The Saxon court is a room full of men performing stability. Everyone in it knows the performance is tactical. Eivor walks into these spaces as an outsider and reads them more clearly than their participants do, not because she is smarter but because she is not invested in the fiction.

Valhalla's political sessions are its best writing. The kings are not villains. They are pragmatists who have learned that sincerity is a vulnerability. Eivor's task is to work within their logic without becoming it.