Category talk:Battles involving Wessex

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Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms

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Battle of Hehil

Metabaronic left this message on my talk page and asked for a reply here:

You undid a category revision on Battle of Hehil referencing "uncertain categorisation". This revision is being applied across the board to diffuse Category:Battles involving the Anglo-Saxons into battles involving the Heptarchy Kingdoms where they can be applied. I've reverted this revision as the West Saxons are synonymous with Wessex, but welcome to discuss this further at Category:Battles involving Wessex - better to apply the outcomes of a disagreement for the entire category than under a single article. Metabaronic (talk) 19:25, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Of course, we could apply the outcomes to the entire category when the disagreement was about the whole category, but this one is only about the Battle of Hehil. There's no evidence that that battle was between the Britons and the Saxons, let alone between the Britons and the West Saxons. The Annales Cambriae tell us the Britons won, but who the other combatants were is a matter for informed guesswork. An encyclopedia can refer to speculation but can't possibly treat it as fact, so the best thing here will be to use neither Category:Battles involving the Anglo-Saxons nor Category:Battles involving Wessex. I'll make that correction. Moonraker2 (talk) 19:54, 24 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That certainly makes more sense, although the Hehil article perhaps needs to reflect the two opposing views currently put forward, and the weighting between them. As I understand it some scholars believe Hehil was a battle between different British tribes to establish the Kingdom of Dumnonia, while the majority view is that the enemy wasn't mentioned in the Annales Cambriae simply because it was obvious at the time that the enemy concerned were the Saxons. Obviously given Hehil's location "among the Cornish" the most probable, or even only plausible enemy would have been the West Saxons.Metabaronic (talk) 22:13, 24 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the most plausible, but not really the only plausible enemy. There has also been a theory about Vikings. Moonraker2 (talk) 02:19, 26 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Vikings in AD721-2? 70 years before the Viking Age began - the Anglo-saxon Chronicle says the first three Danish ships to visit Britain arrived in Northumbria in 789. That would be a rather fundamental rewrite of history.Metabaronic (talk) 23:11, 26 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]