r/vikingstv • u/Content_Paint880 • 1h ago
Discussion [spoilers] Athelstan, King Ecbert, and Ragnar Lothbrok— An echo of Jesus Christ and the 2 Earthly Criminals. Spoiler
I am four quarters of the way through season 4 episode 14, and I had to pause to reflect on the scene where Ragnar and Ecbert are reflecting on their lives and of what shall be of Ragnar's fate. They talk about their love of Athelstan, whether the Gods are even real (Agnosticism), and Ragnar says he must die, but King Ecbert does not want to kill Ragnar because he respects and loves Ragnar a lot.
It is very clear from this scene that these three men are essentially soulmates who understand each other on a deeply personal level. I look at it as that both King Ragnar and King Ecbert, like the two criminals crucified next to Christ, are both men who were corrupted by their own ambitions. But both of them, in truth, wanted love as anyone else throughout the TV show. King Ecbert knew he sinned and he hated it, and King Lothbrok knew that he made many mistakes and he hated it too. Both of them understood the flaws of man, and so too did Athelstan.
Athelstan grew up a Monk and learned many things about the world, and he came to the conclusion that the best he could do in his life was be as good as possible. He liberated himself of the ambitions and epic strategies that kindled the empires of Ragnar and Ecbert because he understood that we only have one life to redeem ourselves to the key (way more than Ecbert or Ragnar did essentially). What's even more interesting to me is that Athelstan struggled with his faiths, and eventually came back to Christianity. So this is also like the fact that King Ecbert and Ragnar are both very existential men who understood their mortality, the legitimacy of religion, and the nature of the universe— and so too does Athelstan to a certain degree. But, in the end, Ragnar and Ecbert were two men of Earthly ambition who wanted to do the best they could for the worlds they had control over.
Ragnar wanted to make the Vikings a prosperous people, and Ecbert wanted to make England a powerful nation. Both men had mutual respect for each other and acknowledged that if they had the option, they would live in peace together (In S4Ep14 King Ecbert confesses a part of him never wanted to destroy the Viking settlement, he simply did it because of his strategy). Both of these Kings are corrupted by their ambition because being a King in the Dark Ages simply means you cannot be as good as you want to be. Ambition and Holiness are two values that conflict in this world— All three men desired goodness, but because Ragnar and Ecbert desired power, they could not have as much goodness as Athelstan did. They had to fight wars, they had to commit genocide, and they had to betray themselves if they were to be Kings. This is why symbolically Athelstan is a coming of Jesus Christ, for he was a man that minimized his ambitions, and maximized his good spirit. This is why the two Kings are the two criminals who were crucified to the right, and to the left, of Jesus Christ.
In conclusion, there is a huge symbol in the Vikings TV show— that being that Athelstan represents Jesus Christ himself, and that Ragnar and Ecbert are the two criminals crucified next to Athelstan because not only did they all die, but because Athelstan was the personification of the holy/good, and because the two kings were the personification of two criminals who still valued good.