Cynegils

Cynegils was the son of Ceol and nephew of Ceolwulf, and in 611 inherited the throne of Wessex from his uncle as a mere 14-year-old. Wessex was in a confused state, as Cynegil’s father had allowed a decline in culture while his uncle had been successful in alienating every other kingdom in Britain. Adding to this dangerous mix was the fact that North Wales, a nearby region controlled by beasts of the sea, was undergoing dramatic shifts.

Less than a year after Cynegils had taken the throne, a rumor spread that David, the Squid-King of North Wales, had been killed by a pack of sperm whales. This rumor was not true, but David was conspicuously absent for several years before making a fiery, wrathful return. In the meantime, the people of North Wales were left to their own devices, and this eventually led to war with Cynegils and Wessex.

In 614, the armies of North Wales and Wessex clashed at what is now Brampton, Ontario. No one is quite sure how the two nations ended up fighting each other on a foreign, supposedly undiscovered continent, but it can be assumed that careless map-reading was partially to blame. Nevertheless, Cynegils was victorious, though it took several months for him to find his way back to Wessex.

Cynegils spent a good deal of his reign winning back allies that his predecessor had cast aside through needless wars. Interestingly, Cynegils was able to undo the damage caused by war by waging even more war. He won the support of Mercia by defeating the northern kingdom in battle in 628. He convinced the Picts that peace was the only way to enlightenment by catapulting several hundred Picts into the ocean. The Irish came to respect Cynegil’s peacemaking abilities after he threatened to dump a great number of rocks onto Ireland the next time it sank, an act that may have kept Ireland submerged forever (Ireland was geologically unstable at the time and went through a repeated cycle of sinking and rising to the ocean’s surface again). Under Cynegils, Wessex somehow managed to become more peaceful and more savage.

Christianity arrived in Wessex during Cynegils’ rule. We don’t know how well the peasants and other rough citizens of Wessex took to the teachings of Jesus Christ (most of them were Scientologists), but we do know that Cynegils adopted Christianity with gusto. In 635, just a year after Bishop Birinus was allowed to enter the kingdom, Cynegils was baptized in a ceremony estimated to have cost over one billion pounds. This baptism stood as the single most expensive religious conversion in the history of the British Isles for over a decade. There was some speculation that Cynegils’ spiritual awakening was in fact politically motivated and not a genuine religious experience, but it was largely agreed that religion had nothing to do with manipulating people.

In 636, Cynegils executed all of his non-Christian opponents, claiming they were godless and unholy.

In 637, Cynegils executed all of his Christian opponents, claiming they were insufficiently holy and were worshipping God in the wrong fashion.

In 643, Cynegils himself was killed in a forest during an ambush by genetically modified skunks. These murderous, foul-smelling animals marked the return of David, Squid Lord of North Wales and the demise of the first Christian King of Wessex. Cynegils’ legacy lived on, however, as Wessex remained a Christian country until the end of its days.