Gaimar’s translation of the ASC begins with the coming of Cerdic and Cynric to the British Isles, the Saxon invaders whose arrival immediately follows the Haveloc interpolation. With the exception of the Buern Bucecarle episode and its aftermath, Gaimar’s additions to his main source are few until the reign of Edgar, who ruled between 959 and 975. By this point in the Estoire, as the narrative enters the 960s, the descendants of Cerdic are well established as legitimate rulers in the kingdom that is now England, despite frequent attempts at invasion by Danes claiming rights in the land due to the presence there of their countrymen, Adelbriht and Haveloc, centuries earlier. As we have seen, Haveloc left no heirs, and the Danish invaders who follow him appear to have inherited none of his admirable qualities. Wasing, the Danish king who is the first figure in the Estoire to commit an ‘ultrage’ (‘outrage’, 902), is so belligerent that he even attacks those of his own compatriots who remain in Norfolk after Haveloc’s time. Given that Wasing’s brief career is interpolated by Gaimar, this dismissal of Danish claims after the approbation given to Haveloc is notable.

Gaimar’s careful translation of the ASC’s account of the formation of England constructs a narrative in which the heirs of Cerdic attain legitimacy through their defeat of the Britons and their subsequent conversion to Christianity. The ASC’s kings are mostly given little in the way of characterisation in Gaimar’s translation. As Véronique Zara succinctly puts it in her study of Arthur in Wace’s Brut, ‘kings are not, in fact, created equal’. Gillingham also highlights the fact that most are distinguished by generic terms familiar from courtly accounts of kingship: ‘gentil’ (noble), ‘prodom’ (worthy), or ‘fort’ (strong). Alfred the Great is accorded special praise, yet Gaimar reverts to generalisations in his account of that king’s son, Edward the Elder.

Gaimar’s account of Edgar’s love for Ælfthryth is, with the addition of the related subsequent passage on the murder of that king’s son, Edward, the second longest interpolation in the Estoire (3587–4094).