Edwin of Northumbria

Edwin was king of Deira and later ruler of a united Northumbria in the early seventh century. He expanded Northumbrian power, married the Christian princess Æthelburh of Kent and accepted baptism in 627 under the influence of Bishop Paulinus.

Edwin’s power rested on military expansion and alliances extending beyond Northumbria, and Bede later remembered him as an overlord of exceptional reach. His conversion followed marriage to Æthelburh and the mission of Paulinus, but the new Christian establishment remained politically fragile. After Edwin’s death his kingdom fragmented temporarily and Paulinus withdrew, showing how closely the first Northumbrian conversion had depended on royal power.

In Nicola Griffith’s Hild, Because Bede records little about her life before adulthood, Griffith builds outward from Hild’s Deiran ancestry, her relationship to Edwin and the conversion of the Northumbrian court. In Nicola Griffith’s Menewood, The novel dramatizes the destruction of Edwin’s Northumbrian supremacy at the Battle of Hatfield Chase and the campaigns associated with Penda of Mercia and Cadwallon ap Cadfan.