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King Harald Fairhair and Kjotve the Rich, Assassins Creed: Valhalla
Assassin’s Creed first graced us with a blend of engaging storytelling and history in 2007. It was a combo I fell in love with to the point of imagining parkour figures on buildings. When in history class, there was a picture of a building in Renaissance Italy I thought would work. Then “Assassin’s Creed II” came along.
I enjoy games where history plays a large role in telling the story. Recently I dove into “Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla”. I already knew a fair bit of Viking history from my own studies. I read “Eaters of the Dead” and watched “The 13th Warrior,” knowing the true stories behind them. But there was a touch of history that I didn’t know of in the first part of Valhalla.
King Kjotve of the Who?
The first real historic character that we run into is Kjotve the Cruel, historically known as Kjotve the Rich. He was a king during the later part of the 9th century, so the late 800s. Kjotve ruled over a petty kingdom known as Agõir, inhabited by the Egõir. The county of Agder is derived from this Old Norse kingdom.
It was King Kjotve who led the other kings of western Norway against Harald Fairhair, or Harald I. This is the same Harald in “Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla”. As in the video game, Kjotve did not win the battle or the war.
