I wonder if anyone set a precedent for legitimate control of a region by militarily defeating the current ruler (looking at you magnus maximus)
A dark-age Stoic classic composed in the late 9th or early 10th century AD, the elegiac Anglo-Saxon poem The Wanderer presents the voice of an exiled retainer mourning the loss of his lord and former noble life.
Preserved in the Exeter Book, the poem recounts a solitary figure’s reflections on loyalty, fate (Wyrd), and the ephemeral transience of earthly gains and pleasures. As expressed in its solemn verse, the speaker endures both physical hardship and profound spiritual sorrow, recalling the vanished hall-life and the bonds of kinship now broken in his frost-bitten domain. Through meditation on the ruin of once-great men and brother-bonding Kingdoms, the poem turns towards a distinctly Christian moral conclusion, thus urging wisdom and indomitable faith in divine stability over worldly sensuality and impermanence.
This narration adopts a deliberately restrained approach, avoiding the more animated (and oddly jaunty) recitations apparently favoured in modern readings -- in order to, I believe, aptly reflect the poem’s gloomy and deeply pensive character. One supposes that it's all a matter of aesthetic taste. Regardless, I hope you enjoy my rendition.
This text is taken from the Exeter Book manuscript tradition, in translation by Siân Echard of the University of British Columbia.
Music Track 1: https://icelationworks.bandcamp.com/track/polaris-6
Music Track 2: https://icelationworks.bandcamp.com/track/blue-dawn-10