Battle Royal

Which king is the kingliest? There’s only one way to find out in TOTAL WAR SAGA: THRONES OF BRITANNIA

- Tom Senior

I am the king of nowhere. My lying bastard nobles have spent years tearing me down with a prolonged campaign of extortion, and now they rebel in unison, turning my provinces to their cause, and sending armies to claim my head. All I wanted was to turn the northeast of England into a Viking paradise. I crushed rebels and repelled aggression from the north for them, and now they My kingly ego would rather overlook the fact that I failed to build any farms and presided over chronic food shortages. My decision to mint my own currency and put an imprint of my head on all the coins didn’t go down well with my Christian English subjects, who would rather see the Lord’s cross there. When one of the nobles started getting uppity, I should perhaps have taken the option to torture him rather than pay him off. In the following years the nobles came to me for bribes several times after that, and each time I caved my reputation collapsed further. As a result the reign of king Guthfrid of the Northymbre Vikings is short and violent, which is fitting considering the tensions surrounding that period. Maybe his son and heir will go on to do better, though with the name Cnut, I have my doubts.

Thrones of Britannia is set in 878 AD, just after Alfred wins the battle of Edington and halts the Viking takeover of England. The proud factions of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland enter a febrile peace, the sort that just wants to implode the second a leader farts in the wrong direction. It’s an ideal setting for one of the most experimental Total War games to date, especially for a game that’s well suited to telling stories. At a glance this is still very much a