Eadith, Lady of Bebbanburg
In book eight The Empty Throne, Eadith and Uhtred become lovers the night before Aethelred’s funeral. Aethelflaed isn’t pleased and orders Uhtred to get rid of her former husband’s mistress, but he won’t. When Uhtred suffers from an infected wound he received in a bout with Cnut, it’s Eadith who mystically cures him using Cnut’s blade. Eventually, Eadith and Uhtred marry, and when he retakes his ancestral fortress, she becomes the Lady of Bebbanburg.
By the end of Book 12 Sword of Kingshowever, Eadith goes the way of Uhtred’s other past loves Brida, Iseult, Gisela and Aethelflaed. She contracts the plague after leaving Bebbanburg to care for Uhtred’s son-in-law and grandchildren, who’d caught the disease. All of them die from the plague, leaving Uhtred to end up in Book 13 War Lord with Benedetta – an Italian woman who had been rescued after being captured and enslaved as a child.
Benedetta refuses to marry Uhtred and so becomes the unofficial Lady of Bebbanburg, while Uhtred is forced by the King to marry Eldrida, the young widow of a Cumbrian Ealdorman whose lands and men are ceded to Uhtred through the union. Uhtred describes Eldrida as young enough to be his granddaughter, “a small, plump girl with a face that reminded [him] of an indignant piglet”. Nonetheless, he follows orders and marries her to become Ealdorman of her lands, allowing her to live unmolested in a private chapel he has built for worship, while he lives out his days in Bebbanburg with Benedetta.
Vengeance for Stiorra
In season five of the TV show, Stiorra and Sigtryggr are living in peace as the Danish rulers of Eoforwic when Brida’s army attacks the city. Brida’s forces are eventually routed, but thanks to the dastardly Lord Aethelhelm, disunity is fostered between previous allies Sigtryggr and Edward. Sigtryggr attacks Aethelhelm’s camp, Edward retaliates and sentences Sigtryggr to death. Uhtred carries out the execution at Sigtryggr’s request, and eventually, Stiorra and her people come to live in Bebbanburg.
In the books, it’s Stiorra who dies first. After Uhtred’s army is led south in a ruse to ensure that he can’t come to his daughter and son-in-law’s rescue, Danish warlord Sköll Grimmarson attacks Eoforwic and kills Stiorra. That kick-starts War of the Wolf’s revenge narrative in which Sigtryggr and Uhtred successfully seek vengeance against her killer. (Sigtryggr is later forced to marry Aethelstan’s twin sister by the King, in order to put Saxon queen by his side at Eoforwic. The Dane eventually dies of the same plague that kills his children and Eadith by the end of Book 12.)
RIP Edward the Elder
In Book 12, Sword of KingsEdward dies and leaves a will that divides the kingdoms between his two sons, half-brothers Aelfweard and Aethelstan, leaving the lands on the brink of civil war. Bernard Cornwell writers in his historical accompaniment to Sword of Kings that there’s some suggestion that Aelfweard ruled Wessex for a month after Edward’s death, before he also died, and so Cornwell exploited that possibility to tell the story of the half-brothers fighting for the city of London, and Aethelstan killing Aelfweard to take control of the Wessex throne. Whatever the truth of the matter, it leaves King Aethelstan as the ruler of Edward’s kingdoms, but not yet England. Aethelstan eventually dies leaving no heirs, and is succeeded on the throne by his half-brothers Edmund and Eadred, the sons of Edward by his third wife Eadgifu.