No figure in Hungarian culture, politics, or history is more revered or crucial to the nation’s self-understanding than King Stephen i. This book deconstructs the myths and political narratives attached to the first king of Hungary in such an authoritative way it may be considered dangerous to certain ways of thinking. Nora Berend’s lucid style of writing, paired with an aspirational level of research, culminates in a challenging and thought-provoking work that best serves readers with an interest in Hungary and those working on how historical myths become nationalist realities. Scholars of history, theology and politics will also find ample to grapple with in this work. Berend’s book has the potential to become expected reading in many fields, and in its four chapters makes a convincing case that the historic reality of King Stephen and the myths or stories told about him in the formation of contemporary Hungarian identity are often vastly different.

Berend’s first target in her deconstruction of the modern and medieval myths about King Stephen centre on the supposed life and defeat of Cupan: an older relative who sought control over the new kingdom. Supposedly a pagan uncle, Cupan is a central myth in Stephen’s ascent to power whose defeat and quartering was imbued with political significance as cementing Stephen’s control over the realm and Christianity’s defeat of paganism. As Berend shows in this well written and researched chapter, this short story grew into a representation of true Hungarian identity, with the search for the true Cupan being a search for true Hungarianess. This chapter’s strength lies in its detailed deconstruction of this myth. By going directly to the medieval sources, Berend is able to show just how late in the narrative history the Cupan name appears, how little is concretely known about the figure, and how significance and importance was attached to the story at specific times, proving the real person of Cupan to be more unreliable than reliable.

What Berend recounts in the following chapter clearly highlights the central claim of her work: that the historic realities and the myths around King Stephen are often far apart, and the small quantity of historic material has become jet fuel for medieval and modern myths, legends and nationalist identity-making. In the early 1980s, a rock opera was produced recounting King Stephen’s rise to power and his defeat of Cupan. What would otherwise seem out of place in a well-researched historical account of the first king of Hungary turns into a fascinating demonstration how the myth of Stephen’s victory over Cupan became a nationally recognised reality, so much so that the rock opera’s producers could provide subtle anti-establishment and nationalist rhetoric through these characters. This chapter is vital for the work as it provides the clearest example of the transformation of historical ambiguity into nationalist reality, and provides a transformational reading of how Hungarian national identity emerged under the Iron Curtain.

The book’s third chapter is a shorter examination of the myth of the Holy Dexter of Stephen. The relic of his right hand is a revered object in Hungary, one of the few first-class relics of the canonised king. Berend again works closely with the source material to uncover the contradictory stories and claims to this relic, shedding doubt on the Dexter’s legitimacy and origin story. Berend’s alternative account proposes that future Hungarian kings invented the narrative of its uncorrupted nature to legitimise their authority, and the Hungarian politicians and leading figures in the 1920s amplified the Dexter’s significance. This chapter, while well researched and argued, is less convincing than the previous chapters as Berend does not entertain the possibility of divine intervention in preserving the relic. For a historian this is not a factor often to be considered but when speaking of a saintly king, a theologian would find such an omission unfortunate.

The book ends in the same fashion it began: with a dismantling of a well-established Hungarian truism. The Hungarian crown, sometimes called the crown of St Stephen, is often considered the national symbol and is deeply rooted in the nations imagining of political power. As Berend shows, in the late nineteenth century and increasingly into the twentieth, the Holy Crown became a symbol of Hungary’s unbroken constitutional tradition, going back to Stephen. What makes this claim not only untenable but, for Berend, indefensible, is the long tradition of scepticism about the age of the crown. Historic and contemporary analysis of the crown of Hungary contend that it is a crown of two parts: a ‘Greek’ and a ‘Latin’ half that were not part of an original. Dating places these parts in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and historical analysis of the sources from and immediately after the reign of St Stephen reveal no reverence for a crown attached to him. In a fitting end to the book, Berend shows in detail how a historical object became associated with King Stephen in the medieval period, and Hungarian history has absorbed this myth to create a contemporary narrative in which the crown that sits in parliament today is both the crown of Stephen and the symbol of Hungarian constitutional power.

Regrettably, Berend’s work does not come with a satisfying conclusion. It cuts to the heart of the questions around the role historic myths and legends have in nationalist constructions of identity, and Berend makes light of this in reference to Eric Hobsbawm’s work amongst others. Rather than ending with an exploration of the significance this work and its conclusions have for the wider Hungarian national identity, for myth making as a nationalist enterprise, or how history proper ought to contribute to the discussion of how to understand the often unclear and mysterious past, the book ends with a one page epilogue that leaves the reader wanting much more. Regardless, the work is in some ways earth shattering for Hungarian conceptions of the nation’s past and its implications for the present. What ought Hungary make of the ahistoric nature of the Cupan Stephen defeated to cement his rule over the nation? What significance does the miraculous history of the Holy Dexter have for the modern, pluralist, European nation? How does a crown wrongly attributed to the first king of Hungary provide political legitimacy to a republic? Berend’s work untangles and problematises all these aspects to the legend of St Stephen and leaves a wake of uncertainty behind her about what it means to be a Hungarian. Berend makes it clear (p. 236) that ‘it is infinitely more interesting to look at how and why the stories were woven together in the first place, instead of perpetuating fake certainties’.