Destiny is all!

"The Last Kingdom" is a Dark Ages tale for the 21st century.

Spoilers abound.

Most episodes of “The Last Kingdom,” the BBC-Netflix series set in Dark Ages England, close with the central character declaring, “Destiny is all!”

The destiny of Uhtred Ragnarson, it turns out, is pretty complicated. And that’s putting it mildly.

Based on the 13 historical novels of Bernard Cornwell’s “Saxon Stories,” “The Last Kingdom” tells the tale of Uhtred as Saxons and Vikings from what is modern-day Denmark fought for supremacy in Britain long before the Norman Conquest of 1066.

The fictional Uhtred was born a Saxon in the Northumbria region of modern-day Great Britain but raised as a Dane when his uncle sold him into slavery. As a young man, Uhtred went into the service of Alfred, the Christian king of Wessex, but chafed at Alfred’s piety. Uhtred led the armies of Alfred and Alfred’s son, Edward, against Danes and Scots, but clung to his Norse gods even though he was baptized three times.

Uhtred simultaneously respected and despised Alfred, who reciprocated. Saxons depended on Uhtred even as they distrusted him. Danes feared him but recognized him as one of their own. Throughout five seasons (and a movie-length sequel), Uhtred navigates the complicated and violent world of Dark Ages Britain and helps usher in what would become England.

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The paucity of historical evidence from this period allows a gifted storyteller like Cornwell ample room to fill in the blanks with the rich storylines and colorful characters that populate his books and the streaming series. There are lots of horses, plenty of swordplay, and enough grand guignol violence to satisfy the most devoted fan of “Games of Thrones.”

But “The Last Kingdom” is much more than a wallow in Dark Ages barbarity. Along the way, we get to know King Alfred — portrayed brilliantly by David Dawson — as a devout Christian who struggles to reconcile his faith with his dependence on the war-fighting prowess of the pagan Uhtred. Alfred calls Valhalla “a lie,” but accepts the ministrations of a pagan healer when his infant son Edward faced death, and attends her Norse funeral pyre when she died.

He is a man of letters, often seen in the palace at Winchester poring over books and correspondence, and a gifted strategist. “The bastard thinks,” one of Alfred’s Saxon warriors tells Uhtred.

It is Uhtred, however, not Alfred, who is at the center of every episode. Played by German-born actor Alexander Dreymon, Uhtred is a bundle of contradictions. He is headstrong but cagey, quick to anger but capable of love, opportunistic but honorable. Dreymon tends to emote rather than act (think a Teutonic William Shatner), but somehow it works. Like Captain James T. Kirk, Uhtred becomes the bigger-than-life personality around whom all the other characters revolve.

In its portrayal of the sectarian tensions that divided Christian Saxons and Danes, “The Last Kingdom” tells a complicated but evenhanded tale. Many Christians come across as hypocrites or piety-spouting prigs, but others display a genuine — and moving — faith. Father Beocca knew Uhtred as a boy and stood by him even when he was given ample reason to disown his headstrong pagan friend. Sister Hild, a nun who was being raped by Danes until she was rescued by Uhtred’s band of warriors, ministers to Christians and pagans with a compassion borne of her love for God.

Asked by one of Uhtred’s warriors in the hours after her assault how she could believe in God after what happened to her, Hild answers simply: “He sent you.” She joins Uhtred’s warriors for a time and learns to wield a sword, but she eventually puts her weapon down and rejoins the church.

The Danes are similarly complex. Ubba is a crazed and fearsome warlord who dies fighting Uhtred “in the square.” Guthrum, another warlord, shares Ubba’s taste for blood but finds himself intrigued by Christianity and eventually converts with Alfred looking on. Sigefrid crucifies priests to understand how that torture works; his brother, Erik, is an honorable man who kidnaps Aethelfled only to fall in love with her and die fighting to save her.

All of these storylines unfold with a fidelity to history. One of the nice touches in the series is how the names of towns, cities, and other historic sites are initially identified on the screen with their ancient renderings before dissolving into their familiar 21st-century names.

Out of curiosity, I searched the Washington Post for commentary about the series and came up with an unlikely review. Conservative columnist Hugh Hewitt likened the Republican Party of 2016 to Alfred’s Wessex court and compared Uhtred to — wait for it — Donald Trump.

“[W]hat might strike your imagination is that the Alfred of history is very much like today’s Republican Party: enfeebled, back against the wall, out of options and a Supreme Court vacancy away from losing its cherished ‘rule of law,’ slowly yielding ground to an always-growing regulatory state at home and vastly ambitious opponents abroad,” Hewitt wrote in 2019. “So, like Alfred enlisting Uhtred, the GOP of 2016 turned to the half-this-half-that brawler, sometimes Democrat, sometimes Republican from New York City.”

Time has not served this piece of punditry well. In its final two seasons and especially the movie that followed (all of which, it should be noted, dropped after Hewitt weighed in), Uhtred comes to a stunning realization. His destiny, he discovers, is to fight for an England where Saxon and Dane can live together — if not in harmony, then at least not at war.

That is a message distinctly at odds with the Trumpian temper of the times. Whether coexistence is our destiny remains to be seen.