Englaland: An Age of Broken Kings

Englaland: An Age of Broken Kings chronicles the violent birth of the English monarchy through seven centuries of blood, betrayal, and desperate survival — from King Egbert's dream of unity in 802 to the shattering of that dream at Hastings in 1066. Written as a mythic chronicle by Ariaste of the Unwaking Library — an immortal archivist who witnessed the fading of Arthur's age — this is history told with the atmosphere and emotional weight of epic fantasy.

The White Boar of Wessex struggles to forge a single crown. The Sea-Wolf arrives from across the northern seas, bringing chaos and conquest. The Godwins rise as kingmakers, only to watch everything collapse in the Year of Three Kings. This is the twilight between the age of the Divine Ring and the age of the Conqueror — when magic withdrew from the world, monsters walked the land, and shadowy forces fought their secret war while mortal kings claimed their fragile thrones.

Like all titles in the Aethereal Histories, Englaland: An Age of Broken Kings is narrated by Ariaste — the immortal archivist of the Unwaking Library, the long witness whose record covers the full span of the mortal world. Ariaste was there. The vantage is long. The voice is restrained.

Englaland is concerned with the fading of wonders and the breaking of kings. Its Anglo-Saxon world is one in which the older English magic is receding from daily life into the margins of belief, even as the Viking incursions bring with them a different, harder cosmology. Its kings are not triumphant figures; they are broken things, presented honestly, whose crowns weigh more than any of them were built to carry.