Flodoard’s Annals are a crucial source for the history of the post-Carolingian kingdoms in the first half of the tenth century. Yet in spite of the text’s importance, it has seldom been studied as a piece of historiography. Flodoard’s highly reticent prose has often been noted, but the work presents several puzzles that have yet to be resolved. Building on the findings of Chapter 1 concerning Flodoard’s political activities, this chapter considers the Annals in the context of his deep knowledge of history and the different ways it could be represented. It examines aspects of the text that were highly traditional as well as those that were exceedingly novel. While the Annals have often been interpreted as a gloomy but accurate account of tenth-century political decline, this chapter argues that this narrative of failure was a more deliberate authorial construction than has been supposed. Disillusioned by political calamities and personal disappointments, I suggest that Flodoard found in the chronicle form a vehicle for a subtle but pointed critique of the ills of his day.