King and Emperor

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“Just a village,” they said. “A few huts by the roadside. Capital of the North! It's not even Capital of the Fen. Never been anything, never will be.”

The inhabitants of Stamford, both the old ones and the many more numerous incomers, bore the taunts of their neighbors easily. They could afford to. For whatever its history, whatever its native merit or lack of it, Stamford was now chief residence of the King of the North, once a co-king, once a jarl, before that a mere carl of the Great Army now destroyed, before that, almost, a thrall in a fenland village. Now they called him the One King, for so he had proved himself, and to his name and title, King Shef, his Norse subjects added the nick-name Sigrsaell, his English ones, with the same meaning and in almost the same word Sigesaelig: the Victorious. Truly he was a king who ruled by his word alone. If he declared humble Stamford the Capital of the North, then so it must be.

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