Denmark had leaned over him one day. With a face that dripped with blood, he told England hat he'd always be a target. Setting yourself on an island small enough to be a day's march from any shore was just asking for seafarers like him to sweep it.
It was poetic justice, now, to watch him be pushed north by his former allies. England was going with him, yes, but it felt good to see that look of frustration.
Panic was a lot to ask for, and he predictably didn't get it. Denmark liked having the Isles as a part of his empire, but his concerns lay far more in Scandinavia than in Briton.
Soon enough, Denmark had been driven out and England was left on his own to make do with what little farmer armies could manage. The leaders of his rebellions knew a hopeless cause, and fled to Scotland as if that made it any better.
England had to stay behind and watch his aristocracy positions and land be divvied out to men who didn't bother to set foot on his shores. He watched his rebellions slowly lose steam from behind the French lesson books he was forced to memorize.
His government, if reluctantly, bounced back from the fire it had been consumed by. His shires condensed as quickly as castles could sprout up.
As he grew stronger, it became more and more apparent that the resistances his brothers had planned were useless. Wales rose with his armies, and almost as quickly was crushed down.
Unwilling but too broken to resist anymore, they bowed their heads an pledged allegiance to the English crown. That it was technically Norman still was irrelevant, castles bloomed with the crest regardless.
By the time Scotland was forced to head down from his home, England had lost the rural isolation he'd had once.
England watched Scotland's fingernails draw blood from clenched palms as he admitted that mismanagement and insufficient forces had rendered him incapable of defending himself any longer. His boss talked about submitting to the English as if this were a temporary thing. Both nations knew better.
He signed his independence slowly, each stroke as deliberate as it was pained. Scotland glared England down, and demanded assurance that this would be the last time for any of them if he was to be entrusted like this.
Using a tongue heavy with French reconstruction, and pushing aside Denmark's assurances, England promised that it would be.
