Like Attenborough, my grandfather was a frontline witness to the dramatic emptying of our oceans over the last 80 years, except he saw it from the perspective of the exploiter rather than the conservationist. In the 1950s and 1960s, he took out a risky financial loan to build a fishing vessel and sail it to Senegal, Africa. In his memoir, he describes a tropical ocean overflowing with life, recalling terrifying, spectacular feeding frenzies where sharks drank blood discharged from the ship, packed so densely that it seemed a man could walk across their backs.

By 2004, his relentless drive had built a massive commercial fishing empire that spanned from France to Senegal to Peru to Japan, landing him on the list of the 500 largest fortunes in France. Yet, his story is ultimately one of caution. Over the following ten years, his empire unraveled in spectacular fashion because the ocean quite literally ran out of fish. It had started with the El Niño weather pattern of 1996/97, when the coast of Peru suddenly emptied, and the situation never improved. By 2010, witnessing the collapse firsthand across the globe, he delivered a series of haunting lectures titled “Et si l’océan était vide ?” (And what if the ocean were empty?), a chilling warning that I still preserve on DVD. Driven in large part by the rapid depletion of global ocean resources, he was forced to close his business in 2014 due to bankruptcy.

Watching Attenborough speak about the tragic depletion of the sea evoked within me a profound sense of sadness and guilt. Among all who have benefited from the reckless exploitation of the sea, my family was one of the most privileged. But instead of a substantial material inheritance, I carry a deep sense of responsibility for the ocean’s ecosystems, which are now on the edge of collapse.

I believe this is why Ocean’s soaring message of resilience rather than despair spoke so strongly to me. Attenborough proves that when given a chance and properly protected, the ocean bounces back with astonishing speed. The documentary highlights incredible turnarounds, such as the recovery of marine ecosystems in the Channel Islands and the spectacular resurgence of seabird populations in Hawaii. Marine life possesses a fierce resilience if given sanctuary from those who continue to pillage it.

The documentary concludes with a vital call to action, highlighting the historic commitment by world countries to protect 30% of the global ocean by 2030 (the so-called “30x30” initiative). Reaching that target is a monumental task, but it is the ocean’s most viable path to a sustainable future.

As the grandchild of a man who witnessed both the peak and the collapse of industrial fishing, I am channeling my guilt into purpose. Starting today, I explicitly commit to supporting causes whose primary mission is to protect the ocean. I cannot undo the past, but I can help to protect the ocean’s future. It starts with the 30x30 goal.

Below you will find two groups I support, one focused on the 30x30 goal and the other on removing plastics from the ocean. I ask that you please consider supporting one or both of these if you are able:

• Marine Conservation Institute: This organization bridges the gap between marine science and policy to advocate for the protection of highly vulnerable ocean ecosystems. Through their Blue Parks initiative and the Marine Protection Atlas, they actively track, grade, and accelerate the creation of effective Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) globally, making them a critical player in achieving the 30x30 target.

• The Ocean Cleanup: A pioneering non-profit that develops advanced, large-scale technologies to rid the oceans of plastic. Their dual strategy focuses on cleaning up the legacy plastic already circulating in ocean garbage patches while simultaneously intercepting plastic in the world’s most polluting rivers before it ever reaches the sea.

Let’s protect our oceans, together!

My parting piece of advice for those looking to publish was to have them answer the question: “Who are you and why are you the best person to have written this book?” It’s the most fundamental question an author trying to market their book can answer, and the most critical when it comes to creating a connection with readers.

After the class finished, it occurred to me that I had not been practicing what I had been preaching. It’s been a long time since I wrote anything truly personal. I write about history, about writing, about my books, and on occasion about other ‘out there’ things. But about me? I can’t remember the last time I did. It would require me to be vulnerable, and I’m not good at that.

However, in the spirit of practicing what I preach, I decided to begin committing to paper my long-form answer to “Who are you and why are you the best person to have written these books?” In the following, I will share with you what came before the first threshold on my personal hero’s journey toward writing my Viking novels. And, if the response to this beginning is positive, I’ll cover the second part next week. My hope is that fellow writers out there will see what I’ve done here and be inspired, or find some kind of takeaway, or something. I hope.

Let’s begin.

My call to adventure

“I want to be served by the Viking,” she said.

She was hovering over her shopping cart, holding herself up by grasping its sides. The slight hunch in her back made her lean to the right and away from the counter, and her thick glasses gave her a bulbous, inquisitive stare.

“Who?” my boss answered, a smirk tugging at his mouth.

His name was Davide. He was a forty-something ‘cool guy’ from the early 2000s with frosted tips who fashioned himself something of a local celebrity. She pointed an unsteady, wrinkled finger at me while I stood behind the crab tank. I pointed to myself, mouth agape. Davide scowled.

“You’re an Adrien, aren’t you?” she said.

“I am.”

Her icy countenance softened to a smile. “I want to be served by the Viking.”

I had never been called a Viking before, and I dared not disobey such a mysterious request. Davide ceded his place at the counter. She ordered two mackerels and a kilogram of mussels. When she left, Davide and I shared a muted laugh.

“What was that about?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

After a moment of awkward silence, he sent me back to the freezer to scrub mold off the baseboards. I was 17 years old, the youngest person in the fish stand, and everyone liked to make me do the dirty work. It wasn’t a pleasant job.

I returned home that afternoon, wondering about the older woman and her request. L’Epine is a small town, and my family is well known there, so it was not unusual for her to recognize me. I had been told I was the spitting image of my paternal great-grandfather, whom many people still alive back then remembered fondly. The older woman was certainly old enough to have known him.

What lingered in my mind was this mention of the Vikings. That was new. And it was weird. Still, I soon put it out of my mind and went about my day. My cousin had invited me to hang out at the beach in the late afternoon, and he said he’d have hot girls with him. The Vikings could wait.

Except the Vikings didn’t wait. The next day, the older woman returned and made the same request. It visibly annoyed Davide, but he dared not refuse her. And she returned the next day, and the day after that. She became my first (and only) regular customer. I had meant to ask her why she called me “the Viking,” but never worked up the courage, and by the second week of August, my seasonal contract was up.

It wasn’t until my grandfather’s sister Nadette came to visit one day that anything came of it. By then, the “Viking” moniker had become something of an inside joke for all my cousins. When my grandfather told her the story, she said to us very matter-of-factly, “Why yes, we have Viking ancestry. They came here over one thousand years ago, and historians are pretty sure some of them stayed.”

And the Vikings Followed Me to College

Nadette had been a history teacher, and she knew more or less what she was talking about. She explained that the Vikings had used the island of Noirmoutier as a base in the 9th century and that they may never have left. Combined with a persistent presence of blue-eyed blond and redhead traits in an area where you would not expect them—a phenomenon that was immortalized in the song “Auprès de ma Blonde,” written, allegedly, about the island of Noirmoutier—a narrative had developed on the island that a certain segment of the local population was descended from Norse colonizers.

It was all interesting, but I didn’t have the tools, education, or resources to verify her claims. Nor did I think of it in those terms back then. And besides, it was a mere distraction to a major life event on my immediate horizon: college. That following autumn, I started my first year at the University of Oregon, and so far away from the sandy coasts of southern Brittany, Vikings were again far from my mind. They would have to wait.

But again, the Vikings didn’t wait. My first class was a history course on early Russia, which I had selected as an elective. In those early days, I chose to major in journalism because my parents said there was no future for a history major. I had always enjoyed history, and in fact, it had been my favorite subject in secondary school, but alas, I had to be pragmatic.

Our professor for the course, Dr. Alan Kimball, arrived at the top of the hour, wearing a brown tweed suit with a battered briefcase in his hand. He flicked on the projector, introduced the course structure, and then dove into our first topic: the Swedish Vikings known as the Rus. Needless to say, he had my attention. I cannot quite describe what gripped me then, but something did, an intangible call from somewhere, and by the second semester of that year, I had changed my major to history. I followed Dr. Kimball’s series of courses through to graduation, and he was even my advisor on my senior thesis.

Alongside my studies, my grandfather was invited to serve as president of the local historical association, L’Association des Amis de Noirmoutier. Evidently, his experience running large international commercial fishing operations helped him to bring order to a chaotic non-profit riddled with internal strife. I continued to return to the island during the summer academic breaks. While there, I accompanied him to his meetings, where I met heavy-hitting local historians who not only gave me access to their archives but helped me pinpoint what I wanted to know. It’s during those visits that I first encountered the salt hypothesis and, famously, was cornered by Dr. Bernard Penisson about the myth of the Viking Hasting, who allegedly led the band that used the island as their base.

Piece by piece, I cobbled together a research framework that I would use to apply for a BA to PHD program at the University of Oregon. And I was successful.

The Great Crash of ‘09 and My Road of Trials

I was meant to start in the autumn of 2009, but a few weeks before the term, I received a letter stating that the university had slashed the humanities department by 40%, including my program. There was no time left to reapply elsewhere, and so I found myself in quite the pinch. I returned home without a job or direction, not unlike Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.

During my stay in Central Oregon, I ran into a former teacher who told me he was finishing work on his PhD, which he had completed while teaching, and that the school was helping to pay for it. That got me thinking. What if I went to school to be a teacher and then leapfrog into a PhD like him? It was my way back into academia. Besides, universities seek tenured professors who can teach, so this would be the perfect experience.

By the following summer (yes, that fast), I had gotten into an accelerated teacher prep program and, for the next year, learned how to be a school teacher. But that pesky Great Recession that had thwarted my plans in 2009 was now knocking at the door of my ambitions in 2011. During the last week of my student teaching, I attended the year’s final staff meeting with my mentor teacher. We all knew something was wrong when the principal entered the room more disheveled than usual.

“I have bad news,” he said, not waiting for everyone to quiet down. But quiet down the room soon did. “The state is cutting the education budget by 6% again this year. That means either all of you here take a 6% pay cut next year, or two of you won’t be coming back after summer.”

His announcement stirred a flurry of debate, and remarkably, the vote was unanimous to take the pay cut. Still, I leaned into my mentor teacher’s ear and asked him, “What does this mean for me?”

He answered: “I think you’re f—ked. Sorry, guy.”

My eyes popped out of my head. And indeed, for the next three months, I applied to 300 teaching positions across the country and didn’t get a single call back. By the way, that was ALL the social studies positions available in the ENTIRE COUNTRY. It was the worst job market for teachers ever. And there would be no PhD if I didn’t have a job. I also understood that the days of a school helping to pay for such a thing were probably over, too. It was an unmitigated disaster.

So, for the first two years thereafter, I worked as a substitute teacher. Alongside that, I was also a personal trainer and the manager of a local gym. It was a grueling schedule. My first fitness client was at 4 am, school started at 7:30 am, and I had to be back at the gym by 3:30 pm to close it out by 8 pm. I was staying afloat, and, looking back, I was making good money for a 22-year-old kid—more than a tenured teacher, in fact. Still, my ambition was to find that teaching job that would get me back on track.

How I started writing my first novel during this time started with something of a dare. My mom had finished Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth and recommended I read it. Not two chapters in, I thought to myself, “What a great way to bring history to life!” After all, I had been sitting on a wealth of research on a niche topic on the Viking Age that I was losing hope of ever bringing to fruition in academia. I had considered writing a novel before, but not using my historical research. And so the musings for my first novel started to cogitate in my mind.

My mom called a little later that day and asked how I liked the book, and, with the gusto of youth I had at the time, I said, “I can write like this. I’m going to write a novel.”

She laughed.

Admittedly, with a bit of hindsight, I believe her response was quite measured. I must have sounded insane. How could a twenty-two-year-old substitute teacher match the talent, skill, and decades of experience of someone like Ken Follett? Back then, however, I didn’t see it that way. I saw a challenge. My mom laughing at me? That was her daring me to do it.

“I’ll write a novel. You’ll see,” I told her. “Challenge accepted.”

“Ok, honey, you do that,” she said.

For the next year, I spent all my spare time, which wasn’t much, writing my first novel, and wouldn’t you know it, I finished it before the world ended (in 2012).

And I had no idea the can of worms I was unwittingly opening.

Lived experience is the most potent tool at a writer’s disposal, though we often spend the first half of our careers looking elsewhere for inspiration. We tend to believe our personal histories are either too mundane to be interesting or too chaotic to be art. We treat the mess of our upbringing like a set of cluttered drawers we’d rather keep closed, fearing that if we opened them, the contents might spill out uncontrollably. But for the storyteller, that mess matters most. It is the raw ore that must be smelted. When we stop resisting the jagged edges of our personal history and start observing the patterns within them, we move from being a victim of our circumstances to a master of our world and our craft. Creative depth means taking the unique and perhaps mildly loony reality of our lives and distilling it into something relatable, feeling, and universal.

A Kingdom Built on the Sea: My Grandfather’s Legacy

To understand the scale of the story I was born into, one has to look at the remarkable arc of my French grandfather’s life. He began in what he describes in his memoir as abject poverty, in a far-off and oft-forgotten corner of France where electricity, paved roads, and running water were fantasies as unattainable as the moon. During the German occupation of 1940-1945, his world was one of rationing and deep humiliation, yet he nurtured what he called a “secret garden,” his inner spirit that allowed him to see beyond the precariousness of wartime.

Driven by a traumatic past, he spent the middle of the twentieth century hurtling toward a greater destiny, eventually rising to become a global captain of industry and one of the wealthiest men in France. He built a commercial fishing empire with a fleet of ships that spanned from West Africa to Peru to France, ostensibly to ensure his children and grandchildren would never know the famine-prone hardships of his youth. But as he forged his kingdom, he unwittingly created a Ring of Power.

The drive that saved him in the 1940s became, decades later, a rigid system that valued preserving his institutions over the humanity of the individuals within it. By the time his businesses filed for bankruptcy in 2014, the legacy was no longer a gift; it was a weight that had torn the family apart over thirty years of mismanagement, corruption, and strife.

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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.

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?

You can learn more about me, my courses, and my books on my website: www.cjadrien.com

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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 Viking historical fiction 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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Vikings in my books use tweezers, too!

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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

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:

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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

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.

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.

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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.

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:

To understand my thinking on this, we need to go back 150 years to the succession crisis in England called the Anarchy.

When Henry I’s son, and only heir, died at sea, he asked his nobles to support his daughter, Matilda, to succeed him. But Henry had made the mistake of marrying her off to Geoffroy Plantagenet, Count of Anjou (in France), as a means to buffer the French king’s power vis-à-vis the duchy of Normandy. Geoffroy was unpopular among the Anglo-Norman nobility because he was their traditional enemy. When Henry kicked the proverbial bucket on December 1st of 1125, his nephew Stephen of Blois, who was count of Boulogne (in France) by jure uxoris (through his wife), gathered support and took the throne to “preserve stability in the realm.”

Matilda took action. She moved to Normandy and sent letters to gather supporters in England. Many rallied to her cause. By the time she landed on English soil in 1139, she had enough support to fight a successful campaign. In 1141, her forces captured Stephen, and she planned to crown herself queen. Unfortunately, she remained deeply unpopular in London and had to flee after an uprising. Stephen’s wife led an army that captured Matilda’s uncle, and she was forced to release Stephen in the exchange.

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By 1148, it was clear that Matilda was not going to win the hearts and minds of the English, so she withdrew to Normandy again and planned instead to find a way to install her son, the future Henry II, on the throne. With his mother's help, Henry consolidated his power by becoming Duke of Normandy in 1151, while also inheriting Anjou, Maine, and Touraine from his father. In 1152, he married Eleanor of Aquitaine and received the duchy by jure uxoris. His marriage alliance with Eleanor effectively made him the most powerful and wealthiest nobleman in France, and far richer than the entire kingdom of England.

By the time Henry II landed in England in 1153, he had King Stephen cornered. But the English nobility, exhausted from 15 years of war, refused to fight for either of them. They gathered in what was later called The Baron’s Revolt Against War and forced Henry and Stephen to negotiate peace. By some strange coincidence (hint, hint), Stephen’s son Eustace died, and so Stephen agreed to make Henry his legal successor in the Treaty of Westminster. Stephen died the following year of a stomach issue (oh, come on, he was poisoned!), and Henry was crowned king.

All well and good, but let’s not forget that Henry was not just king of England. He was Duke of Normandy, of Aquitaine, and Count of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine. Moreover, his titles in France made him a vassal of the French king. Did all of this make Henry a French king of England? Well, let’s do a quick thought experiment: His father was French; he was born in France and had lived most of his life there; he married a French woman; and he spoke French. How would Henry have seen himself? I’ll give you a hint: he was so French that he needed an interpreter to communicate with his English subjects.

It’s undeniable that by the time Henry ascended the throne in 1154, his landholdings, lineage, and entourage made him look unquestionably French.

And this is when things got really interesting. Remember what I said about our tendency to be closer to our mother’s language and culture? Well, Henry’s wife was very French, and she raised her sons, the so-called ‘Devil’s Brood’, to be very French. Let’s run the same thought experiment for them: their mother was French, their father was French, they all spoke French, and they spent much of their lives in France (in fact, Richard spent only three months of his adult life in England). Would they have said they were French or English?

From this perspective, it appears that, for Henry and, later, his sons, England had been a mere territorial acquisition to add to their continental empire. Their main purpose or political goal, if we can call it that, was to rival the power of the king of France by gobbling up feudal estates in the French realm. We see this most poignantly in Henry’s hostile takeover of the Breton nobility when he forced Duke Conan III to marry his daughter Constance to his son Geoffrey, and then forced Conan to abdicate so he could step in as regent. The rivalry between the Plantagenets and the Capetians, however, would lead to their undoing.

First, Henry’s succession was anything but smooth. His sons rebelled against him on several occasions, and his eldest, Henry the Younger, who was meant to succeed him, died of dysentery while on campaign in…you guessed it…France. Richard ultimately succeeded his father, but had little interest in governing. He used the English crown as a piggy bank to fund his wars in France and his infamous crusade. His was a short reign, marked by his intense self-interest and disregard for the responsibilities of leadership. When he died—from an arrow to the face while besieging the castle of an alleged former lover—the realm breathed a sigh of relief.

Richard’s death left John to inherit the Angevin Empire, but he was not spared the character defects that had earned him and his brothers the moniker, “Devil’s Brood.” Further, the empire fractured under his predecessors’ exigencies: England and Normandy backed King John, while Anjou and Maine backed his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, who was Henry II’s grandson by way of the youngest of the Brood, Geoffrey, who had been killed at a tournament in…you guessed it…France.

If you’ve followed to this point, I promise there’s a payoff—plenty of infighting, backbiting, and political intrigue to come, and it absolutely does tie back into the Hundred Years’ War.

John did the ignoble thing of killing his nephew, Arthur. No one is sure how, but the result was clear: the king of France, Phillip II, who was also related to Arthur (as a half-uncle through a half-aunt…let’s stick with ‘related’), used the murder to turn the French nobles against John. Thus began a FRENCH CIVIL WAR that ended Angevin rule. That’s right, I called it a French Civil War, because it was French on French. John was French and defending his interests in France. Phillip was French and defending his interests in France. Arthur had been French. Even John’s dog was French.

Phillip moved quickly to seize Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Normandy. He decisively expelled John from France in 1214 at the Battle of Bouvines. By 1216, the Angevin empire had shrunk to a small “rump” state in Aquitaine.

But the king of France did not stop there. This was, after all, a civil war, and he wanted to eliminate the possibility that John might gather support in France again and cause trouble. So, he launched an invasion of England. He was helped by the English Barons, who were upset by John’s disregard for the agreements he had made in the Magna Carta. You see, the English nobility had grown tired of all the French a-holes taking control of and ruining their country, so they sought to put limits on the monarchy. When that didn′t work, they decided they might have better luck with the other French a-hole who had just kicked their a-hole′s butt at Bouvines.

Dear God… I kid you not, this is real.

Phillip sent his son, Louis, to England in 1216, and by June, he had taken London and occupied it. He and the English Barons set about divying up the kingdom while John fled…again…to…you guessed it: France.

By the way, there’s a great book about this episode in English history, Blood Cries Afar, that I highly recommend; it offers a detailed breakdown of everything that was going on at the time. My summary is just that, a summary, and hopefully one that has put a smile on your face so far.

For all intents, it appeared by 1217 that the jig was up for the Angevin line. But John threw one of history’s longest Hail Marys (for non-Americans, this is an American football euphemism for a long shot). He had, years prior, made England a vassal of the papacy, for fear of this precise situation. No sooner had Louis landed in England than he was excommunicated for attacking the papacy.

For those of you wondering: yes, that’s a 4d chess move.

John’s gambit worked. Louis’ spiritual punishment dogged his efforts to consolidate power in England. John then threw his next Hail Mary, which I am almost certain he had not planned: he died. But it was his death that allowed the barons to rally behind the young Henry III, who was, as they put it, leading a ‘crusade’ against the excommunicated French Prince. Louis signed the Treaty of Lambeth after losing the Battle of Lincoln in 1217 and returned to France.

Thus ended the first French Civil War.

The key point to retain here is that Henry III was an Angevin, albeit a much less ‘Frenchified’ one. For the next century, the French and English monarchies took two completely different approaches toward avoiding a repeat of a “French family gone wild.” The English king was constrained by his nobility and compelled to establish checks on his power, including a parliament. This was the result of England’s experience in the French Civil War, as it effectively became a hostage to a French noble family, which bankrupted the kingdom to fund its wars. The French king did the opposite. He created an overbearing administration and bureaucracy to consolidate power and curb the nobles' authority. This resulted from France’s experience in the civil war, as it had effectively lost control of one of its noble families and was drawn into the conflict. Saint Louis’ legal reforms, for example, allowed plaintiffs to go directly to the king rather than to the local noble, stripping the nobility of one of their core levers of power.

By the time we reach the 1328 succession crisis, however, we see that history has a nasty habit of rhyming, as they say today. And it didn’t start in France.

Edward II was not a nice person. Perhaps not as nasty as Mel Gibson would have us believe, but certainly not a considerate husband. When he married Isabella of France, sister to the French king, he edged her out in favor of his ‘favorite’ nobles. Isabella did not take it well. She used a diplomatic mission to France as cover to escape, and started a torrid love affair with an exiled English Baron named Roger Mortimer. By English standards, this was a scandal, but the French responded with more of an “eh…”

Isabella and Mortimer raised a mercenary army in Hainaut (modern-day Belgium) and invaded England. They were greeted as liberators by a nobility and clergy exhausted by the tyranny of the Despensers and Edward II’s failures. In a historic and legally dubious move, Isabella and her allies forced Edward II to abdicate in January 1327. This was the first time in English history that a monarch was deposed by a formal political process. Isabella and Mortimer ruled England as regents for the teenage Edward III. During this time, they enriched themselves and signed the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton, which recognized Scottish independence.

So now we are faced with another English king whose mother was French (recall what I said about language and culture), who had lived a good portion of his childhood in France, and who had even attended the French court to pay homage to his uncle for his estates in Aquitaine, which made him a vassal of France. Moreover, he was still a Plantagenet.

When Charles IV died in 1328 without a male heir, the French kingdom faced a thorny situation it had been spared for well over 300 years. The “Capetian Miracle” had defied the common fate of most kingdoms of the day. And it wasn’t through any sort of competence, either. It was luck.

Still, the French state faced a succession crisis that it had no experience or laws to address. When Isabella was the first to petition the French court on her son’s behalf, they panicked. To them, it was the Angevin debaucle all over again. Luckily for them, the Captetian kings had invested heavily in an army of lawyers, or ‘Legists', to sort it all out. And sort it out they did. They resurrected an old Salic Law from long before France was even a country to justify denying passing the crown through the female line, arguing that “no woman can inherit the throne” and, crucially, that “no woman can transmit a right she does not possess” to her son.

When the newly crowned Phillip VI called for Edward to pay him homage as his vassal in 1329, Edward made a scene. He wore his English crown, carried his sword, and refused to kneel. Edward and Phillip were cousins, and they already knew each other. According to all precedents, Edward should have been crowned king of France, and Phillip knew it. But he was denied because, for all intents and purposes, he wasn’t ‘French’ enough.

I have experience with this. My father is French, and my mother is American. I speak French natively, as I do English. But I am undeniably more Americanized in culture and even language because of my mother. If I were to return to the U.S. and be denied something on the basis that I was also half-French, even though it was something I had a right to as an American, you can bet I would not take it well. And I think that’s what ate at Edward the most. In his mind (and I can’t prove this, so take it for what it is), he was French and was entitled to the French crown, but the French court denied him on the basis of his Englishness.

What we see unfold over the next few years is a chest-thumping display of two cousins locked in a deeply personal rivalry. When hostilities broke out in 1337, Edward moved with a swiftness and organization that the medieval world had not before seen. He was a man with vengeance in his heart, and one who was out to prove his ‘Frenchness’. Oddly, it took him a few years to declare himself king of France. Historians have argued that this indicates that the succession crisis was not the primary motivator for Edward’s campaigns. But to me, I believe he may have delayed doing so, hoping he might have an early opportunity to face his cousin on the battlefield and settle the matter with steel.

Like his ancestors, Henry II and the Devil’s Brood, Edward was arguably more French than he was English. In my view, the wars he led were a series of French Civil Wars that would permanently sever the two countries and give rise to two sovereign, independent nations and two separate, irreconcilable monarchies.

I’ll be teaching a ten-week course on the Hundred Years’ War here soon on Medievalists.net. If you’d like to hear the rest of the story and enjoy attacking established history from different lenses, sign up at the link below and use promo code ‘ADRIEN’ to get a discount.

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Gold Medal Winner – Reader’s Favorite International Book Awards.

Perfect for fans of Bernard Cornwell, Giles Kristian, James L. Nelson, and Robert Low.

His is the story of a boy who was a slave, who became a warlord, and who helped topple an empire.

Orphaned by a blood feud and sold across the sea, Hasting should have vanished into history. Fate had other plans. Under the eye of the gods and the hand of a Viking warrior, he rises beyond survival to lead.

In a brutal world of oath-breakers and ambition, he finds a rare light: a woman named Ása. When she is stolen from him, his journey turns to fire. What begins as a quest driven by love becomes a saga of vengeance that will echo across the ages.

From the icy fjords of the North to the sun-scorched cities of the Moors, Hasting’s legend spreads with every raid, every betrayal, and every battle won. He becomes the first Viking to sack a fortified Frankish city—Nantes—and with his name now carried by skalds and kings alike, he unites a fearsome alliance of sea kings—their goal: Paris.

But even Paris is not the end. As storms gather and loyalties fracture, Hasting sets his sights beyond the bounds of the Carolingian Empire—to Constantinople, the seat of Roman emperors and gateway to the East.

His is a saga of blood, ambition, and destiny—of a man who dared to defy fate, carve his name across the world, and prove that, in the end, reputation is everything.

The Saga of Hasting the Avenger is a visceral, gripping Viking epic inspired by the true story of one of the most daring warlords of the 9th century.

PRAISE FOR THE SERIES:

Kirkus Reviews: "Richly developed fictional adventures of a real Viking on an epic journey through Europe. Our verdict: Get it!"

The Historical Novel Society: "If you want to sit down with an extremely well-researched tale involving heroic battles, first loves, and the making of a legend, this book is for you. Recommended."

Reader's Favorite: "Filled to the brim with interesting and accurate details about the Viking period that are sure to have fellow history fans deeply fascinated, with an intelligent balance between historical research and the furthering of the narrative. Highly recommended."

The Book Commentary: "Richly detailed, conveying the harsh truths of Viking life and the visceral landscape of Northern Europe. From fierce ocean battles to intimate moments of domesticity, Adrien creates a world where the elements play an integral role in shaping the characters' fates, reflecting the brutal yet vibrant nature of the Viking Age. The prose is delectable, and the overall writing is cinematic."

Johanna Wittenberg, author of The Norsewomen series: "A thrilling action tale that leads us through the eastern Viking lands, leaving us breathless by the end."

Ian Stuart Sharpe, author of The Vikingverse: "CJ Adrien's Fell Deeds of Fate is a riveting journey through time, delivering a Viking Age saga for the ages. A masterwork filled with thrilling encounters and dramatic twists that holds you captive till the very last page."

J.M. Gillingham, author of the Ten-Tree Saga: "C.J. Adrien has laid forth another saga worthy of the heroes of old. With many narrative tie-ins and continuations from Adrien's The Saga of Hasting the Avenger trilogy, new and old fans are in for a ravens-feast of sharpened steel, shining silver, and long-hidden secrets!"

D.W. Roach, author of the Marauder series: "A vivid historical depiction of a world lost to time. Brilliant, complex, a true underdog tale."

Mary Enck, author of A King in Time: "I am awestruck by how immersed I felt while reading this story."

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No matter your feelings about the past year, there’s still been plenty of good news around the world that we too often ignore. Let’s take a quick look at some of the things that went well this year:

Also, if you haven’t been following Robert Irwin’s rise to stardom, then you missed out on one of the most feel-good stories of the year. I hope this brightens your day as it has many of mine:

My year through an archetypal lens.

If you follow my work, you know my affinity for Jung’s Hero’s Journey and Campbell’s Monomyth. I have always found that the best way to make sense of life's chaos is to view our experiences through these archetypal lenses. For me, the “Call to Adventure” actually arrived two years ago when we decided to move to France, but the transition that followed was anything but a straight line.

Instead, I found myself in the “Belly of the Whale.” It’s the classic stage of the mythic cycle defined by limbo and the shedding of the old self. This state of waiting characterized the entirety of last year and bled heavily into the beginning of 2025. We were stuck in a trans-Atlantic waiting room for my wife’s visa, a process that ultimately took two years to resolve. During that time, I was busy mopping up the remnants of my previous life in the US, which included the heavy lifting of finalizing a bankruptcy for a failed business venture and the sudden loss of a remote job that was supposed to follow me across the ocean. It was a period of dissolution and of waiting for the world to turn.

The threshold appeared in April when the visa was granted. We spent the following weeks in a whirlwind of activity, selling or donating nearly everything we owned until our lives were distilled down to just three suitcases. We packed the baby and the dog, moved into my mom’s for a few weeks, and flew to France in late July. It felt as though we had pulled off the impossible. Thanks to my father’s help, we found a small house to rent in his and my sister’s village, secured a car, and began the arduous but rewarding process of integration. I “disembarked” into this new land, with my first three books translated into French, and immediately started a book tour across the region. Like Noah being delivered to a new land, the whale had finally spat me out onto the shore of adventure.

Of course, the delivery to a new land only signals the start of the “Road of Trials.” The latter half of the year was a wild ride of navigating the complexities of French administration while trying to get my author business off the ground. Yet, amidst these trials, the universe began to provide in ways I couldn’t have predicted. I received a traditional publishing offer from Vinci Books, which will rebrand my Hastings books and launch them in ten languages across eighty countries. At a book fair in Saumur, I met the Secrétaire Général of a museum association who invited me to consult on their museums to promote them better in the anglophone world. This opportunity marries my business experience with my passion for history. To cap off the year, my Vikingology Podcast co-host Terri and I produced some fascinating podcast episodes, leading to an invitation to record with HistoryHit’s Gone Medieval podcast, which airs this January 27th.

And just before the year ended, I got these from Vinci Books. Don’t they look great?!

Looking forward to 2026.

As I look toward 2026, the slow start of 2025 has transformed into powerful momentum. I am preparing to teach two courses for Medievalists.net and overseeing the global rebrand of my novels. Another Hasting novel (the sixth) is written and will hit the editor’s desk in January, with an early summer release planned through Vinci Books. I also started a new YouTube channel to put my teaching background to use, as you may have seen, and plan to keep developing the content over the next year.

On a slightly different but related note, a Christmas conversation with my French grandfather helped me solidify my newest initiative: executive coaching. By combining my seemingly disparate experiences as a former personal trainer and athletic coach, a school teacher, a student of Jungian psychology, an award-winning novelist, a business consultant, and a man in recovery, I believe I’ve found my “Ikigai.” I am adapting the Hero’s Journey as a template for personal change and growth to help business leaders, whom I already consult, overcome their liabilities (or what I call “Tyranny”) and become more effective leaders in their businesses and communities. It occurred to me that my consulting usually takes that route anyway because the root causes that drive business leaders to seek consultants aren’t business problems, but ones tied to their own shadow. I’ve written a short forthcoming book titled “Leadership in the Tyrant’s Shadow,” which outlines my approach and framework. More on that later.

Thank you all for being part of this journey. My fans do the heavy lifting, and without you, none of this would have been possible!

Be well, and Happy New Year! 🥳

For dedicated readers of The Saga of Hasting the Avenger, specifically those who engaged with the historical notes in The Kings of the Sea, I am pleased to announce the fulfillment of a long-standing commitment. The extensive historical research underpinning the narrative of my fictional series is now available to you in a formal academic setting.

This course is the definitive expansion of the historical context that provides the essential foundation for understanding the forces at play in my novels. For readers who wish to move beyond fiction and gain mastery of the primary source material and scholarly debates, this six-week online course is an ideal companion.

I have partnered with Medievalists.net to offer Early Medieval Brittany A.D. 800–1100.

Use promo code ‘ADRIEN’ at checkout to get 10% my courses and any course in the medievalist.net catalogue!

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The Course Overview

This curriculum is designed to provide a systematic and rigorous examination of the region’s history during its formative period. Participants will trace the geopolitical and cultural evolution of Brittany, beginning with the transition following the Roman withdrawal and concluding with the region’s integration into the feudal system of the High Middle Ages.

The course structure enables a comprehensive exploration of key historical dynamics, including the Breton rebellions, the establishment of the kingdom’s independence from the Frankish Empire, the catastrophic period of Viking occupation, and the subsequent efforts toward reconquest and political reconstruction.

The six sessions are organized chronologically to build a robust understanding of the period:

1. Inheritors of Rome: Establishing the post-Roman context and Celtic continuity.

2. The Breton March and the Indominable Celts: Analyzing the borderlands and early conflicts with the Franks.

3. Nominoë, king of the Bretons!: Examining the rise of the autonomous Breton kingdom and the historical figure who founded it.

4. Diwall, Breizh! (Beware, Brittany!): Reviewing the emergence of internal conflicts and the first incursions by Scandinavian forces.

5. Under the Viking Yoke: Studying the period of Viking settlement and the collapse of the Breton administration.

6. Reconstruction and Rapprochement: Detailing the successful reconquest and the re-establishment of political order.

Scholarly Engagement and Direct Access

This course offers a unique opportunity for direct intellectual engagement with the material and the researcher. Each of the six weekly sessions will be conducted live, concluding with an extended question-and-answer period. This interactive format allows participants to pose direct questions regarding the primary evidence, the challenges of historical interpretation, and the methodological decisions involved in adapting complex history for historical fiction. Your participation ensures direct access to my expertise on this specialized subject. For those whose schedules conflict with the live lectures, all sessions will be recorded and made available to every participant.

This is your chance to acquire a sophisticated, scholarly understanding of the historical reality that serves as the backdrop to the events in The Saga of Hasting the Avenger.

Use promo code ‘ADRIEN’ at checkout to get 10% my courses and any course in the medievalist.net catalogue!

ENROLL IN THE COURSE

I once heard that the Hundred Years’ War broke out because the French court mocked the English king’s accent so ruthlessly that it prompted him to declare war. Vanity, however, was not the cause of the Hundred Years’ War, nor was the other often cited trope: the succession to the French crown. The truth is actually far stranger.

You see, on the eve of the outbreak of war in 1337, Edward III had not yet claimed the French crown; nor would he do so for another three years. He even paid homage to the new French king, Phillip VI, in 1329, putting the matter to proverbial bed. This tells us that contesting the French crown was not the original motivating factor behind his first campaign in France (though it did later become a matter of political expediency). Instead, modern historians have come to agree that the war had its roots in French aggression.

England and France had fought several small-scale wars in the preceding decades, many of which involved England’s claim to the region of Aquitaine through their Angevin line. King Phillip VI decided to settle this long-standing matter, which was a frequent source of costly conflicts, by simply annexing it in 1337. Edward was none too pleased.

Now, there was a succession controversy that rocked France in 1328, and it needs to be mentioned. Edward did have a claim to the French throne on his mother’s side, and in English law, that would have given him a fighting chance to become king. However, French law did not permit kings to come from the female line, so Edward was denied the right to petition. Given that Edward was sixteen or so when this all happened, it’s hard to say whether he truly understood what was at stake, and he did not press the issue. He did, however, keep the resentment in his back pocket for later.

It could be said that part of Phillip’s motivation to annex Aquitaine stemmed from the earlier succession struggle. Some historians have proposed he was peeved that Edward even tried to contest him. In truth, his reasons were more economic, and I discuss those factors further in my course on the Hundred Years' War.

The first years of the war followed the same unremarkable cadence of the wars of the previous eighty years. A few sea battles, clashes in Flanders and Aquitaine, and a meandering campaign in northern France did little to impress. What's more, wars at the time were expensive and slow, and for monarchs whose revenue systems were still shaky at best (France was even considered to have been in an economic depression), even these small, unimpressive engagements took their toll. By 1340, Edward and Phillip signed their first truce to allow time to refill their war chests.

Had nothing else happened, the war might have ended there. Each monarch might have gone his separate way, and historians might have chalked up the conflict as another one for the books. But it would not be so. No, a small, irreducible region in Western France was sitting on a time bomb that would fan the flames of war for the next 123 years. Brittany, still a semi-independent duchy that played both sides in the conflict between France and England, experienced its own succession struggle. The trouble was, despite their semi-independence, their nobility was intermarried with half the continent.

When Duke John III of Brittany died on 30 April 1341, he had no clear successor. Two claimants emerged: Charles of Blois and John of Montfort. Charles’ claim stemmed from his marriage to Joan of Penthièvre, the niece of Duke John III and the daughter of his younger brother, Guy. John’s claim stemmed from his being Duke John III’s half-brother, making his a male-line claim.

Now, Charles had a slight advantage insofar as he was also Phillip VI’s nephew. Naturally, Phillip supported his claim. But herein lay the incendiary problem: Edward had been denied a right to claim the throne of France because Capetian Salic Law did not allow succession through the female line. But Phillip was now pressing his advantage in Brittany despite Charles having a claim through a woman. Edward, of course, took great offense to Phillip’s hypocritical move, and that festering resentment over the female succession controversy took hold. He thus supported John.

However, he did so not just out of principle, but also because there were a lot of damn sheep at stake. Forgive my expletive, but sheep were really important. How important? They were so immensely, tremendously, stupendously valuable that any shift in who controlled them stood to become the next hegemon of Western Europe. And they powered England’s war machine. Wool from England was sent to the Low Countries to be spooled, refined, and dyed, and then sent to France to feed its textile industry, which sold into the rest of the world. At the time, the textile industry was THE defining industry of the European economy, akin to today’s AI giants as a share of the global economy.

Therefore, whoever controlled Brittany, a net wool exporter, stood to gain substantially. And they might use those gains for…you know…more wars. Moreover, Edward had taken massive loans against England’s wool exports to fund his war effort, and adding Brittany as a vassal would help him make his interest payments. Brittany possessed other valuable assets as well, including strategic ports that ensured the movement of goods and troops between England and Aquitaine, as well as commodities such as salt. Phillip’s hypocrisy was one thing, but the chance for Edward to wrestle away one of Phillip’s most critical vassals was something completely different.

The War of Breton Succession thus poured rocket fuel on an already smoldering fire, leading to the renewed outbreak of hostilities between England and France that would persist long after everyone involved was dead. Still, it’s neat to think that the small region of Brittany, which the Romans had considered a waste of space (the peninsula was depopulated during the Gallo-Roman period), was in large part responsible for turning the broader conflict we today call the Hundred Years’ War into something more than a mere continuation of the sporadic disputes of the previous century.

Want to learn more? I’ll be teaching an in-depth course on the Hundred Years’ War in 2026 through Medievalists.net. Use promo code ‘ADRIEN’ at checkout to get 10% my courses and any course in the medievalist.net catalogue!

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The Viking Age was a long time ago. Not many buildings from that era have survived intact over the centuries. Fire, war, renovation, collapse, and the simple passage of time have erased most physical traces of the world the Vikings knew. But L’Abbatiale de Déas in St. Philbert de Grand Lieu stands in that rare category of “somehow made it,” and is one of the oldest medieval structures still standing in Europe.

My wife and I visited recently, arriving between noon and two, which, as any seasoned traveler in France will tell you, is a cardinal sin. Everything is closed in small towns. Everything. So we did what one does when one has committed this unforgivable error: we surrendered to fate and begrudgingly took refuge at the local crêperie. I say “begrudgingly,” but the truth is we were rewarded with some of the best galettes we’ve had since moving back. France punishes you and rewards you in equal measure.

We were in the off-season, so when we finally made it to the abbey, we had the whole place to ourselves. The young twenty-something woman at the front desk probably regretted saying “Let me know if you have any questions,” because I immediately cornered her with more information about the Vikings than she ever wanted to know. She was polite, smiled through it, and will probably tell her friends that a very enthusiastic (or, as my wife insisted, good-looking) American man with impeccable French showed up and talked her ear off.

The grounds outside are lovely. Broad lawns, stone walls, and the quiet flow of the river close by make for an inviting afternoon. I made a video for Instagram and TikTok, because of course I did; that’s half the reason I go anywhere now. While filming, I accidentally startled a poor woman who was trying to nap in the grass. Moments later, we were startled in turn by a very drunk, very chatty man on a bike. The medieval world is gone, but human nature has changed remarkably little.

And then we went inside.

The interior of St. Philbert hits you like walking into the halls of Moria: massive pillars lift a great vaulted ceiling that seems to swallow sound. It’s surprisingly clean in there, almost unnervingly so. My wife, who is into what I affectionately call “ghost shit,” was scanning the place for any kind of lingering presence. After a minute, she frowned and said, “Nothing. Totally blank.”

“Yeah,” I told her, “that’s because the Vikings attacked this place a decade after it was settled, everyone fled, and it basically sat empty until some rich guy turned it into a museum in the 1890s.”

Indeed, St. Philbert’s story begins in 819, when the abbot Arnulf secured permission from Louis the Pious to build a safer monastery for the community of St. Philibert. Their original home was the island of Noirmoutier, which by that point had been hit with “frequent and persistent” Viking raids. I cover the earliest phase of the incursions in my series on Brittany’s first encounters with the Northmen.

By 836, the monks relocated permanently to L’Abbatiale de Déas, hauling their relics and their entire monastic world inland. They hoped distance would protect them. It didn’t. In 847, the Vikings “found” them again, but this time the monks received a warning and fled before anyone was harmed (though I am certain the Vikings still burned through the roof down). Thus began the next chapter of their long wanderings, eventually settling at Tournus much farther east, leaving L’Abbatiale de Déas abandoned to time, weather, and whatever wandering souls happened to pass by.

It wasn’t until the late 19th and early 20th centuries that the abbey rose from obscurity. It was declared a national heritage site, restored, given a proper roof, and reopened to the public. Now you can stand inside those quiet, echoing halls, run your hands along those ancient pillars, and touch the same stones the Vikings touched.

Explore the Viking world, including this amazing site, through my immersive Viking historical fiction novels:

READ FOR FREE ON KINDLE UNLIMITED

As I’ve been re-researching some of the backdrop history for my next novel to confirm certain details, I’ve found myself tangled up in the puzzle of Nantes in the 850s. Everyone knows about the famous sack of the city in 843, but almost everything about what happened afterward feels like a staccato of disparate mentions that don’t necessarily agree with one another. The events are there, but it feels like trying to read by candlelight in a smoky room.

The starting point is solid enough. On June 24th, 843, during the feast of St. John the Baptist, a Viking fleet sailed up the Loire River and attacked Nantes. The Annals of St. Bertin, along with the Annals of Angoulême, tell us they killed the bishop, Gohard, along with many others, and looted the city. Other, less reliable chronicles, including the Chronicle of Nantes, preserve the story of the bishop’s martyrdom, albeit with some curious additional details that cannot be verified, such as placing Hasting at the event. What’s certain is that the city was taken by force, and the Vikings even supposedly wintered on a nearby island afterward, acting as if they intended to stay.

Things became more complicated in the following decade. I keep seeing references to a “second sack” of Nantes, supposedly around 851 or 853, but when you start digging into the primary sources, nothing stands out as clearly as the 843 entry. Instead, you find hints. The political landscape changed dramatically after the Battle of Jengland in 851, when Erispoë defeated Charles the Bald. The treaty afterward effectively recognized Brittany’s independence and seems to have placed Nantes under Breton control. But how solid was their control? And what kind of city did they take over? I imagine a place still scarred from 843, half-rebuilt, half-abandoned, sitting on a frontier where Franks, Bretons, and Vikings all jostled for influence.

Then comes one of the most intriguing pieces of evidence: a document from 853 granting the Vikings royal permission to set up a market on the island of Betia, just outside Nantes. On the surface, this sounds almost peaceful, as if the same people who killed a bishop ten years earlier are now invited to establish a market. But when you look at it in the context of the political map of the time, it becomes clear how fluid and opportunistic relationships had become. The ‘royal’ power in question was the Franks, but the city had come under Breton control two years prior.

Only a few years later, in 856, the Annals of St. Bertin describe Vikings moving up the Loire again and strongly imply they were operating from Nantes as a base. This raises the question I keep coming back to: were they already in control of the city by 856? Did they raid it again, and no one bothered to write it down? Or was this simply a continuation of their habit of occupying places seasonally, the same way they would come and go from Noirmoutier depending on the tides of opportunity?

The chronicles don’t help. They record only what their authors thought necessary, usually events involving kings, bishops, and political crises. Frontier towns like Nantes appear only when something dramatic forces its way into the narrative. So it’s entirely possible that the Vikings slid in and out of influence there without leaving clear footprints in the surviving texts. What is clear from the evidence we have is that there was some funny business going on in Nantes in the 850s.

For my novel, this ambiguity is a gift. It allows me to paint Nantes in 853 as a city haunted by the memory of 843, caught between Breton rule and a rising tide of Norse activity. The evidence suggests a time when alliances were fragile, loyalties negotiable, and control of the city could shift with the seasons. And in a way, what happens at Nantes in the mid-9th century foreshadows what is coming later in the century, when Viking power in the Loire region becomes far more entrenched with what historians have dubbed an ‘occupation’ of Breton lands.

If this topic interests you, I’ve written a book on it called Under the Viking Yoke: A History of Early Medieval Brittany.

Over the past two months, I have had the pleasure of teaching a six-part course on Chivalry for Medievalists.net. What started as an exploration of knighthood ideals evolved into a much broader discussion about how those ideals were tested, bent, and often broken by the realities of medieval warfare. The students were highly engaged, asking sharp questions about how the loose code of chivalry (more of a guideline) struggled to survive in the brutal crucible of fourteenth and fifteenth-century conflict.

After the fifth discussion section ended, several students asked the same question: Will there be a dedicated course on the Hundred Years’ War? I checked with Terri and Peter, who manage the course catalog for Medievalists.net. They had someone scheduled to teach it, but that person decided not to do it after all. I saw a chance.

While I may write mostly about the Vikings today, my fascination with the medieval period started with knights and chivalry, including the Hundred Years’ War. In fact, I have an entire series planned on the life of Geoffroy de Charny, famous for his last stand at Poitiers in 1356, once I finish Hasting’s saga.

So, I asked if I could teach the course. Terri and Peter agreed, and therefore I created: The Hundred Years’ War and the Birth of Modern Europe.

In this new series, we’ll follow the conflict from its tangled origins in feudal politics to its sweeping end in 1453, when France and England emerged forever changed. We’ll explore how this century-long struggle sparked the idea of national identity, led to the development of new technologies and tactics that transformed warfare, and caused social and economic upheavals that reshaped society.

You can find all the details, along with my current and upcoming offerings, on the newly launched Courses Page. There, you’ll also get a glimpse of what’s coming in 2026, including my Viking history courses and a series of writing courses and workshops designed to help aspiring authors bring the past to life on the page.

Teaching has been one of the most fulfilling extensions of my work as a writer and historian. It’s where I can turn my research, ideas, and what-ifs into shared exploration. And your feedback shows that the desire for deeper, story-driven history remains strong.

If you joined me for Chivalry, thank you for helping make that course a success. And if you’re new here, welcome. The journey through history continues to the battlefields of France and England, where modern nations were born.

Explore the Courses Page →