The Story
Emma of Normandy was married twice — first to Æthelred the Unready, then to his conqueror, the Danish king Cnut. She was queen of England for over thirty years, navigating Viking invasions, royal murders, political betrayals, and the slow unravelling of a dynasty that had ruled for five centuries. Sermon of the Wolf follows Emma from her arrival as a teenage bride at a court already under siege, through the catastrophic failures of Æthelred's reign and the surprising stability of Cnut's, to the moment when the world she had shaped began to fall apart.
"TWICE QUEEN AND MOTHER OF TWO KINGS, SHE WITNESSED THE UNRAVELLING OF A DYNASTY THAT HAD RULED FOR OVER FIVE CENTURIES."
From the novel
The title comes from the famous sermon preached by Archbishop Wulfstan as the Vikings tightened their grip — a warning that the apocalypse was coming, and that the English had brought it on themselves. He was not wrong. This is the gripping story of the end of Anglo-Saxon England.
Before Hastings, there was Emma. The story is based closely on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the sagas, and surviving charters, keeping as close to the historical record as possible while bringing to life a woman who refused to be written out of history.