History Series / TheLastKingdom

** Season 4 has Cnut, but at the Battle Of Tettenhall, he is [[spoiler: killed by Brida, upon her finding out he commanded the killing of Ragnar]]. [[spoiler: Brida]] is captured by the Welsh, who later keep her as a slave, and humiliate and torture her. [[spoiler: Sigtryggr]] and his mean rescue her, and after finding out by [[spoiler: Eardwulf]] that [[spoiler: Edward]] isn't present in Winchester, they march on to take it. The final battle take splace here, but since [[spoiler: Brida and Sigtryggr]] have taken hostage members of the royal family, and [[spoiler: Stiorra]], people are reluctant to attack. [[spoiler: They strike a deal with Sigtryggr. He leaves Winchester and takes over Eoferwic. Brida leaves, although upset by the fact that the other Danes gave up so easily]].

* FateWorseThanDeath: To die without a weapon in your hands is this to the Danes. It's one thing to die in glorious combat, but to die without a weapon in your hands means you are weak or a coward and arecondemned to Hel and ice-ridden torture for all eternity. [[spoiler: This comes into play in Season 3 as Ragnar the Younger dies without his weapon and Uhtred has to kill the murderer in a specific way to save his brother from Hel.]]

* ConflictingLoyalties: Uhtred is too unruly to be a Saxon and too ambitious to be a Dane. His current preference in usually determined by which side has offended him most recently.

* CanonForeigner: The Saxon Halig was invented for the show. He get's to do a lot of action in the 8th episode of Season 1 where he is introduced and becomes a member of [[TheFellowship Uhtred's routine]] in Season 2. [[spoiler: He is also made a slave by Guthred and sold to Sverri and dies on the slave ship]].

** For pragmatic purposes, Aelfric's son is renamed from Uhtred to Witger, in order to have less characters present named such.

** Alfred's brother King [=Æ=]thelred, his nephew [=Æ=]thelwold, and his daughter [=Æ=]thelfl[=æ=]d. ("[=Æ=]thel" means "noble", and was ''very'' popular in the Wessex dynasty).

* AdaptationalAttractiveness: Father Beocca is described in the books as one of the most ugly men Uhtred has ever known. In the show he's played by Ian Hart.

* ArtisticLicenceHistory:
** Unlike the books, the English weapons and tactics appear suspect since they carry rectangular shields instead of round ones like the Danes and Uhtred must explain shieldwall tactics to them. In reality, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes came to England from roughly the same place as the Danes and had a very similar social and military culture. (In the novels, instead of teaching shieldwall tactics, Uhtred's Danish background gets him sent to Wessex's fledgling navy.)
*** In Season 4 in particular shield walls all but disappear on both sides in favour of the standard chaotic Hollywood melees, only being called on in the final battle as a means of ''halting'' the fighting.
** As in the books, Ubba is given the patronymic "Lothbroksson" as a son of the famous [[Literature/RagnarLothbrokAndHisSons Ragnar Lothbrok]] to [[OneSteveLimit avoid another]] "Ragnarsson".[[note]]Even though "Lothbrok" ("Shaggy Pants") is a personal epithet like "the Great" or "the Bald," rather than a proper name.[[/note]]
** [=Æ=]thelwold is a historical character, but he was only an infant when his father died, not the young man the series portrays him as.
** In Season 3, the final battle in which [[spoiler: [=Æ=]thelwold is killed is depicted as a great victory for Wessex. In reality, Edward retreated before the battle, the men of Kent disobeyed the order to follow, and in the ensuing fight the Danes were victorious but suffered heavy losses, including [=Æ=]thelwold, making it a PyrrhicVictory.]]
** The Cornish Britons receive an absolutely bizarre portrayal in Episode 1.6. They wear chalky face paint that seems to be styled after the Hindu tilaka. Their hairstyles and dress seem to be inspired by Central Asian peoples. Their soldiers wield Inuit fishing spears, Dacian falxes, Renaissance pikes, and crude wooden pitchforks. In terms of armour, they wear Early Roman ‘heart protector’ breastplates, which at this point would be nearly 1000 years out of date. Their shields are made of wicker, and have gigantic holes in the front of them, apart from some where the hole had been covered by a large bronze disc. In what seems to be a low-budget attempt at emulating scale armor, King Peredur wears a leather shirt sewn full of metal buttons, and also wields a late medieval longsword.
** Early in the series, nuns can be seen in the background of some scenes wearing giant ridiculous hats shaped like shoes, possibly a low-budget attempt at a bonnet. Later in the series when nuns show up in more prominent roles, their costumes are less egregious.
** In Season 4 we see Æthelred claiming to be the King of Mercia, whereas in RealLife he was only ever acknowledged as the Lord of the Mercians. In real life he was also older than his wife and appears to have submitted to Alfred's authority several years before he married his daughter.
** The Welsh in Season 4 also receive an odd treatment. They seem to be portrayed as faux Romans with red tunics and rectangular shields, but wear no Roman-like armor (this is likely based on the traditional belief that the Welsh preserved aspects of Roman culture long after the Romans left Britain). They also use the Saxon term ''Wēalas'' to refer to Wales, even among themselves, which they certainly wouldn't have called themselves. The closest Welsh terms they may have used would be ''Cymru'', ''Cymry'', or ''Kymry'', which are all modern names for Wales.
*** Uhtred also quips that they don't look like Christians because of their different apparence, as though Saxons were the only Christian people in Britain.
** Historically, Eahlswith died in 902, eight years before the Battle of Tettenhall, while in the series she's instrumental in the political maneuvering surrounding the campaign.
** Sitryggr is based on Sitric Cáech, a (possible) grandson of Ivar the Boneless who spent much of his life in Ireland (making him about as Irish as Finan), and later became King of Northumbria from 921 until his death in 927. However, while there's evidence that he didn't have a good relationship with Edward the Elder, there's no mention of him ever directly fighting a war against him like in the show (there is numismatic evidence of Sigtryggr having held territory south of the Humber, which would indicate a partial Norse reconquest of lands around 921 - 924 however), and he definitely did not capture Winchester. His reign in Northumbria was also immediately succeeded by another descendent of Ivar named Guthfrith, [[spoiler: whereas in the show Norse rule over Northumbria simply ceases to exist with his death.]]
** Some of the Scots in season 5 are shown wearing early kilts, a-la ''Braveheart'', which they wouldn't have for about 600 years.
** [[spoiler: There was no battle of Bebbanburg as shown in season 5, where Constantine II of Alba (Scotland) fights against Uhtred, Edward, and Stiorra's Jorvik Danes. The entire campaign primarily serves to finish Uhtred's story of finally reclaiming Bebbanburg. Constantine, however, ''did'' later ally with a Viking lord from Ireland and a Brittonic king to fight against Aethelstan.]]

* StockholmSyndrome: How else to explain Uhtred's affinity for the Vikings who invaded his homeland and slew [[spoiler: his father and brother]] in battle. Granted, Ragnar saves him from [[spoiler: his Evil Uncle [=Æ=]lfric]] and eventually considers him LikeASonToMe, but still... [[labelnote:From the books]] The books partially explain this by having Uhtred's family be pseudo-pagans who, while Christian, are proud of their own pagan ancestors (claiming descent from the pagan god Woden and using his wolf as their sigil) and tolerant of paganism (Ealdwulf, the smith who forges Uhtred's sword, is one such). This, combined with the Danes giving his father a decent burial (unlike in the show), means Uhtred was very positively disposed to their culture in the books. [[/labelnote]]
** [[spoiler: It's subtly repeated in season four, where Uhtred's daughter Stiorra spends a month trapped with Sigtryggr, and ends up running away with him.]]

* SpiritualSuccessor: To ''Series/{{Vikings}}'', which takes place a generation before this show, though it is still ongoing and the source material for this series ''[[Literature/TheSaxonStories Saxon Stories]]'' predates it by almost a decade. ''The Last Kingdom'' also downplays direct links between the shows like the Danish warlord antagonist [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubba Ubba]] being a son of [[Literature/RagnarLodbrokAndHisSons Ragnar Lothbrok]], the semi-historical protagonist of ''Vikings''. Ubba himself appears in ''Vikings'', though that show uses the alternate spelling "Ubbe". Ragnar Lothbrok is often alluded to in the books through Ubba's {{UsefulNotes/patronymic}} "Lothbroksson", but the show only uses it once. Their relation is left to FridgeBrilliance on the audience's part - like a few mentions of Ubba's brother Ivar, meant to be [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivar_the_Boneless Ivar the Boneless]], who also appears in ''Vikings''. The books mention his epithet "Boneless" but the show doesn't.