REGIA ANGLORUM

Founded in 1986, Regia Anglorum is a society based in the UK but with a rapidly growing membership overseas. We are a group of people from all walks of life who share a common interest in the period often called the Dark Ages, or the early mediaeval period – roughly from the time of Alfred the Great to Richard the Lionheart – although much of our work aims to recreate a cross-section of British life around the turn of the first millennium. It was a time when Britain was host to many peoples – Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Danes, Norse, Picts, Cymru, Viking raiders, and even Normans, Frisians and Carolingians from the continent. Regia portrays all of these and more.

We are proud of our strong stance on authentic portrayal and have acquired a considerable academic reputation for accuracy. This we maintain and augment by seeing not only the wood, but the trees as well!

Regia Anglorum was a term used by early English writers to describe the English state, what we would call “Britain” today. In vulgate Latin, Regia Anglorum was a term used to mean, roughly, “The Kingdoms of the English-speaking people”, pronounced with a hard “G”, as in gate. It implies no particular boundary, either geographically or spiritually.

We feel that we do our ancestors no service at all if we portray them as mindlessly violent and their lives as nasty, brutish and short. England was the jewel of Europe; rich in gold and silver and self-sufficient in all aspects of life. Whilst life continued much as it had done for over a thousand years, politically the English state was moving towards a form of constitutional monarchy, only to be brought up short one day in October 1066. But that, as they say, is another story…

 

 

________________________________________________________________________________________________
Content on this page ©Regia Anglorum. Photography ©respective photographers
Regia Anglorum can be contacted at www.regia.org.