Penda victorious at the Battle of the Winwaed

Watching TV a programme about the Staffordshire Hoard pushed me to ask this. What if King Penda won the Battle of the Winwaed? How strong would Mercia be? How long would English paganism last? Penda's son Peada was Christian before Penda was defeated, so unless he backslides this victory may not have much of an effect on that.
 
Ultimately i don't think you can make Mercia itself much stronger or larger than it already was historically; it had pretty much spread as far as geography would allow. You've got the mountains of Wales to the West, a Northumbria too large to absorb to the north, the North Sea to the East and a formidable barrier in the River Thames to the south. That said, by giving the Mercian kings to opportunity to acheive predominance so early into the 7th Century, which Penda could conceivably have done, you'd leave his successors in a good position to be the unifying power that eventually establishes the English nation, rather than the West Saxons. As an added bonus, by choosing this as a POD you'll further muddle the already problematic succession crisis in Northumbria between the Deiran and Bernician dynasties, and this could leave Northumbria a lot weaker that it was in OTL.

As for the question of Christianity my view has been that you could perhaps keep Mercia pagan for a few decades longer, but ultimately you will reach the point where any Anglo-Saxon king will accept that the benefits of conversion to Christianity outweigh those of retaining the older Germanic gods. You are effectively talking about such useful things such as writing, that can allow you to establish diplomatic relations with other countries on the continent, and the introduction of a church whose priesthood can act as an early form of bureaucracy and serve as a stabilising element to bind a kingdom together.

Ultimately becoming Christian is too good an opportunity to miss.
 
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