Wolves in the Hall: Fall of an Empire, Rise of the Chaos Kings

England, AD 1042. At a wedding feast in Lambeth, King Harthacnut collapses-and with him falls the dream of Cnut's North Sea empire. In the shock that follows, Edward the Confessor returns from exile to claim England, while in Denmark a pious foreign heir, Magnus of Norway, takes the throne by bishops' blessing and silence.

Wolves in the Hall hurls readers into the struggle for two kingdoms after Harthacnut's sudden death-when oaths fray, halls fill with whispers, and the fate of England and Denmark hangs on who moves first.

In Winchester, Queen Emma of Normandy is pushed into the shadows as Edward reshapes his court with Norman priests and the rising power of Earl Godwin and his son Harold. In Roskilde, Magnus rules without love, his cross-laden banners failing to win Danish hearts. Across the Baltic, Estrid Svendsdatter summons her son, Sweyn Estridsson-blood of Gorm and Harald-to return not as a supplicant but as a storm. From Funen's marshes to the markets of Ribe, a quiet rebellion spreads by memory more than by steel. Women maneuver in the half-light-Emma and Estrid-queens, mothers, and makers of kings, their counsel as dangerous as any sword. Priests preach a new order as the old sea-kings' heirs reach for broken crowns. Raids give way to fleets; feasts to councils; sagas to chronicles. And on a cold coast at Helgenæs, ships converge and the price of hesitation is paid in blood.

Meticulously researched yet paced like a thriller, this is the last roar of the Viking Age and the hard birth of the medieval world-when England and Denmark are bound together by faith, ambition, and war. The second volume in The Blood and the Crown, Wolves in the Hall continues the epic tale begun in The Stones of Gorm, carrying readers from Lambeth and Winchester to Roskilde and Ribe-where loyalty, lineage, and belief decide who wears the crown.