When Charlemagne waged his first war against the Continental Saxons in 772, he did something different than his ancestors. He went after a pillar sacred to pagan peoples: the Irminsul.
Why target a religion in addition to strategic territory? I explore that question in my post about the monument’s destruction at Unusual Historicals.
1882 illustration by Heinrich Leutemann of the destruction of the Irminsul, public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Kim Rendfeld 
Yeah, I was just delighted that you emphasized through the dialogue towards the end of the novel that nobody is innocent, and when two warriors meet on a battlefield, there are no villains or victims. Not to make any excuses for anyone, but pagans were not all a bunch of tree-huggers. The lines between mono- and polytheism are really blurred. There were elements of startling violence in both traditions.
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Exactly. While I certainly don’t condone forced conversions, the pagan religion, what little we know of it, was not a bunch of peaceniks. “Beowulf” is a good example of the blurring between Christianity and paganism, and the word “vengeance” appears quite a bit.
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