The 25 Best Characters on The Last Kingdom
2) BRIDA
When you grow up a female Saxon slave in a Viking household with a young Uhtred as a playmate, you’d better be a tough cookie. Brida (Emily Cox) is resilient and fiery. She likes to fight and is good at it. As an adult, she becomes Uhtred’s lover and soulmate. Though a Saxon by birth, she identifies with the Danes who raised her, meshing well with their wilder lifestyle and greater respect for women. When she is forced to engage with Saxon society, she finds their poor treatment of Saxon women galling, and doesn’t care if anyone in unhappy with her opinions.
Brida has been through a lot. In season 1, in an attempt to reconnect with Ragnar the Younger, she drank a hallucinogenic mushroom potion. The resulting vision showed her the thing she desired most: her aboard a Viking ship with Ragnar, but it also caused her to miscarry Uhtred’s baby. In this time period, childbirth is a dangerous event for both baby and mother, and while Brida is tough enough to move on, we see the sting of loss on her face when she later learns that Uhtred’s wife Mildrith has given him a son.
Brida’s distaste for Saxon life makes her resentful of Uhtred’s alliance with the Saxon King Alfred, though she does her best to support him. A better strategic thinker than most of her peers, including the impulsive Uhtred, her message nevertheless can be waylaid by her bad temper. Still, she’s never stopped trying to get Uhtred to embrace his Viking heritage. “Uhtred Ragnarsson is a good man to be,” she tells him in season 1. “Look at me. You owe Alfred nothing. To him your word means nothing — you’re a pagan. Please.”
Brida was last seen departing with Ragnar the Younger (the two of them now enmeshed in a love affair) in the middle of season 2, soon after Ragnar killed Kjartan, but we know they’ll be back again. If Uhtred has indeed embraced his Viking Viking roots, she’s going to be thrilled. But if he crosses back over, there could be trouble. When things get rough, Brida will always bet on the Vikings.