The Story
King Alfred is dead. The throne is disputed — rebels have challenged the succession, Vikings sense weakness on the borders of a fragile kingdom. In the chaos of the succession struggle, it falls to Alfred's firstborn daughter — Æthelflæd — to hold together everything her father built.
"She had done what no man had dared, and the chronicles barely paused to notice."
From the novel
Married into Mercia, she becomes a military and political leader in her own right. She rebuilds ruined towns into fortified burhs, negotiates alliances, leads armies into battle. She defeats the Danes at Derby — the first of the Five Boroughs to fall to the English. She takes back Leicester without a fight. She is preparing to retake York when she dies, unexpectedly, in 918.
And then history wrote her out.