Noble Fortunes is the story of how, between 899 and 975, England was transformed from an idea into a kingdom. It is the story of the unification of a nation. It is also the story of a royal family, with a shadowy patriarch and a warrior princess and a dissolute reprobate. It is the story of a deeply principled archbishop and a deeply unprincipled archbishop. It is a story of heroic deeds and squalid misdeeds.Above all, it is the story of an ongoing contest for power: between rival candidates for the throne, between Crown and Church, between north and south, and between the English and the Norse.