[19][20] J. N. L. Myres noted that when Cerdic and Cynric first appear in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in s.a. 495 they are described as ealdormen, which at that point in time was a fairly junior rank.

Summing up, Myres believed that: It is thus possible ... to think of Cerdic as the head of a partly British noble family with extensive territorial interests at the western end of the Litus Saxonicum.

It might have taken matters into its own hands and after eliminating any surviving pockets of resistance by competing British chieftains, such as the mysterious Natanleod of annal 508, it could "begin to reign" without recognizing in future any superior authority.

This cannot be the case if Dumville is correct, and others assign this battle to Ælle or another Saxon leader, so it appears likely that the origins of the kingdom of Wessex are more complex than the version provided by the surviving traditions.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the earliest source for Cerdic, was put together in the late ninth century; though it probably does record the extant tradition of the founding of Wessex, the intervening 400 years mean that the account cannot be assumed to be accurate.

[29][30] The annals of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, along with the genealogical descents embedded in that source's accounts of later kings, describe Cerdic's succession by his son Cynric.

However, the Genealogical Regnal List that served as preface to the Chronicle manuscripts instead interposes a generation between them, indicating that Cerdic was father of Creoda and grandfather of Cynric.