5 Write it down...
There are many realms about which very little is known. Then there are those about which nothing is known beyond a name – otherwise obscure tribes such as the Sweordora and the Unecungaga, for example. And there are the unknown unknowns: the kingdoms that we don’t even know that we don’t know about. The factor that makes the difference is the survival of the written word.
In British history, the period from c400 to c800 is not distinguished by the quantity or the reliability of its surviving written sources. No contemporary written texts survive at all for large areas of the island, over very long periods of time. Those that do survive have very particular regional and ethnic biases or are largely products of a later period. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (c731), for example, is a history framed deliberately to the advantage of English-speaking communities, Roman forms of Christianity and Bede’s own kingdom of Northumbria.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle assumed its original form in the 890s at the court of Alfred the Great, king of Wessex. At the time of its creation it represented a sophisticated tissue of favourable reportage, propaganda and tendentious lore designed to bolster the reputation and ambitions of the West Saxon royal dynasty. In this respect, it did a remarkably thorough job. Likewise, the early ninth-century Historia
Brittonum was compiled to the benefit of the kings of Gwynedd.
There is, it must be admitted, a certain circularity here: the most successful kingdoms survived the longest, and the longestlasting were the most likely to produce written chronicles, charters and histories. Those that failed are the most likely to have seen their records lost or destroyed. Still, the point remains: if you don’t want your reign or your kingdom to be forgotten, the key strategy for ensuring a long-lasting legacy is simple: write it down.