself as a blank slate. And that’s where the story of Jesus found me. Not in my pride or arrogance, but in my surrender. To survive my alcoholism, I had to die and be reborn, not once, but many times, repeating the cycle over and over, whittling away at the character defects that had served me in childhood but had brought me to ruin as an adult. Like Hasting. Like how the myths intended.

So, I leave you on this Easter Sunday with my hopefulness. In the words of Rocky Balboa, “If I can change, and you can change, then everyone can change!” May this day be an opportunity to reflect on our willingness to change and the process of individuation as the common link between us all, and may that common link help us to create a better world. I send my love to everyone who is struggling (which is everyone), even to those who are carrying out atrocities in the name of their religion. May the wisdom of Jesus’ teachings reach their hearts, minds, and spirits today.

Happy Easter,

C.J.

I had gone to York explicitly to see the Jorvik Viking museum, and, perhaps more importantly, its most popular and highly valued attraction: the Lloyd’s Bank Coprolite. Of course, the ‘piece’ did not disappoint, but something else caught my attention that day that has stuck with me more than any other single object from their collection: tweezers.

The Vikings used tweezers.

At first, it was one of those revelations that helped to humanize an often mythologized historical population. They were just people like us who were interested in keeping the so-called ‘runway’ between their eyebrows clear. Still, I found it interesting that such a common tool used today was not only in existence 1,200 years ago, but was evidently a normal part of everyday life.

Tweezers are not the tool most of us think of when we think of Vikings. And yet, tweezers were actually produced by Norse smiths, whereas their famed ringed swords, such as the Ulfberhts, were of Frankish make and entirely outside the Scandinavian realm’s ability to produce (so far as the evidence suggests). So, in many ways, tweezers are much more authentically ‘Viking’ than their swords, or helmets, or maille shirts. Not what you were expecting, eh?

All well and good, but then I discovered something about tweezers that really got my attention. While taking my wife through the Louvre museum in Paris—a museum I have visited a dozen times, at least—an object in the ancient Egyptian exhibit caught my eye for the first time: a pair of tweezers.

A grooming kit, including copper tweezers from Ancient Egypt (BCE 1550). Photo Credit: The Metropolitan Museum.

I was astounded. That the Vikings had tweezers 1,200 years ago had already impressed me, but Egyptians over 3,000 years ago? It got me asking: How old is the invention of tweezers?

It turns out, tweezers are among the earliest inventions of human civilization that we still use today in much the same way, shape, and form. The tweezers you use in the morning to pluck your eyebrows, your nose, your chin, and for some of you, your private parts, form an unbroken link between you and the deep past, as far back as pre-dynastic Egypt (around 3,100 BCE) and perhaps even farther. They were used by the Minoans, the Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, and later the Romans and pretty much everyone else.

A pair of bronze tweezers attributed to the Minoan civilization, c. 2900–1050 B.C.

Tweezers may not be the first human tool to come to mind when we think of consequential inventions, but their persistent and frequent presence across the archeological record throughout what appears to be all of human civilization dating back over five thousand years speaks to their subtle, if generally unrecognized, importance to our lives and society—even if that importance is difficult to pin down.

And now I notice them everywhere I go, including recently at the Musée Dobrée in Nantes, where I encountered Roman tweezers:

@vikingwriter C.J. Adrien on Instagram: "I don’t know why tweezers are the th…

To be honest, I don’t yet understand why I have been so captivated by such a simple little tool, except that perhaps I was surprised that something I take for granted in my morning routine has such a long and colorful history. Perhaps I just get a kick out of the idea that the reason I don’t have a unibrow is that someone in pre-dynastic Egypt decided they didn’t want one, either, and they did something about it.

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There is something inherently magical about the Viking Age—the longships, the sprawling mythology, and the rugged spirit of adventure. But as parents and creators, my wife Crystal and I often found ourselves asking: How do we share this world with the next generation in an engaging way without losing the history in the Hollywood hype?

We recently had the incredible honor of sitting down with Becky Hill on the Valhalla Conversations podcast to answer that very question. It was a thrill to step into “Valhalla” (digitally speaking!) to discuss the heart and soul behind our children’s book, I’m a Viking!

Watch the full episode on YouTube here!

During the episode, we dove deep into our creative process. As a historian, I wanted to ensure the world of our protagonist, Leif, was grounded in authentic history. Meanwhile, Crystal shared her journey of bringing that world to life through illustrations that are as charming as they are historically informed.

We talked about why it’s so important to move beyond stereotypes and show children that Vikings were more than just raiders; they were explorers, farmers, storytellers, and family people.

Whether you’re a fellow “Viking geek,” a parent looking for a meaningful bedtime story, or just curious about how a husband-and-wife team collaborates on a historical project, we think you’ll love this conversation.

Bring the Adventure Home: If you haven’t met Leif yet, you can grab your own copy of I’m a Viking! and join him on his journey through the Viking Age. It’s the perfect primer for young minds (and maybe even a few curious adults!).

SHOP I'M A VIKING!

I’m excited to announce that we’re four weeks away from my upcoming workshop offered by Medievalists.net: Writing Medieval Fiction: From Research to Publication.

If you’ve done a little writing or are thinking of writing, but are feeling paralyzed by a research rabbit hole, concerns over “authenticity,” or confidence to enter the market, this course was built for you.

Led by yours truly, this 5-part workshop takes you from a rough idea to a professional-grade manuscript.

A Free Preview: The "Never Go Full Viking" Rule (And Why Your Novel Needs It)

If you’ve listened to the Vikingology podcast, you’ve heard me talk about this before. It’s a riff on the famous line from Tropic Thunder, but for historical fiction writers, it’s a life-or-death rule for your manuscript:

Never go “Full-Viking.”

It sounds counterintuitive. We spend hundreds of hours researching Norse law, weaving patterns, and ship construction because we want to be “authentic.” But there is a dangerous paradox at the heart of historical fiction:

If you create a character who is literally 100% historically accurate to the 10th century, your modern reader will likely find them repulsive, alien, or impossible to root for.

The example I like to use to illustrate this point is Robert Eggers’ The Northman. From a historical standpoint, it was a masterpiece. It went “Full Viking.” The result? It was panned by audiences.

Why? Because the protagonist’s moral compass and value system were so authentically medieval—so rooted in a cycle of honor-bound violence and alien spirituality—that the modern audience couldn’t find a “way in.” They couldn’t identify with him.

Peter Konieczny from medievalists.net and I had a rather funny back-and-forth about the film in the comments section of a film review. Together we landed on a description of the protagonist of the film as, “Like watching a slasher film from the point of view of the psychotic killer.”

That’s not the look you want for the MC of your novels!

To write a successful novel in 2026, you have to walk a tightrope. Your readers expect to be immersed in the past, but—here’s the kicker—it must be the past as they imagine it, or at least a past that contains a bridge to their modern sensibilities. You have to juggle faithfulness to the Source by keeping the world-building rigorous while giving your characters motivations (like the desire for agency, love, or justice) that a reader today can actually get behind.

The Logistics

Start Date: April 2nd, 2026.

Format: Five live 1.5-hour sessions (all recorded for lifetime access).

The Goal: By the end, you will have a clear roadmap for your book and a professional pitch ready for the market.

I’m keeping the cohort size manageable so we can have real Q&A sessions. We’re currently sitting at 9/15 spots taken, so if you’re serious about your novel, don’t wait until we’re full! Also, get 10% off with code ‘ADRIEN’ at checkout!

SIGN UP

In the mid-ninth century, the Loire River appears to have fallen under near-total Viking control, with widespread devastation. When we look at the archaeological and monastic records, a strange paradox emerges. The same people burning monasteries and sacking cities were also building markets and “cottages” so substantial they rivaled wealthy trade towns.

The traditional narrative of the Viking Age often focuses on the “hit and run.” However, by the 850s, the strategy in the Loire Valley shifted from predatory excursions to something that resembled occupation. The timeline of their “leapfrogging” up the river suggests a deliberate, strategic inland creep, starting with the second sack of Nantes in 853, followed by the establishment of a base at Mont-Glonne in 854, and the subsequent sacks of Angers, Tours, and Orléans (among others) from 856-866. The devastation was clear. This was also the heyday of the chieftain Hasting, who would later go on to forge an alliance with King Solomon of Brittany and kill Robert the Strong.

But there was something else going on that appears to have run contrary to the narrative of bloodthirsty marauders moving upriver. At the same time that they were torching cities, they were also setting up shop. The most striking piece of evidence comes from the monk Adrevald in his Miracles of St. Benoît. He describes the growing number of Viking camps not as muddy lean-tos, but as thriving trade centers with structures comparable to a ‘Bourg’, or wealthy trade town.

What's more, a Royal Charter signed in 856 by King Charles the Bald granted one group of Vikings permission to establish a market on the Île de Betia, today Île de Beaulieu, near Nantes. The timing is crucial. It suggests that the Frankish nobility were forced, in part, to recognize their loss of control of the river and its trade.

It is a curious case that raises many questions, indeed. Were these different groups operating with different agendas? Were they one group that had established ties with the Bretons and were pillaging wealth from the Franks to resell to the Bretons? What was Charles doing handing out a charter to the Vikings in the Nantes area in 856 when he had signed the city and its land over to Erispoë, the Breton king, in the Treaty of Angers in 851?

The biggest question of all is why, if the Loire Vikings were building towns in the 850s and 860s in the river basin, did they fail to build anything during the Viking occupation of Brittany from 921 to 936? Alas, short of any new evidence, we may never have answers to these questions. All we can say for certain is that something weird was going on among those Vikings in the Loire River Valley in the mid-9th century.

These are all topics that I address in my most recent book: Under the Viking Yoke: A History of Early Medieval Brittany.

What do you think? Leave a comment below to start the discussion.

Don’t forget that I also write fiction set in Brittany and the Loire River Valley. And I hear they’re pretty good. Check them out here:

READ FOR FREE ON KINDLE KU

History is rarely a story of permanent borders and ancient grudges; more often, it is a fluid game of musical chairs played by ambitious men. In the mid-9th century, the crumbling Carolingian Empire was the ultimate stage for this game. At the heart of the drama were two of the era’s most formidable “strongmen”: Robert the Strong, a rising star in the Frankish nobility, and Salomon, the ambitious so-called King of the rebellious Bretons.

Their relationship had begun as an alliance of opportunity, but ended in a bloodbath and Robert’s death at a village church at the hands of the Viking Hasting. The Breton/Frankish/Viking wars serve as the historical backdrop for my historical fiction series, The Saga of Hasting the Avenger, and are a central focus of my history book regarding the Vikings in Brittany.

The Rise of the New Guard

To understand the falling out between Robert and Salomon, we have to understand the world they inhabited. Following the bloody civil wars between the grandsons of Charlemagne, the old Frankish aristocracy had been decimated. In their place rose a new breed of military “meritocrats.”

Robert the Strong was the poster child for this pre-feudal social mobility. He wasn’t born into the highest echelons of power, but his martial brilliance made him indispensable to the Frankish King, Charles the Bald. Robert was a man who understood the value of land and the power of the sword. Charles, however, made a mistake with him. In attempting to settle the thorny question of Brittany, which had all but won its freedom from the Franks at the battle of Jengland, he made a deal with the Breton king Erispoë to marry his son Louis to Erispoë’s daughter Constance. Louis received the lands in and around Le Mans as a sort of dowry. But those lands already belonged to Robert.

It was during this period of fluid loyalties that Salomon—who seized the Breton throne by murdering Erispoë—and Robert found common ground. Together, they chased Charles’ son from Le Mans and forced him into an unfavorable peace treaty. In the ensuing peace negotiations, both men pledged themselves as fidelis (vassals) to Charles in exchange for territorial concessions. For Salomon, this was a way to keep trade routes open and settle domestic disputes while ostensibly appearing as a “loyal” subject of the Franks. For Robert, it was a way to regain his lands and standing.

The Cold War on the Breton March

The peace could not last. By 865, the political landscape shifted again. Charles and Robert reconciled, and the King handed Robert the keys to the kingdom: the Countship of Anjou and command of the March of Neustria.

This was a direct provocation to the Bretons. Robert’s new territory—previously known as the Breton March—was designed specifically as a buffer zone. Robert’s job was simple: keep the Bretons and the Vikings out.

Robert was perhaps the first Frankish commander who truly understood Breton tactics. As Salomon attempted to launch destabilizing raids into Neustria, Robert met them with disciplined force. For the first time, Salomon found himself boxed in by a man who was just as ambitious and militarily capable as he was. The “unruly vassal” was being tamed, and the rising Breton state faced an existential threat.

A Pact with the Northmen

Desperate to break Robert’s stranglehold, Salomon turned to an outside force that the Franks feared above all others: the Loire Vikings.

By the 860s, the “Northmen” were no longer just seasonal raiders; they were becoming a permanent fixture of the Loire River Valley. Having stripped the local monasteries and towns of their easy gold, these Vikings were looking for new ways to monetize their violence. They became the ultimate mercenaries.

Salomon struck a “deal with the devil.” He hired a massive warband of Northmen to strike Neustria from the south, catching the Franks off guard. Among the leaders of these Norse mercenaries was a figure who would become a legend of the Viking Age: Hasting.

While Hasting is the title character of my historical fiction series, The Saga of Hasting the Avenger, his historical presence is real and terrifying (though I haven’t quite made it to that stage of his life…yet). He represented a new kind of Viking commander who was interested in political leverage and sustained warfare as much as loot.

The Blood of Brissarthe Robert dying at Brissarthe

The escalation reached its breaking point in 866. A combined force of Bretons and Loire Vikings, likely under Hasting’s command, had just finished pillaging Le Mans and were retreating toward their ships. Robert the Strong, sensing an opportunity to end the threat once and for all, intercepted them at the village of Brissarthe.

The Franks forced the raiders into the village’s stone church. It should have been a total victory for Robert. The Vikings were trapped, surrounded by a superior Frankish force. But in the heat of the siege, Robert made a mistake.

Believing the Vikings were neutralized and exhausted by the heat, Robert and his men began to remove their heavy maille shirts and helmets to rest. It was the opening Hasting and his men needed. In a desperate, explosive sortie, the Vikings charged out of the church. Robert, caught unarmored and unprotected, was struck down in a doorway.

The Aftermath: A Kingdom Forged in Chaos

The death of Robert the Strong sent shockwaves through the Carolingian Empire. He was the “Shield of Neustria,” the only man capable of holding the frontier. With Robert gone, Charles the Bald’s defensive strategy collapsed.

In 867, at the Treaty of Compiègne, Charles was forced into a total diplomatic capitulation. He ceded the Cotentin Peninsula and the Avranchin to Salomon and—most importantly—officially recognized him as Rex: King of the Bretons.

Through his alliance with Hasting and the Norsemen, Salomon had achieved the largest territorial expansion of the Breton nation in history. He had reached the territorial zenith of his reign, but it came at a staggering cost. By inviting the Vikings into the heart of the empire to settle a grudge with Robert, Salomon had opened a door that would be nearly impossible to close.

Salomon had introduced a “people known for their barbarity and cruelty” into the very fabric of Breton life—a theme I explore in depth in my history book on the Vikings in Brittany. The Vikings were no longer just at the gates; thanks to Salomon, they were now part of the neighborhood.

If you enjoyed this deep dive into the bloody origins of the Breton Kingdom, be sure to check out The Saga of Hasting the Avenger for a fictionalized look at the man who killed Robert the Strong, or pick up my history of the Vikings in Brittany for the full account of these tumultuous years and their consequences.

I finally did the thing! After months of coffee-fueled writing sessions, my new book, Under the Viking Yoke, is officially out in the world. This project really took shape after the course on Early Medieval Brittany that I recently taught for Medievalists.net. The book follows two parallel stories—the desperate, bloody rise of a "Little Britain" and the relentless phenomenon of the so-called Vikings—until they crash together in a cinematic struggle for the soul of the Armorican peninsula. Think of it as a medieval Star Wars: an underdog rebellion led by figures like Nominoë rising against a leviathan empire, only to face an "apocalyptic" threat from the sea.

As a teaser, I’ve included my introduction below to set the stage for the inspiration behind the book and the stories you can expect to find therein. I imagine this small book will make for great coffee-table material (it even has pictures!), and will serve as a popularized entry point into this subject that has been so central to my life and research for almost 20 years. For those of you who have read my novels, this is also a great historical companion for The Saga of Hasting the Avenger.

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Introduction

Some weeks ago, as of the writing of this book, I met a fellow father of a rambunctious two-year-old at a children’s park in the center of Nantes. When he learned that I was, at the time, teaching a course on the history of Early Medieval Brittany for Medievalists.net, he jumped at the opportunity to, as they say, pick my brain. According to him, his child’s school required students to learn the Breton language, and he had mixed feelings about it.

“No one ever spoke Breton in Nantes, right?” he asked me.

I shook my head and said, “No, they did not. Nantes was part of Haute-Bretagne, and their language was Gallo. A few Brythonic Bretons occupied the city here and there, but not for long.”

My answer launched us into a lengthy conversation—while keeping an eye on the kiddos, of course—about Brittany’s tumultuous history and how it came to develop its unique identity, which today revolves around its Brythonic language, buttery galettes, hard cider, and rugby. What I had to say about it left my fellow father stunned. I told him that the notion of a sovereign kingdom of Brittany dates to the early medieval period, but that it ended in the mid-tenth century following a Viking invasion and occupation that destroyed any chance it had of becoming an independent state, as, for example, Scotland had.

“Why do people still feel that Brittany is its own nation today?” he asked.

I replied: ”Because a nation that failed to construct its own state is still a nation—united by a common culture, language, and values. However, the reason it failed to create its own state mostly has to do with the fact that there was never just one Brittany.”

The modern region of Brittany is often thought of as a monolith, but that’s because, while it preserved the Brythonic language and culture it inherited from its Roman-era ancestors, it failed to preserve the Gallo language and culture that once shared the Armorican peninsula with it. Why this happened is still hotly debated among Breton historians. Some cite the early and uninhibited integration of the Gallo-speaking region with its French-speaking neighbors, such as the Angevins, as a primary cause. Gallo was, after all, a Romance language. To me, it was also the result of a centuries-long propaganda campaign by foreign rulers to appease the insular, Brythonic Bretons, who were prone to rebellion, and establish the legitimacy of their rule by identifying themselves with a glorious Brythonic past. Whatever the case, the Breton nobility abandoned both Breton languages for French in the early 12th century, and while the peninsula had ample contact with the British Isles, which may have contributed to the Bretons’ cultural attachment to their ancestry, it fell firmly under the Carolingian Empire’s and then the Kingdom of France’s acculturation. We must, however, acknowledge that the Breton nation has proven tenacious, driven by the people’s desire and the nobility’s necessity for a distinct Breton identity, which has kept the region distinct.

I think I changed that man’s life. Already suspicious of the school’s claims, he felt vindicated in his resistance to the state’s forcible instruction of his child in a language that did not belong to their community. We shared a good laugh about using a language to teach a history that doesn’t quite fit the city of Nantes. But before we parted ways, he asked me one last question: “Why Brittany? Why would an American study and teach the history of such a small and obscure backwater region?”

My initial response was, “I’m American, yes. But like Brittany, I have two identities, because I’m also French. And not just French, but French from Brittany. It could be that I see myself reflected in its early history. It’s also just a really good story.”

I am a passionate student of medieval history, and so to me it’s an intrinsically interesting topic. Admittedly, I had not started with Brittany. I’m a “Viking” guy; hence why my course and this book focus so much on the region’s experience of the so-called Viking Age. But the more I explored, the more I wanted to know. Part of the draw for me is that it is such a little-known time and place, despite being a region that proved exceptionally consequential to the development of Western Europe. The earliest Bretons defeated Childeric I, delaying the Frankish conquest of Gaul. They resisted Clovis and the Merovingians and welcomed Irish monasticism onto the continent. They played a critical role in the collapse of the Carolingian Empire in their bid for independence. And later, they played a central role in the rise and fall of the Capetians and the Angevins, and their succession crisis in 1341 gave Edward III cause to turn what had been a petty, business-as-usual fight between the kings of France and England into the Hundred Years’ War, a historical movement that transitioned feudal Europe to the era of the nation-state. It astounds me that more people don’t know their story because everywhere you look in the medieval period, the Bretons turn up. There were even Bretons at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, of all places.

If I take it a little further and focus on the storytelling aspect, the true history of early medieval Brittany—which I define as before the Assize of Count Geoffrey in 1185—is a collection of stories with all the hallmarks modern film audiences love. It’s often an underdog tale. For example, the key figure of Nominoë rises from obscurity like Luke Skywalker to lead a rebellion to freedom from a leviathan of an empire, and while Louis the Pious wasn’t his father (though he could have been, we don’t know, the Franks were not shy about having mistresses), he remained in loyal service to the emperor after he was deposed, as if he saw something to be redeemed within him. I could have called this book “Brittany Wars” because the region’s history makes for such engaging Hollywood-style storytelling, indeed. Their story is one I have been keen to explore in my historical fiction novels, albeit from the Viking Hasting’s point of view.

Most importantly—and this will be the central thesis of this book—Brittany is an ideal example of how readily reality and myth blend when national narratives and identity collide in a period when contemporary sources are scarce. The modern memory of a sovereign Breton kingdom in the early medieval period is, by and large, a fiction, first developed and propagated by a foreign nobility to legitimize their rule over a culturally and linguistically distinct group, and then resurrected by 19th-century historians who projected their longing and desire for what might have been onto their national narratives. This is something I emphasize in my courses to encourage students to carefully consider how we, as a society, have engaged with the past and continue to do so.

The purpose of this book is not to dismantle Breton nationalist narratives; on the contrary, I find them essential companions to this history. These larger-than-life stories are the bedrock of modern Breton identity, and to ignore them would be to ignore how Brittany understands itself today. My goal is to hold the legend up to the light so we can see the shape of the idealized history before we dive into the gritty, objective evidence. Using this contrast, I find, is the most effective way to teach this subject. By seeing where the myth and the reality diverge, we gain a much deeper appreciation for both. And as you will see, the true story of how we got here is worthy of being told in all its messiness, precisely because the objective reality is often weirder—and more cinematic—than the fiction.

In the pages that follow, we will journey through a narrative history—or as close to one as we can get from the evidence we have—of the rise and persistence of this “Little Britain,” the rise of the so-called Viking phenomenon, and how the two collided in spectacular fashion. It is written for the curious reader, such as my new acquaintance at the kids’ park, rather than the seasoned academic. I have written it in the same style as I deliver my course lectures—part Bill Bryson, part Mark Kurlansky, with a little Terry Jones thrown in to keep things light. Together we will trace the origins of the Breton culture that first flickered into the historical record in the middle of the 8th century, and follow its desperate, bloody fight for independence from the Frankish juggernaut throughout the 9th century. Yet, we will also witness how the story of our two Brittanies appears to have constrained their efforts to forge a political identity that could survive their own successes, and ultimately led to their demise at the hands of the Northmen.

Under the Viking Yoke is a sweeping, popularized history of the events that led to the total destruction of what might have become a sovereign Breton kingdom and its eventual, stunted rebirth: a second life as a dependent polity, forever trapped in the orbit of the French and English crowns. It is an entry point for curious readers seeking to expand their understanding of Brittany as a modern and historical entity, and I hope you will not stop here.

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From the film The Northman

When my editor sent back the latest round of notes on my upcoming Viking-age novel, one comment made me pause. In reference to my protagonist, he joked, “He cries a lot, doesn’t he?” In a book spanning two years filled with trials, loss, and trauma, my protagonist sheds tears three times. I can see how, from a modern perspective, and given the representation of Vikings in media, a Viking warrior weeping even once might come off as an outpouring of emotion that threatens my readers’ preconceived image of the stoic, iron-willed Northman. And that’s exactly how I want it.

The feedback highlights a fascinating interpretative blind spot in how we view the past. We often project a modern, post-Romantic sensibility onto historical figures, assuming that ancient warriors were silent in their grief or that emotional displays in sagas were literary tropes rather than reflections of lived experience. But if we look more closely at the sources and recent scholarship, we find that human emotion is not easy to pin down, and that what primary sources have told us is still hotly debated.

Why the modern world tends to think of Vikings as emotionless

Our modern perception of the stoic Viking warrior is less a reflection of the 10th century and more a product of the 19th. In these early days of historical discourse, historians created a teleological view of human progress in which modern people were seen as more in control of their emotions than their ancestors. The concept, dubbed by modern historian Barbara Rosenwein in her essay “Worrying about Emotions in History," the Civilizational Grand Narrative, cut two ways. On the one hand, medieval people, particularly Christians, were viewed as childlike, victims of ungoverned emotions, and in need of an external guiding hand such as religion. It was a means to explain the more overt displays of emotion mentioned in the sources. On the other hand, those considered uncivilized, such as the Vikings, were thought to have a shallower sense of self.

In this framework, 19th and 20th-century scholars projected an emotionless framework onto Viking warriors because, from their more modern perspective, a noble but uncivilized warrior ought to behave that way (the same rationale was applied to the “Noble Savage” concept, as concretized in the U.S.). Their ideas were further reinforced by the (then) consensus that the Norse sagas do not contain much emotion. Today, popular culture continues this trend by projecting our modern notions of stoicism and masculinity onto the Vikings because…that' ’s how we think they ought to have behaved.

Evidence for the emotional lives of the Vikings

More recent research on Old Norse literature suggests a starkly different picture of the Vikings' emotional lives than previous scholarship and popular culture would have us believe. Professor Sif Ríkharðsdóttir of the University of Iceland has argued that while the Icelandic Sagas might seem terse, they are deeply invested in interiority. The idea that Viking warriors were emotionless, she argues in her book Emotion in Old Norse Literature, is a modern construct that ignores the sophisticated ways the saga authors explored human behavior.

"Emotions are universally human," says Sif Ríkharðsdóttir, professor of medieval literature at the University of Iceland. "They mean that we can read the literature of our ancestors and understand it, because we interpret the emotions of the characters based on our own emotions and thereby imbue them with life."

The complex nature of studying emotion

In her paper "The study of emotions in early medieval history: some starting points," medievalist Mary Garrison argues that historians have traditionally failed to understand the inner lives of medieval people due to "interpretative blind spots" and a modern bias that dismisses literary conventions as inauthentic. She challenges the common misconception of the early Middle Ages as a "millennium without portraits," suggesting that the perceived lack of intimate sources is an obstacle we can overcome through sensitive, psychologically informed readings. Future opportunities for medievalists lie in a "hermeneutics of empathy," in which shared cultural structures such as topoi and rituals are viewed as privileged access points to emotional experience.

The relatability and plausibility of using emotion in historical fiction

That medieval emotions are still ill understood and hotly debated in academia creates genuine doubt for fiction writers such as myself. While it’s clear that medieval people, including the Vikings, were neither emotionless nor overly emotional, it still raises the question of how emotional my characters should be.

The answer, as I have often written, lies in the careful balancing of historical plausibility and modern relatability. I write modern stories for modern audiences. Therefore, my characters must be relatable to modern audiences. “Never go full Viking,” I’ve said in several Vikingology episodes because, as we saw with the movie The Northman, veering too far into an attempt to make a historical people historical and alien to us alienates audiences.

When it comes to the emotional lives of the historical people in my novels, I tend to give them a more modern emotional profile. But is that historically plausible? Well, if all we can say about the emotional lives of medieval people is that they felt human emotions, same as us—as Professor Sif Ríkharðsdóttir suggested, “on a neurobiological level”—then it stands to reason that even if I’m overlaying certain modern sensibilities onto my characters to make them relatable to people today, I might not be completely off-base.

Writing Medieval Fiction

If you’re a writer struggling to navigate the tension between historical accuracy and narrative resonance, I’ve designed a resource specifically for you. My course on Writing Medieval Fiction will dive into these challenges, providing you with the tools to build worlds that feel authentic and emotionally gripping for a modern audience. I will share how I have delved into the psychological frameworks of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, Ernest Becker’s work on death anxiety, and, most importantly, Carl Jung’s archetypes and the process of individuation. By planting the latest in psychology within a meticulously researched medieval world, we can move beyond the “Civilizational Grand Narrative” to craft protagonists with a sophisticated, authentic sense of self and emotion. You can enroll in the workshop below.

ENROLL NOW

Three years ago, when Terri Barnes and I first launched the Vikingology Podcast, we jumped straight into the deep end with a deceptively simple question: What caused the Viking Age? It is the foundational mystery of our field, and as many of you know, it’s a topic we’ve returned to time and again as our own understanding has evolved.

Recently, we had the honor of taking this conversation to one of our favorite stages. We joined Dr. Eleanor Janega on the Gone Medieval podcast by HistoryHit to review everything we’ve learned since our journey began.

If you follow the medieval history world, you know that Gone Medieval (by HistoryHit) is the gold standard. It’s a show I’ve listened to for years, reaching millions of people worldwide every year. To go from a dedicated listener to a featured guest was a major "pinch-me" moment.

In the episode, titled “What Caused the Viking Age?”, Terri and I reflect on the trajectory of our show and how our perspective has shifted after three years of interviewing the world’s leading archaeologists and historians. We discuss some of the specific conversations in Vikingology that served as “lightbulb moments” for us, shifting our focus and, for me, challenging a few biases and assumptions.

It was a look back at history as much as at our own growth as podcasters and researchers. We’ve moved past the easy answers and into the “gray areas” that make this era so fascinating. Whether you’ve been with me since the beginning or you’re new here, I hope this crossover episode offers a fresh look at why the Viking Age began and why it continues to capture our collective imagination.

Listen to the episode here: