In the hit series The Last Kingdom, Uhtred is only a boy named Osbert (Tom Taylor) when we first meet him in the ninth century. When his older brother is killed by Vikings, he’s renamed Uhtred and baptized as the heir of Bebbanburg. His father, Lord Uhtred (Matthew Macfadyen), is also killed by Vikings in battle at Eoferwic, or York. Uhtred watches it all play out, and his life will never be the same. What prompts a Viking leader to tell Uhtred that he “made” him “proud?” We have all the details.
Uhtred tries to fight Earl Ragnar in Season 1, Episode 1 in ‘The Last Kingdom’
During the battle at York between the Saxons and the Vikings, Lord Uhtred charges through a shield wall when their forces are surrounded. He’s attacked and killed by a sword through the neck. Uhtred watches his father die, as he wanted to join the fighting. He charges the battlefield and tries to take on Earl Ragnar (Peter Gantzler), the man who brought his dead brother’s head to the gates of Bebbanburg. Uhtred’s quickly disarmed and thrown to the ground, but he keeps trying to fight, and Ragnar knocks him out.
An awful thing leads Ragnar to reveal that Uhtred ‘made’ him ‘proud’
Uhtred is taken as a slave in Ragnar’s household to Leeds. All members of the family seem to grow fond of him, and he even defends Ragnar’s young daughter, Thyra (Madeleine Power), when she’s violated by a boy named Sven (Andrew Lukacs). He rips her dress from the waist up, and Uhtred fights the boy over it. Although Uhtred didn’t want to admit what happened while sporting a black eye, Thyra tells her family that it was Sven who started the fight.
Ragnar goes to see Sven when he learns about the awful things that has happened to his daughter. Sven’s father, Kjartan (Alexandre Willaume), is Ragnar’s shipmaster at the time. But Ragnar banishes them from his land for what Sven did to his daughter, blinding him in one eye.
Later, Ragnar talks to Uhtred with his son, Young Ragnar (Tobias Santelmann), and he gives him a necklace of Thor’s hammer once he pries it from his hand, and Uhtred thanks him.
“You made me proud today, Uhtred,” Ragnar tells him. “You made me proud.” Ragnar is “proud” of Uhtred for defending Thyra after she was violated, and from then on, he looks at the young boy as more of a member of the family. He fought for Thyra’s honor, and it bonds him to Ragnar and the family.
Uhtred becomes a Viking, and his adopted family is killed
Ragnar decides to “buy” Uhtred when his uncle, Aelfric (Joseph Millson), who is now Lord of Bebbanburg, tries to get him back to be killed. Ragnar adopts Uhtred as his own son, and from then on, he’s part of the family. Uhtred takes on the Viking culture and beliefs as his own, and he considers Ragnar his father.
Years later, Uhtred unfortunately watches his father and most of the other members of his adopted family die in a fire, although Ragnar comes out to fight with his sword as he burns alive. The murders were orchestrated by Kjartan (Alexandre Willaume), and his son, Sven (Ole Christoffer Ertvaag), along with Aelfric, who still wants Uhtred dead.
The only members of his family to make it are Thyra (Julia Bache-Wiig), who’s been kidnapped, and Young Ragnar, who’s away in Ireland at the time. It’s a hard situation for Uhtred, who is blamed for what happened by many, and it leads to a lot more drama and death before it’s all over.
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