If Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is indeed based on historical events as the intro screen says, it is based very loosely. But despite all its simplification and misrepresentation of Britain’s Viking invasions, there is one thing the game portrays really well: the idea that the history of England is one of immigration.
This hasn’t been a great decade for the UK. Successive Tory governments, seemingly determined to develop their own land, regardless of the cost to the population, have overseen two very divisive and unnecessary referendums, the first on Scottish independence, the second and much more disastrous over the departure of the nation. country from the European Union, throwing the entire economy of Britain down the toilet.
Boris Johnson’s government, in particular, has shown themselves immensely unfit for the job, he and his cronies failed so badly in their Covid response that an island state with one of the world’s best public health systems has still established itself as one of the pandemic’s deadliest epicenters.
And yet! This incompetent gang of wealthy brats and sweaty bums has been a success by their own standards, in so far as they can still be reelected, partly due to the dysfunction of the British opposition Labor party, but also because they are the dog-whistling flag-bearers of a a calcification among older demographics) of a particular idea. A rejection of the country of Britain has become since the 1990s, of the rapidly changing modern world, in favor of a Britain that they mistakenly remember from their childhood, or stories from their parents, or old postcards, or cookie tins .
Instead of remaining part of the European Union and all it stands for, there is a significant portion of the UK population – not everybody who voted for Brexit, but it’s there – who would rather be “Britain to the British”. And when they say that, thanks to the public’s overt influence on the country’s politics, they really mean “England to the English”.
That’s … a downright racist approach, reflected in the fact that fear of immigration was one of the defining policy pitfalls for ‘leave’ voters in the Brexit referendum. Believing that England is for the English relies primarily on the existence of a definition of “English”. ‘Others’ who arrived in the UK in the last century following successive waves of immigration, whether from the Indian subcontinent, the Caribbean, Africa or more recently continental (and especially Eastern) Europe, don’t fit in here, and that also applies to Welcome.
But what does it mean to be English? Who is eligible for this prestigious group? Did a people come out of the mud one day, strode over green hills and claim an empty land? Of course not. British history is determined through immigration, displacement and multiculturalism, sometimes peaceful, sometimes violent, something that despite all its other efforts Assassin’s Creed Valhalla gets very correct, and that serves as an excellent – and timely – reminder of that.
Valhalla rarely mentions the idea of an ‘England’ other than as a geographic entity. Instead, it knows that England in the 9th century was a site of enormous social and political unrest, with a number of disparate and often hostile groups, some of which had been around for much longer than others.
The game features two kingdoms – Mercia and Wessex – who hate each other and are predominantly Saxon, a group that didn’t arrive on the British coast until the 5th century. There are British, at play with modern Welsh accents, a people who lived in England much longer than the Saxons. There are Picts to the north, with modern Scottish accents and a strong barbaric energy, brief mentions of the Irish (who are being saved for a later expansion) and finally the newest people on the English coasts, the Vikings (or Danes, as they ‘are mentioned more accurately, even if Eivor has to keep correcting people that she is actually Norwegian).
In this way, England is rarely presented as from someone rightful home, especially since you spend so much time between the Saxons and Danes. Amid the remains of Rome’s departure and before the Normans arrive, it is displayed inside Valhalla– and fairly accurate, given the course of history – as a prize that people fight over, whether they are ancient inhabitants or not.
Besides all those people who live side by side – or push others away – there are also their beliefs. The Danes have brought their pagan beliefs and the Saxons are devout Christians (whose coexistence is again directly reflected in some small quests), but the game is also full of older religions that spill out on the edges of the map and even in a fiery storyline. in Christian practices. Valhalla’s architecture tells much the same story, with crumbling Roman ruins mixed in with Saxon huts around Viking longhouses, all resting side by side in the same towns and villages on the map.
While Assassin’s Creed Syndicate took place at the height of Britain’s imperial power, and as such is immediately recognizable, Valhalla is set in an England that is almost otherworldly, with little present in its architecture or people that we can refer to 1000 years later and say, yes, that is what we would define as “English” today. In this way Valhalla shows a kind of story about the national origin, a glimpse of its origin through a fusion of people and ideas.
When the Saxons finally emerged as the dominant group in this struggle, and began wielding most of the power in the early politics and language of England, we see a view emerging at the end of the game’s storyline, one that places the Saxons. as custodians of the land to the exclusion of all others, a philosophy that is then injected into the core values of the series’ patriarchs, the Knights Templar.
After a battle in a church, King Aelfred’s sidekick Goodwin says, exasperated, in fact “England is for the English”, pointing to Eivor’s strangeness and spitting “This island will never be your home”, oblivious to the fact that his own people were relative. recent arrivals themselves. It’s almost word for word the same sort of thing you’d see in a racist uncle’s comment section on Facebook today.
But contrary to this view are the multicultural successes of the Viking colonies depicted in the game, and the work of men like Stowe (below), who, as you can see below, took a more genius approach to Scandinavian settlement, one that speaks of the fact that while the popular (and let’s be clear, historically accurate) idea of Norse raids and larger invasions were destructive incursions, Viking colonization could often be a more harmonious affair, as evidenced by the continuing genetic legacy of the time , especially in the north of England and Scotland.
I’m not saying that Valhalla was created specifically in response to Brexit-type beliefs, or even had them in mind when writing the game. But the thoughtful exploration of the demographics of the time is nonetheless incredibly useful in today’s climate as an example that history in a medium like this, however loosely applied in some areas, can still be an incredibly valuable educational resource in others. . .