Pearls of Radhara. To celebrate the coming-of-age of the youngest daughter of House Shaadval, the women of House Shaadval gathered for a special event. Pictured from left to right are Princess Eta, Princess Veda, Queen Sundari, and Princess Aditi.

Baptism of King Guthrum by James William Edmund Doyle.

Originally a native of Denmark, he was one of the leaders of the "Great Summer Army" that arrived in Reading during April 871 to join forces with the Great Heathen Army, whose intentions were to conquer the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England. But they were ultimately defeated by Alfred at the Battle of Edington in 878.

The Flag of Northumbria - today’s flag from the time of The Heptarchy (5/7)

Saint Æthelberht, King of Kent

Commemorated on 24 February

Æthelberht (also Æthelbert, Aethelberht, Aethelbert or Ethelbert; Old English: Æðelberht; c. AD 550 – 24 February 616) was King of Kent from about 589 until his death in 616. The eighth-century monk Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, lists him as the third king to hold imperium over other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. In the late ninth century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, he is referred to as a bretwalda, or "Britain-ruler". He was the first English king to convert to Christianity.

Kingdom of Kent

Æthelberht was the son of Eormenric, succeeding him as king, according to the Chronicle. He married Bertha, the Christian daughter of Charibert, king of the Franks, thus building an alliance with the most powerful state in contemporary Western Europe; the marriage probably took place before he came to the throne. Bertha's influence may have led to Pope Gregory I's decision to send Augustine, prior of a Benedictine monastery in Rome, to Kent as a missionary. 

Augustine landed on the Isle of Thanet in east Kent in 597. Shortly thereafter, Æthelberht converted to Christianity, churches were established, and wider-scale conversion to Christianity began in the kingdom. Æthelberht provided the missionaries with land in Kent’s capital, Canterbury, resulting in the foundation of Canterbury Cathedral. He also built the first St. Paul’s Cathedral in London (which lay outside his own kingdom), and was influential in the conversion of other Anglo-Saxon kings – namely King Sebert of the East Saxons and King Redwald of the East Angles.

Saint Augustine of Canterbury meets King Æthelberht of Kent

Æthelberht's law for Kent, the earliest written code in any Germanic language, instituted a complex system of fines; the law code is preserved in the 12th-century manuscript, Textus Roffensis. Kent was rich, with strong trade ties to the continent, and Æthelberht may have instituted royal control over trade. Coinage probably began circulating in Kent during his reign for the first time since the Anglo-Saxon settlement. He later came to be regarded as a saint for his role in establishing Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons.

Saint Æthelberht reposed in peace on 24 February 616, after reigning for fifty-six years. He was buried alongside Queen Bertha in the Abbey Church of Sts. Peter and Paul. His relics were subsequently relocated under the high altar with a vigil light placed in front of them, and they became focal point of miracles up until the time of Henry VIII around nine hundred. years later.