The Sons of Ragnar are figures from a mythology England already knows. Ivar, Halfdan, Ubba. Names that carry weight before they open their mouths. The alliance with them is politically necessary and personally complicated, and Valhalla does not pretend those two things can be fully separated.

Hope is the mechanism that makes alliances possible. You agree to trust someone because you need them and because the alternative is worse. The betrayal comes later, not as a surprise but as a confirmation of what everyone already understood.