The Story
Acha is the daughter of Ælle, King of Deira. Chosen as a "peace-weaver" — a bride offered to seal an alliance — she is sent to marry Æthelfrith of Bernicia, the most feared king in northern Britain. It is not a choice. It is a transaction.
When Æthelfrith kills her father and disinherits her brother Edwin, Acha faces an impossible reckoning. The man who destroyed her family is also her husband, the father of her children, the king on whose survival her own depends. To protect her brother, she must work against her husband. To protect her husband, she must abandon her brother.
"She was a peace-weaver. The irony was that there was no peace to weave."
From the novel
Set in the turbulent world of early 7th-century Britain — warring kingdoms, Christian missionaries, Norse paganism, the relentless violence of succession — Angles or Angels? dramatises the impossible choices faced by women who were political tools in a world they did not control.