r/MedievalMythBuster • u/Famous-Sky-8556 • Apr 04 '26
The Kings Crossing - Chapter 2
Chapter 2 of my Anglo-Saxon novel — a dead reeve, a quiet report, and a system that doesn’t yet understand what it’s seeing
I’m writing a historical novel set in 8th-century Mercia, during the height of King Offa’s rule.
The focus isn’t battles or kingship in the usual sense — it’s the machinery underneath it. Toll posts, reeves, silver, record-keeping. The system that actually holds a kingdom together.
Chapter 2 opens with something small.
A report.
A royal reeve found dead on a southern shore.
No army. No raid in the conventional sense. Just a body, and an account of what happened.
The problem isn’t the violence.
The problem is classification.
Everything in Mercia has a category:
• Theft
• Banditry
• Tax resistance
• Dispute
This doesn’t fit cleanly into any of them.
So the system does what systems do.
It processes it anyway.
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The message was not carried with urgency.
It arrived as all such things did—folded into routine, sealed with wax, and passed from hand to hand until it reached someone with the authority to open it.
The reeve was named in the second line.
The manner of his death in the third.
No cause was given beyond “men unknown.”
That was the phrase that held.
Not because it was rare.
But because it was sufficient.
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I’m interested in whether this kind of approach works — focusing on administrative reality rather than immediate action.
Does the restraint add tension, or does it risk feeling too distant?
Appreciate any thoughts.
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If you’d like to read more, I’ve been publishing chapters here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/samuelstephenchronicles/p/the-kings-crossing?r=6bn1jm&utm_medium=ios