What Did Aethelflaed Die From In The Last Kingdom | Screen Rant
Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Last Kingdom season 5.
The Last Kingdom season 5 saw the death of the beloved Mercian Queen, Aethelflaed, from a mysterious illness. The series follows Bernard Cornwell’s acclaimed book series The Saxon Stories, with The Last Kingdom season 5 adapting books nine and ten, Warriors of the Storm and The Flame Bearer. And while the fifth season is the last for the Netflix series, Uhtred’s story in The Last Kingdom will end in a movie, Seven Kings Must Die, which will adapt the last three books of The Saxon Stories and is currently filming in Hungary, predicted to debut late in 2023.
Following the history of England, The Last Kingdom shows the war between the Danes and the Anglo-Saxons. Caught in the middle is Uhtred (played by Alexander Dreymon), son of a Saxon Lord but captured as a boy and raised by the Danes. Uhtred’s shared loyalties lead to his becoming a great warrior and advisor for the Anglo-Saxons, with the first seasons of the series covering his time serving King Alfred. When King Alfred dies in The Last Kingdom season 3, Uhtred continues to serve Alfred’s son, Edward, while falling in love with Alfred’s daughter, Aethelflaed. In season 4, however, Aethelflaed takes an oath of chastity in order to become Queen of Mercia, thus sacrificing her and Uhtred’s life together for her people.
The Last Kingdom season 5, finds Uhtred, now Lord of Mercian borderland, Rumcofa, still very much in love with Aethelflaed (Millie Brady), who arrives secretly seeking medical knowledge of now-healer, Eadith. Upon inspection of what Eadith calls a “canker,” it is revealed that Aethelflaed is dying. Though the term has a different connotation in the modern-day, the use of the word is historically accurate, with “canker” being the Old-English word for cancer.
As Eadith (Stefani Martini) inspects Aethelflaed, she notes a painful lump that Aethelflaed believed would go away on its own. Aethelflaed tells Eadith the lump is not the first and that she believed the others had healed themselves with time, an idea that reveals the lack of information about the disease at the time. Eadith reveals that the “canker” or cancer, has passed a point of remedy, with Aethelflaed being in the advanced stages of breast cancer.
The death of Aethelflaed’s character in The Last Kingdom remains true to Cornwell’s novels, in which Aethelflaed also dies of advanced breast cancer, however, history shows that the real Aethelflaed, Queen of Merica, died June 12, 918 from an unspecified illness. Further artistic liberties were taken in The Last Kingdom, which has the beloved queen die in the arms of her loved one, Uhtred, overlooking her kingdom, whereas Uhtred is not present at Aethelflaed’s death in Cornwell’s The Flame Bearer.
All episodes of The Last Kingdom are available on Netflix.