Who plays Brida in The Last Kingdom?

Emily Cox, across all five seasons of the series between 2015 and 2022 — 34 of its 46 episodes. Brida is Saxon-born and Danish-raised, taken as a child in the same raid as Uhtred, which makes her the story's control experiment: the same childhood, the opposite conclusion.

Why does Brida turn against Uhtred?

Because she thinks he made a choice she considers unforgivable and he thinks he made no choice at all. Both of them were taken as children and raised by Danes; Uhtred spends his life belonging to both peoples at once, and Brida regards that as a betrayal rather than a predicament. Her position hardens over the fourth season into open enmity.

What episode does Brida die in?

The series finale — season five, episode ten, released in March 2022. She is killed by an arrow shot by Uhtred's daughter Stiorra during the fighting at Bebbanburg, after she and Uhtred have finally stopped trying to kill each other. It is the last thing the series does before letting Uhtred have his fortress.

Who Is Brida in The Last Kingdom, and What Happens to Her?

Taken as a child in the same raid as Uhtred, raised in the same hall, taught by the same people — and she comes out of it certain where he comes out of it divided. Brida is the argument the series is actually having with itself: if you can be two things at once, does that make you generous or does it make you unreliable?

The facts, in one place

Played by Emily Cox.
First appearance season one (2015).
Last appearance season five, episode ten (2022) — the series finale.
Episodes 34 of the 46.

The control experiment

Put next to Uhtred, Brida is the same input with a different output, and the series knows exactly what it is doing with her. Two Saxon children are taken by Danes and brought up as Danes. One of them spends the rest of his life holding both loyalties and being distrusted by everyone for it. The other decides, early and completely, that she is a Dane, and then holds that line through everything that follows — including through the people who love her, which is where it starts to cost.

What makes her more than a foil is that she is not wrong about very much. Her read on the Saxon kings is accurate. Her read on what Christianity is doing to the world she was raised in is accurate. Her read on Uhtred — that he keeps ending up on the side that suits him and calls it destiny — is uncomfortably close to fair. She is simply unable, or unwilling, to let any of that coexist with anything else.

The line she is remembered for

In the final episode of the first season, on Aethelwold, she delivers the flattest possible dismissal of a man everybody else is still humouring: “Not everybody enjoys a fool.”

Five words, and it is the whole method. Brida does not do the polite half-second where a person decides whether to say the true thing. She has already said it and moved on, and the room has to catch up. That reads as strength for two seasons and as something harder to be near by the fourth, which is a very deliberate piece of writing.

Where it ends

Her fourth season turns her into an enemy in earnest, and her fifth spends its whole length walking her and Uhtred toward each other. It finishes in the tenth episode: an arrow, shot by Uhtred's daughter Stiorra, in the fighting at Bebbanburg, after the two of them have finally stopped. The series does not treat it as a villain's death and it is not written as one. Whatever else Brida was by then, she was the last person alive who remembered the hall both of them were raised in.

Is Brida real?

No — she is Bernard Cornwell's invention, like Uhtred, and unlike the kings around them. But the situation she is in is thoroughly documented. Children were taken. People changed sides, changed gods, and changed names: Guthrum himself was baptised at Aller in 878 with Alfred as his godfather and took the Christian name Aethelstan. What is invented here is the person; what is real is a century in which a great many people's answer to "which side are you on" was complicated, contingent, and occasionally fatal. The dates are on the chronicle page.

Common questions

Who plays Brida in The Last Kingdom?: Emily Cox, across all five seasons of the series between 2015 and 2022 — 34 of its 46 episodes. Brida is Saxon-born and Danish-raised, taken as a child in the same raid as Uhtred, which makes her the story's control experiment: the same childhood, the opposite conclusion.
Why does Brida turn against Uhtred?: Because she thinks he made a choice she considers unforgivable and he thinks he made no choice at all. Both of them were taken as children and raised by Danes; Uhtred spends his life belonging to both peoples at once, and Brida regards that as a betrayal rather than a predicament. Her position hardens over the fourth season into open enmity.
What episode does Brida die in?: The series finale — season five, episode ten, released in March 2022. She is killed by an arrow shot by Uhtred's daughter Stiorra during the fighting at Bebbanburg, after she and Uhtred have finally stopped trying to kill each other. It is the last thing the series does before letting Uhtred have his fortress.

Where to go next

Uhtred had the identical childhood and drew the opposite conclusion. Ragnar is the hall both of them were raised in. And the question Brida answers instantly and most people cannot — which side would actually have taken you — is what the allegiance sorter is for.

This is fan-made, and unofficial

This is an unofficial fan profile of a character from The Last Kingdom — the television series and the novels of Bernard Cornwell it is based on — naming the work, its characters and its facts under nominative fair use. It is a free, unofficial fan tribute, made for fun. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Carnival Film & Television, Netflix, or Bernard Cornwell and his publishers.

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