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Can someone help me with a rather specialised AH scenario I want to develop?

Essex was one of the Saxon kingdoms of England until the early 800s , when it was dominated by Mercia and then subsumed into Wessex.

Is there any way that if could have survived as separate from the rest of England until the Norman Conquest (probably not as a independent state, but under foreign rule) and then survived onwards as a separate kingdom, in a personal union with the rest of England under the same monarchs - so that it continues to the present day as a fifth member of the UK, together with England, Scotland , Wales and Northern Ireland.

My first thoughts were that perhaps Sigeric (King of Essex 758-798) could have married a daughter off to one of the kings of Normandy, then I realised there weren't any Normans ruling Normandy until Rollo in the early 900s.

Can anyone help me with this one? I don't want any drastic alterations to English history, I'm hoping to have 20th century Britain almost -but not quite- the same as our timeline.
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