I'm a big fan of Bernard Cornwell, hopefully you won't have to spell his name or was that autocorrect being a bugger. Have you read his Warlord Chronicles? I'd be tempted to go for them, love the books and I've read them several times. Fewer names to remember than his Saxon Stories series too, it can be a head scratcher trying to remember who everyone is.
Hahahaha! No autocorrect, just me being a tit! Yes, I read the Warlord series and I enjoyed them but they didn't really satisfy. One thing about the saxon saga is that I live just over the border from Chester, right on the borders of Wales, Mercea and Viking Wirral so Anglo-Saxon history is a key part of my past. My father came from East Anglia so, with my wife being from Sunderland so this really makes these tales live for me. I don't find the names such a problem - nowhere near as much as with the Welsh genealogical names when reading about the Norman conquest!
I can see that, if you can feel a connection to the past it would make it feel real. We took a trip up to Bamburgh castle a few years ago to have a look at the impregnable Bebbanburg, it was impressive and a great day out.
It's not just Harry Potter mate, it's all of this genre, just the same cast of characters with different names. The smart honest hero, a wizard with a long grey beard, an evil adversary, a cute weirdo, rough hairy man of the earth, etc. The story is always the same and it's always set in some quasi-medieval time .... ... Potter is just Game of Thrones without the shagging