The Last Kingdom characters

Appears from the start

Born Osbert, the second son of the ealdorman of Bebbanburg, a great fortress on the Northumbrian coast. When his older brother is killed by raiding Danes, the boy is renamed Uhtred and made his father's heir. His father then dies fighting the Danes at Eoferwic, and the ten-year-old is taken captive rather than killed. Drawn steadily into the Danish world of ships, gods, and warriors even as his stolen birthright pulls the other way, he grows up proud, quick-tempered, and belonging fully to neither the people who bore him nor the people who raised him.

Also known as Ragnar the Fearless, Earl Ragnar

First appears in chapter 2

A powerful, boisterous Danish earl who captures the young Uhtred at Eoferwic and, instead of killing or selling him, raises him almost as a son. Generous, loud, and fond of feasting and fighting, Ragnar teaches the boy the Danish way of war and comes to love him. His easy good humour makes him careless of the enemies a hard man collects, chief among them a resentful shipmaster he is forced to punish.

First appears in chapter 2

A young English girl taken captive in the same raids as Uhtred and, like him, raised among the Danes. Fierce, clever, and wholly at ease with the pagan gods, she becomes his closest companion and first love. Where Uhtred is torn between Saxon and Dane, Brida embraces the Danish life without regret, and her sharp certainty often steadies him.

First appears in chapter 2

Ragnar the Fearless's blind old father, a skald who has traded fighting for poetry. Unable to see, he keeps the songs and histories of his people in his memory and earns his place at the fire by reciting them. Shrewd and talkative, he takes to the young Uhtred and teaches him the Danish tongue, its verse, and the worth of a story well told.

First appears in chapter 2

A Danish shipmaster in Ragnar's fleet: hard, grasping, and easily slighted. After his son Sven assaults Ragnar's daughter and is maimed as punishment, Kjartan is banished from the earl's service and carries the injury as a lasting grievance. Cold and vengeful, he leaves nursing a hatred for Ragnar's household that will not cool.

First appears in chapter 3

One of the feared sons of the Danish warlord Lothbrok and among the most renowned fighters in the great army harrying the English kingdoms. Superstitious as well as savage, he will not commit to battle without a sorcerer's blessing, but in the shield wall he is thought all but unbeatable. His name alone carries weight wherever the Danes make war.

Also known as Alfred of Wessex

First appears in chapter 6

A prince, and soon king, of Wessex, the last English kingdom the Danes have not broken. Pious, bookish, and often ill, Alfred is nothing like the warriors Uhtred admires: he prizes law, learning, and the Church, and treats war as a problem to be solved by patience and cunning. Uhtred finds him cold and sanctimonious, yet cannot deny the stubborn intelligence with which he means to keep his kingdom alive.

Appears from the start

A young, red-haired, squint-eyed priest who served Uhtred's father at Bebbanburg. Devout and kindly, he flees south when the Danes overrun Northumbria and finds a place at King Alfred's court. He never forgets the boy he once knew, and when their paths cross again he becomes one of the few people able to bridge Uhtred's Saxon birth and his Danish upbringing.

First appears in chapter 10

A young Saxon woman of Wessex, pious and dutiful, whom Uhtred is more or less obliged to marry as part of his bargain with Alfred's court. She brings land but also an inherited debt owed to the Church, and her gentle devotion sits awkwardly against Uhtred's restless, half-pagan nature.

Also known as Ragnar the Younger, Ragnar Ragnarson

First appears in chapter 10

The elder son of Ragnar the Fearless and Uhtred's foster brother, a young Danish warrior who spends much of his youth raiding overseas. Loyal and hot-blooded like his father, he shares with Uhtred the bond of a common upbringing, and when the two meet again amid the treachery between Danes and Saxons he stands by Uhtred as kin.