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‪Regnal styles reflect the extent of a king’s power, but they also show the image that he wants to project. During a period of intense political change in the British Isles, it was only logical that the regnal styles would change too, in order to highlight conquests and annexations and assert territorial claims. At the beginning of the ninth century, the Mercian hegemony was manifested by the use of imperial titles, and at the end of that century, the crucial victories of Wessex allowed their kings to assume increasingly audacious styles. As he had incorporated Angles into a Saxon kingdom, King Alfred presented himself as the king of a new kingdom, the kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons. He and his successors then took up a unifying and redeeming ethnic label forged by the Venerable Bede, and they progressively became the Kings of the English. Because they were able to rule several kingdoms that had been divided only a few decades earlier, and because of their ability to successfully fight against the Vikings, achieve conquests, and have a growing influence outside the kingdom, the kings chose even more daring and showy regnal styles. If one believes the political communication of Wessex during the tenth and eleventh centuries, the kingdom had become an empire, at the very least during the reign of its most powerful rulers, such as Athelstan, Edgar, or Cnut.‪