again) king of Wessex and his brother resumed (or carried on) his kingship of Kent.

Æthelbald married his stepmother Judith. Asser, the biographer of his youngest brother, Alfred the Great, denounced Æthelbald and Judith's union as being "against God's prohibition and Christian dignity, and also contrary to the practice of all pagans", but the marriage does not seem to have been condemned at the time. Æthelbald and Æthelberht appear to have been on good terms: