A new reading of Beowulf, focusing on the poem as profoundly concerned with the most important issue of its day: how to maintain stability in societies whose only mechanism of social order is emotion. Like the societies which produced Beowulf, the societies of the poem show a remarkable investment in developing emotional bonds – marriages, fosterings, asylum – designed to ensure alliance, and yet, in every case, alliance is followed by feud. As king, Beowulf takes the highly unconventional approach of avoiding alliances, only to be destroyed ultimately from lack of allies.