After Assassin’s Creed Valhalla players arrive in England, it won’t be long until they start hearing about the sons of Ragnar. Ravensthorpe, the village that Eivor and companions build throughout the course of the game, actually was once a Ragnarsson outpost, and the brothers even show up as integral members of the game’s story at one point also. This should come as no surprise, as the game takes place during a period of time when their Great Army was very active. Fans may know the sons of Ragnar from another form of media as well, though, the History Channel’s Vikings.
The characters represented in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla are meant to be the same historical figure that the newer seasons of Vikings are following along with as well. It doesn’t take a historian to realize that these characters are portrayed very differently in the game and show, so it’s worth taking a look at them all and comparing the two incarnations of the famous viking leaders. Some of these characters are even absent entirely from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and the game doesn’t do much to explain this absence to Eivor or the player. In appearance and at times personality, the sons of Ragnar have many faces.
One of the first son of Ragnar that players will meet on their journey is Ubba. By appearance, he’s a burly man that is typically heavily armored and wears a fancy cloak befitting of his status as a son of King Ragnar. In terms of personality, he seems to typically be light-hearted in nature, preferring peace over war despite his position at the head of the Great Army. Compared to his brother Ivarr, Ubba is easily the brains of the operation is Mercia, as he’s much more capable of thinking things through before acting.
Compare this to Ubba Ragnarsson from the History Channel’s Vikings, and there are some minor differences. For starters, visually he is much less muscular, and he appears quite a bit younger as well. In the television show, Ubba is the eldest of Ragnar’s sons with Aslaug, whereas in the game, the ages and birthmothers of the sons of Ragnar aren’t clearly laid out. They are similar in their mannerisms, though, with both forms of Ubba wanting to follow their father’s footsteps, seeking peace in England rather than war. In the television show, Ivarr and Ubba are pitted against one another, though, while in Valhalla they primarily work together.
In terms of personality and ambition, the two incarnations of Ivarr the Boneless are very similar. They both want nothing more than to raid and pacify all of England, earning the title of Kingslayer in the process. Bloodthirsty and quick to act before thinking, both characters have made some foolish mistakes that led to unintended consequences, but that’s about where the similarities end. The differences run a lot deeper than an extra “r” in the name, however.
For starters, while Valhalla‘s Ivarr is brash and often acts without thinking, the Ivar of Vikings meticulously plots out every battle. Though he may be similarly brazen, he is much more tactically gifted than his video game counterpart. The biggest difference, though, is how the two forms of media interpret the “boneless” part of Ivarr the Boneless. In Vikings, he is actually crippled, making use of a chariot and other technology in order to get around. In Valhalla, he is up and walking about perfectly fine, with the title instead being awarded to him either because of his fluid fighting style or due to what the game’s codex refers to as possible “performance issues.”
Perhaps the character with the most disparity in his two representations, Halfdan Ragnarsson is a very different character in Vikings than in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. On the left, fans see Hvitserk from Vikings, the second son of Ragnar and Aslaug, while on the right, players see Halfdan, the eldest son of Ragnar and Lagertha. These two characters are meant to be the same individual, yet they are markedly different. In the show, Hvitserk follows Ubba blindly for quite some time before eventually taking Ivarr’s side in the conflict between the two brothers. In the game, Halfdan is the eldest of the bunch and an established king when Eivor meets him.
With this huge difference in background and age, the characters are almost nothing alike. Their appearance and personality are of two completely different people, and it’s difficult to find any similarity between them. This character is the best example of just how little is truly known about these historical figures. The surviving sources are all biased for the most part, and there’s a lot of conflicting information that makes it difficult to parse out what’s really true and what’s just myth. The ability to use the Animus to learn information like this would be huge for historians, so it’s a shame that the characters make the mistake of not doing this in AC Valhalla.
The two remaining sons of Ragnar, Bjorn Ironside and Sigurd “Snake-in-the-eye” Ragnarsson, are nowhere to be found in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Through some voice lines from Ubba, it seems that in the canon of the game these two are already dead. Without seeing what they looked like and how they acted, it’s impossible to really make a comparison between their AC Valhalla incarnations and the way they behave in the Vikings TV show. This is disappointing particularly for Bjorn, as he’s a fan-favorite character from the show.
It should be said that players will meet a berserker named Bjorn if they pre-ordered Valhalla before its release, but this is not the same Bjorn that calls Ragnar Lothbrok his father. The one comparison that can be made between these two forms of media is lineage, as Vikings paints Bjorn as the first son of Ragnar and Lagertha, whereas Valhalla gives that position to Ubba Ragnarsson instead. Again, there are a lot of conflicting sources so it’s difficult to say what’s true and what isn’t.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
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