Uhtred, Lord of Bebbanburg, serves as the novel’s first-person narrator. The frame established in the prologue positions him in the narrative present as an old, battle-hardened warrior writing down for posterity the saga of the pivotal years in which the Saxons secured their island kingdom.

The Last Kingdom is essentially a coming-of-age narrative told from the complex perspective of a grown man who is looking back at a youth when he was uncertain of who he was and where his destiny rested. Those are titanic questions that transcend the tensions between Saxons and Danes. Uhtred is as much Christian as he is pagan, as much a Saxon as he is a Dane.

Uhtred begins as a child of barely 10, living a comfortable and secure life as the second son of the lord of Bebbanburg. In quick order, Uhtred loses everything. First his older brother is slain by the Danes. Then the same occupational force kills his father, and Uhtred is subsequently kidnapped. These traumatic experiences trigger an emotional and psychological growth that defines him as a character. He begins with one set of assumptions: He is a lord, destined for to control the land his family has controlled for generations.