King Alfred The Great Comparison

King Alfred managed to keep the Danes out of Wessex and continued to fight the Danes.

He is the only English king to earn the soubriquet “great” due to his many achievements during his reign. Alfred was the first king of the West Saxons to identify himself as “King of the Anglo-Saxons” (Richard Abels, pg 24), and is often referred to as King of the West Saxons by his fellow companion Asser, from Tyddewi , Dyfred. His eminent defence against the Danes made him a warrior and he showed his expertise on the field of battle. King Alfred was also a keen scholar, who loved to learn, and encouraged and improved the educational system as well as reforming the legal system. King Alfred the Great has been praised as a ‘brilliant’ military leader; however

In addition all these scripts were written in a dead language. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was written in Anglo Saxon whereas Asser’s autobiography of King Alfred was originally written in Latin. Both scripts have been translated and text could have been misinterpreted, something extra added or valuable information excluded. Therefore one should look at these different sources in retrospect to King Alfred as a great war leader and politician in an attempt to decipher the various points each source is

Asser’s Life of King Alfred is an invaluable and authentic source, however is also very problematic and should be critically assessed. It is such an important source for Historians, because Asser was very close to King Alfred, and considered as a friend, thus he must have been aware of what he had planned, what his goals where, and his character as a leader and politician. Asser would have been able to dig deeper into King Alfred’s persona, and years of friendship would have given him an accurate depiction of all the whose and how’s about King Alfred. According to W.H. Stevenson’s version of Asser's Life of King Alfred, he believes that “The Life’s loose organization, repetition, inconsistent use of verb tenses, and lack of conclusion suggest a work in progress rather than a polished text, and what we call the Life of King Alfred may be no more than a imperfect copy of an incomplete draft”. Asser would compare King Alfred, whom he considered to be a close friend, to biblical examples such as Solomon, who is portrayed in the bible as great in wisdom, wealth, and power, and therefore one can assume that Asser admired Alfred, for he even states “Indeed, he could easily have taken the kingdom over with the consent of all while his brother Ethelred was alive, had he considered himself worthy to do so, for he surpassed all his brother in wisdom and in all