Whatever the moral message Bede may have intended to convey, the political circumstances suggest a somewhat different scenario. With Oswiu's expulsion, the Bernician grip on East Saxon affairs seems to have slipped away and so when Sigeberht's successor, Swithhelm, son of Seaxbald, needed a candidate to stand sponsor at his baptism, he turned to the king of the East Anglians. A change of loyalty or political affiliations among the East Saxon ruling elite may therefore help explain the context for Sigeberht's assassination. Barbara Yorke even raises the possibility that Swithhelm was in some way accessory to the murder and that he and his brother Swithfrith were the two brothers portrayed by Bede.