Books: I'm in love with Alfred the Great!

I'm just finishing up a book, The Scent of Rain and Lightning, by Nancy Pickard.  I've had some problem with characters in the book.  I get the sons all mixed up, and I don't really feel the author developed the characters enough so that I can feel I know them.  But that might simply be my old brain, which has more trouble keeping things straight than it used to.  It's set in Kansas, way off the beaten track... it's in the area of Kansas everybody wants to avoid.  Mentioned often in the book are the Testament Rocks, sort of a badlands area in Kansas, caused by an ocean that was there before time began.  When I googled "testament rocks kansas", what I found was Monument Rocks, so there is such a place, far in the southwest area of the state.  Click HERE to see some pictures and information.  If we ever drive to Colorado again, I'd like to take a side trip and see the rocks.  I doubt that happens; Cliff gets so uncomfortable driving long distances, and we have been talking about flying to Colorado and renting a car once we get there.  We'll see.

We are watching "The Last Kingdom", and somehow I've been attracted to King Alfred the Great.  This is the first time I've been so interested in any real person from so long ago, unless you count some of my favorite Old Testament Bible story characters; Alfred died in 899, for heaven's sake.  Like any book or movie, The Last Kingdom plays fast and loose with the truth, so I wanted to read about the REAL King Alfred.  I am also watching "The Crown", and it was a remark made by Queen Mary on that show putting down Phillip (Queen Elizabeth's husband) that motivated me to find more information.

Queen Mary : Yes, but he represents a royal family of carpetbaggers and parvenus, that goes back what? Ninety years? What would he know of Alfred the Great, the Rod of Equity and Mercy, Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror or Henry the Eighth?

Greater than William the Conqueror or Henry the Eighth?

1. Alfred was born in 849 at the royal palace in Wantage. He became king in 871 and died in 899.
2. He had four older brothers who all ruled as king before he did.
3. As a boy of four he accompanied his father Aethelwulf on a pilgrimage to Rome.
4. By 870 Northumberland, East Anglia and Mercia has all fallen to the Vikings. Wessex was the only Anglo-Saxon kingdom to hold out against the Vikings.
5. In 870 Alfred and his brother Aethelred fought nine battles against the Vikings.
6. In 879 Alfred won a decisive victory against the Vikings at Edington.
7. After defeating Guthrum the Dane, Alfred made him convert to Christianity and then adopted Guthrum as his foster son.
8. In 886 he recaptured London and set about renovating the city.
9. Alfred's fortified towns or burhs formed the basis of the English system of boroughs and shires.
10. Alfred believed that all free born English boys should receive an education and he set up a school at his court to educate his sons, as well as those of the nobles and others of lesser birth. 

"Alfred’s defensive genius lay not in the creation of burhs, then, but in the way he adapted earlier strategies to suit the drastically altered military demands of the Viking age. His first steps towards a reliable and more constant system of military service ensured the continuous availability of troops. But the glories afforded him in popular imagination as the architect of “fortress Wessex” no longer, it seems, stand."

So, I found a book, "The Golden Dragon, Alfred the Great and His Times", not at my library, but on Kindle, and paid money for it!  It was pretty cheap, though.  It won't be an easy read, and I won't even guarantee I'll make it to the end; but I will buy however many books I must to find out what the real man, Alfred the Great, was like.  One Google search tells me that people are giving credit to Alfred for some of the things his  son did when he became king.  Hey, he raised the boy, right?  He probably taught him how to do things. 

Cheers!  (That's for the tea in my cup, which is the strongest thing I drink these days.)

These boys are a mess.