Academic historians are by nature revisionists. - Richard Abels

One suspects that many landowners thought Æthelred overly eager to find reasons to confiscate property.

The poem is literature, however, not history. As such it provides a window on the mentality and the values of its audience. Loyalty is lauded, betrayal and failure to fulfill one’s duty condemned.

Loyalty to the person of the king was the glue that unified an English kingdom so recently forged from separate peoples.