Regina E-Book

Emily Murdoch Perkins

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 400

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

**'A fantastic, feminist dance through history.' - Julia Quinn What queens would England have had if firstborn daughters, not firstborn sons, had inherited the throne? We may think of princesses as dutiful and elegant, wearing long flowing dresses, but the eldest daughters of England's kings have been very different. Political intriguers. Abducted nuns who demanded divorces. Murderers. It's time we rediscovered the politicians we lost, the masterminds we see negotiating nunneries not armies, the personalities shining brilliantly even hundreds of years later: the queens who should have been. Let's meet them.

Leseprobe

To Oliver David Burnham

whose opinion I desperately wished

to hear while writing this book.

To my parents, Mary and Gordon,

who made me who I am.

And to my husband

who saw the author I could be.

First published 2024

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, gl50 3qb

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

Text © Emily Murdoch Perkins,2024

The right of Emily Murdoch Perkins to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 561 8

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Illustrated and designed by Jemma Cox

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

CONTENTS

Introduction

1    The Edith Queens (870–?)

2    The Nordic Queens (990–c.1093)

3    The Norman Queens (?–1182)

4    The Plantagenet Queens (1102–1275)

5    The Edward Queens (1269–1382)

6    The Rose Queens (1392–1503)

7    The Renaissance Queens (1489–1662)

8    The George Queens (1687–1828)

9    The Modern Queens (1840–today)

10  The Queens Who Were (1516–2022)

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

Kings beget kings. Kings sire sons. Kings have uses for daughters, but they are a means to an end. Not the end itself.

That is what English and British history has offered: a plethora of princesses, most of whom the average person could not name, who presumably married and loved and hated and died.

Historians are supposed to be explorers of truth. Instead of seas and oceans, we sail through manuscripts of parchment and paper, held together with wood and leather. We examine bills, receipts, letters, diaries, chronicles, paintings, clothing, architecture. We judge based on what was, not what we would wish could have been.

Many historians, including myself, have been trained to ignore the temptation of the ‘what if’ game. What if this particular person had died of plague before they … sparked a war? Married an enemy? Invaded a neighbour?

And my favourite question, the one I return to again and again, unable to relinquish the exciting academic and creative challenge is this:

What if ... it were daughters and not sons who inherited the throne?

For over 1,000 years it has been princes who became kings, not princesses who became queens. Queens were consorts – dutiful wives – not regnants, ruling monarchs in their own right. Daughters were an afterthought. In early records they are absent. When they emerge, mentioned in passing perhaps for needing a gown, a clear picture emerges: that of a possession. An investment made into physical flesh: beauty, elegance, decorum, class, intelligence, language, music, wit, all designed to craft the most tantalising object that another prince – perhaps, even, a king – would in turn like to possess.

There were many women who could have, if the rules had been different, become queen. The eldest daughters who, but for a chance of fate, could not take the regnal crown. The queens who could have been.

Let’s be clear: we don’t know what decisions these queens would have made if they had been crowned. But examining the historical record to see what opportunities they had, what choices were made, and just how they negotiated between being royal yet not quite royal enough, will peel back the folds of a history mostly ignored.

Were they cruel, or kind? Bold, or shy? Determined to make their stamp on the world, or eager to be ruled by another? What could this have meant for their kin? Their crown? Their country?

Though we may have an idea of daughters as dutiful, marital conveniences to build alliances, wearing long flowing dresses, the eldest daughters of our kings have been anything but.

Political intriguers. Abducted nuns who demanded divorces. Murderers.

Instead of Henrys, Edwards, and Richards, we’d have Eleanors, Isabellas, and Marys. We’d have a queen who forced an international conference to allow her to make love to her husband, or another who scandalised the royal court to prove she did not have leprosy. We’d have mothers willing to risk anything for their children, wives who followed their husbands to the very ends of the earth, and spinsters who demanded their intellectual and societal freedom.

This book will introduce you to the women who could have been your monarchs. We’ll follow the current family tree and shine a light on those who could have been household names. We’ll explore what it meant to be royal, why and how sons came to be valued higher than daughters, and just how England, then Britain, might have looked under a royal matriarchy.

Intertwining royal history and little-known family politics within monarchical dynasties, get ready to meet royal daughters from around 875 to today who had little recourse against the most powerful man in the country: their father.

It could have been so different, and all because of Æthelflæd.

Æthelflæd is often the only Anglo-Saxon woman people can name. Sometimes they can even give her moniker: Lady of the Mercians. She may have been their Lady, but in a very real way, she completely challenged our understanding of early medieval womanhood.

Let’s set the scene.

Æthelflæd (pronounced ETH-el-fled) was the eldest daughter and eldest child of a little-known and little-respected ruler of Wessex. We know him now as Alfred the Great, though he was only called ‘the Great’ from the sixteenth century. In around 870 there was little ‘Great’ about Alfred. He wasn’t king, for a start. His older brother was. They were both heavily involved in the battle waging across England against the Norse invaders, known collectively as Vikings. When Æthelflæd was about 8, the royal court at Chippenham was attacked at Christmas and the whole royal family was forced into hiding. The Norse had taken Wessex.

But only for a time – Alfred isn’t considered ‘the Great’ for nothing. Over years, through skirmishes, sieges, and outright battles, Alfred slowly took back Wessex and the northern kingdom of Mercia, establishing a ‘Kingdom of Anglo-Saxons’ by 886. Mercia became subservient to Wessex; the Treaty of Danelaw agreed borders between the Danes (Vikings) in the north and the Anglo-Saxons in the south, mostly; and peace of a kind was made. Into this world Æthelflæd grew up with a very specific sense of what a woman in Wessex was and was not.

Thanks to a rather unfortunately murderous queen in Mercia’s history – Cynethryth (SIN-eh-THRITH)* – queens in Wessex were not permitted power. In fact, the very title of ‘queen’ was removed. Bishop Asser, a contemporary of Alfred, wrote: ‘For the West Saxons did not allow the queen to sit beside the king, nor indeed did they allow her to be called “queen”, but rather “king’s wife”.’ That is how Æthelflæd grew up.

Mercians, in the neighbouring kingdom, did things differently. From 750, Mercian queens witnessed charters and royal papers. Queen Cynethryth even had her name on her husband’s coins. When Alfred decided to strengthen his power over Mercia, he did so by marrying the ealdorman (literally, elder man) of Mercia to his daughter.

Æthelflæd married Æthelred (ETH-el-red), and a partnership began.*

Æthelflæd may not have been handed a sword alongside her brothers, but she would have been surrounded by conversations of ‘kingly’ duties; one historian lists ‘land management, tax revenues, endowment of churches, building projects, fortifications, court judgements, ecclesiastical appointments, hunting trips, and who was plotting against whom to gain the king’s favour’. Every princess, every queen raised in a royal court would have absorbed this – and Æthelflæd’s mother was Mercian, so her daughter might even have spoken the Mercian dialect of Old English.

We start seeing something unthinkable in Wessex: Æthelflæd begins to rule.

Not alone. When she signed charters, visited towns, and founded churches, it was always as Æthelred and Æthelflæd. They are described together as ‘Lords of Mercia’, or myrcna hlafordas. They had a child: a daughter called Ælfwynn (ELF-win). A writer in the twelfth century said the birth was so awful and dangerous, Æthelflæd decided to have no more children – a bold choice for a royal of our time and a startling choice for a woman in the 900s. Æthelflæd proves that for millennia, women have been taking control of their fertility, and for her, one was enough.

That did not mean Ælfwynn was the only child at the Mercian court. Æthelflæd participated in a crucial Anglo-Saxon tradition to continue for at least 500 years: fosterage.

We think of fostering as something offered when parents are momentarily unable to care for a child, but the Anglo-Saxons would not. Fostering another’s child was not unusual. If a married couple could not have children and a sibling had several, struggling to care for them, one was fostered or adopted by the childless couple. This habit died out comparatively recently; one of Jane Austen’s brothers was adopted by childless relatives in 1779 when he was 12. The relatives gave him their surname and made him their heir.

It went further in the Anglo-Saxon period and was common practice within nobility. Allowing your son – or, more unusually, your daughter – to be raised by another family would build ties between you; give them a chance to see the world; collect together the next generation of nobles so they could build bonds early; improve chances of intermarriage; and reduce the burden on families with numerous children. Raising the child of your close ally would bring you closer. Raising the child of your enemy would give you a vested interest – presumably an emotional one – in their heir.

And so Æthelstan (ETH-el-stan), son of Æthelflæd’s brother Edward, the new king of Wessex, came to the Mercian court where women were just as valuable, just as educated, just as powerful as the men. Where music and laughter roared through corridors decorated with finely woven tapestries. Delicious food was cooked with imported spices eaten off plates demarking your rank: gold was for the best, ‘plate’ or pewter for nobles, wooden for servants – but each plate was filled. There was gold jewellery, glass drinking horns and beakers, musicians playing, dogs by the fire …

Æthelflæd had created the perfect life, but it was not to last. As her husband grew older and more infirm – we don’t know their exact age difference, but it could have been as much as twenty-five years – ruling did not cease in Mercia. Why would it, when one half of the rulers were still young and active?

By 907, around fifteen years into her marriage, Æthelflæd was leading troops into battle as leader of the Mercians – crucially, while her husband was still alive. This was unprecedented, but what is even more fascinating is that no one seemed to care. The monks writing the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a record of the important events of each year, mention Æthelflæd’s movements without censure. Why should they? She was acting in the best interests of Mercians – as was her duty.

So when Æthelred died in 911, Æthelflæd simply continued ruling.

Perhaps it surprised a few of Æthelflæd’s contemporaries, but perhaps not as many as we’d think. There was precedent. A man had died without male issue. In contemporary law codes, daughters inherited if there were no sons. Perhaps Æthelflæd considered herself the custodian or regent for her daughter – Anglo-Saxons recognised a woman’s right to manage her estate as she saw best during her lifetime. Why, you can almost hear Æthelflæd arguing, should it be any different for her kingdom?

And so she ruled as a queen without the title.

Many Midlands towns owe their founding to Æthelflæd. Warwick, Shrewsbury, Stafford, Worcester, Gloucester, Chester, Tamworth: all were founded by, fortified by, had their urban centres planned by Æthelflæd. This wasn’t just issuing orders; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states she went to watch the building work. Of more than twenty burhs built over twenty years, Æthelflæd was solely responsible for twelve. She was quite literally drawing the map of England.

Why? To protect her people. When fortified towns, or burhs, were insufficient against Danish invaders, Æthelflæd did not hesitate to go to war. She defended Chester against Norse attacks, raided Bardney Abbey to seize saintly relics, attacked a Danish raiding party in the Battle of Tettenhall, led the army on planned expeditions, and captured Derby, Leicester, and York. She started minting her own coins – a clear mark of power – the tail side showing a castle, referencing Æthelflæd’s building projects. She started to train her daughter. Ælfwynn appears in at least three charters at the head of the list of witnesses, above her cousin Æthelstan, above ealdormen, even above bishops.

We mustn’t fall into the trap of thinking of Æthelflæd as a provincial leader, a sort of ‘lady of the manor’ fondly permitted by her neighbours to play at ruling. Æthelflæd was admired – partly because she kept fighting battles, but also because she began a concentrated effort to secure political and diplomatic ties with kingdoms around her. By 914, Æthelflæd had agreements for mutual aid with the Scots, Irish, Welsh, the rulers of Strathclyde, and the kingdom of Bernicia – giving her the power to head an army spanning Ireland, Wales, the entirety of the Midlands, and most of Scotland. She was so well known that the Fragmentary Annals of Ireland called her ‘Queen of the Mercians’; so well respected by her own people that the Mercian army, her army, willingly followed her to York in 918 to besiege the Norse; so well feared that the York inhabitants surrendered rather than face her.

At the age of almost 50, Æthelflæd could have had another decade or more. But it was not to be. On 12 June 918, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle blandly states: ‘she died at Tamworth, twelve days before midsummer, the eighth year of her having rule and right lordship over the Mercians.’

Ælfwynn was swiftly accepted as the ruler and next Lady of the Mercians. Within six months, her uncle Edward would arrive on her doorstep, depose her, and take her back to Wessex. Ælfwynn is never heard of again.

If Æthelflæd had managed to establish her daughter as the next ruler of Mercia, she would have achieved something England would not see for almost 600 years: a woman successfully handing a crown to a woman. But though Mercia was perfectly happy to accept a female ruler, Wessex was not – and the death of Æthelflæd, his proud defiant sister, was the perfect excuse for Edward to take control.

Æthelflæd was a queen in almost every sense of the word: she deterred Viking incursions into her land; founded and defended towns; witnessed charters; donated huge amounts of money to the Church; and kept people’s hopes alive against attacks from all sides. Called princess by her family, Lady by the Mercians, Queen by the Irish, and by the twelfth-century ‘king’ by chronicler Henry of Huntingdon, Æthelflæd was what our queendom could have become: military, politically bold, respected.

But Wessex, then England, did not want women on thrones. This book will introduce you to those women who would, if Æthelflæd’s legacy had been different, have been our queens.

After the Conquest in 1066, it’ll first become more difficult, then much easier for us to know the personalities of these forgotten princesses. Utilising chronicles, personal letters, art, and, of course, men’s opinions (at times all we are left with), this feminist lens will interpret what cannot be definitively known, but can be enjoyed. We’ll end with Anne, Princess Royal, who could have been our monarch after her mother, Elizabeth II.

The one thing I won’t be doing is the impossible: attempting to track the ‘new’ royal family line that could have been created if Æthelflæd had successfully passed her power to her daughter Ælfwynn. Where would we start or stop? Many women have slipped from the historical record at an early age, or left no heirs, or their descendants now number thousands.

Instead, I’ll introduce the eldest daughters of English and British monarchs, and explore how their rule might have looked. Yes, it’s speculation. Yes, it’s intrigue. Yes, it can never be proven either way. But isn’t it enthralling?

I could never ignore the six regnal queens who somehow pushed past the expectation of men on the throne, and ruled. English and British queens are, statistically, long rulers. Though only seven of the forty-four monarchs from William the Conqueror to Elizabeth II have been women, we have been ruled by women for over 22 per cent of that time. I’ll introduce you to these queens in a radical new way: as bold, political animals who eschewed almost all historical and royal precedent, determined to rule the nation they loved better than any man.

I can’t wait to introduce you to women who demanded more and sometimes got it. They took their husbands to court, were the victims of kidnap plots, and were the first royals to have proper jobs. They were the princesses who changed the direction of not only English but European politics, and who could have done so much more. The queens who could – who should – have been. The politicians we lost, the masterminds we see negotiating nunneries not armies, the personalities who shine brilliantly even hundreds of years later.

Let’s meet them.

________

* The story goes that Cynethryth was behind the murder of Æthelberht II (ETH-el-bert), king of East Anglia, in 794.

* There are a lot of unfamiliar names here, but I promise it’ll get easier.

Welcome to England, 893.

Leave your expectations at the border. This is not the England you know. It’s not even called England – not yet.

Many of the things you imagine of this medieval age are wrong. Women own property, sign charters and legal documents, and take others to court. Children are adored when small, well-educated by the rich, and wept over when lost. Monks and bishops own land, have wives, and frequently bicker. Correspondence across Europe is common. Letters are exchanged with Rome. Christianity sits alongside folklore. Concubines are just as common as wives. Bathing is customary and gold embroidery coveted. It’s a world in which women have arguably more rights than in the Victorian era. When men are so often away from home, it is women who work, maintain a household, raise children, contribute to communities, run businesses, and physically defend their homes from invaders.

What you’ll see as we soar over the land – green and full of forests, woodland, marshes and bogs, mists that frightened the Romans and rich farmland that enticed the Anglo-Saxons – is not quite a country. It’s not even quite a kingdom – not in the way we would understand.

Instead of one centralised ruling family or even ruling class, there are regional kingdoms organised (or in some cases, disorganised) by complicated, sprawling, brawling families. They hail from all over Europe: Britons in the West and Wales; Picts and Scots in the North; and across shifting borders and abandoned towns, Angles, Jutes, Saxons, and Vikings – a catch-all term for anyone who came a-raiding from the Nordic countries.

Considered by some ‘the Dark Ages’ – a term many historians, including me, loathe – this period actually gives us a wealth of information, even if it’s not as much as I would like.

Pottery, jewellery, swords, carvings, burials, forts, poetry, sermons, legal documents (including charters, over a thousand of them from the late seventh century to the eleventh), chronicles (records of major events in each year): all create a vision of a world in which nothing was certain, everything was to play for, and everyone had the opportunity to make something of themselves.

It’s a delightful mess that medieval historians adore, primarily – in my case – because everything was in flux.

What a country or kingdom is isn’t quite decided. Wessex is the kingdom that dominates, accepting fealty from Kent, Sussex, and London. There is no longer a ruling family in Mercia, in what we would call the Midlands, and the ealdormen pay fealty to Wessex kings. Further north you’ll find Northumbria, mostly ruled over by Vikings who also dominate Ireland. There is ever-present tension now these invaders who once raided yearly are here to stay. The complexity of these multiple kingdoms means that Alfred calls himself King of the Anglo-Saxons. To preside over the entire geographical island would, at the time, have been considered impossible.

What a king does is still being decided. Writing in 893, Bishop Asser said his king, when not on the battlefield, ‘found time to meet with his advisers, hold court and hear legal appeals; attend Mass; welcome foreign visitors; hunt, and oversee the work of his huntsmen and falconers; learn Latin and translate books; direct builders, jewel makers and craftsmen; do his accounts; dispense charity; and found a school’.

Who a king is is still being decided. Leaders are elected, not born. The witan, or ruling council, will choose a new king upon the death of Alfred in 899. Their choice is, however, limited to the æthlings, those in the male line of the current ruling family. Younger brothers can inherit before older, cousins before sons – but always sons over daughters. Daughters are not given the title æthling. After Æthelflæd’s attempts to pass a crown to her daughter, no other woman has been so bold.

But kings keep having daughters.

EADGYTH THE PAWN, 893/900–?(daughter of Edward the Elder)

After meeting Æthelflæd, it would be easy to hope that all firstborn princesses were afforded the same opportunities – but as you saw in the unfortunate end of her daughter, Wessex’s dominance meant the kingdom’s approach to women became the norm.

Time to meet Eadgyth, pronounced and often spelled Edith. She was born the daughter of Edward of Wessex, Æthelflæd’s brother.

Edward appears to have been a prickly fellow. Historians have suggested a falling out with his father because Alfred’s chroniclers purposefully left out any mention of Edward’s military successes. Perhaps there was jealousy growing: as the senior man grew older, the younger man began to shine. Not easy to watch for a man who had quite literally fought from nothing to reclaim his kingdom. Eadgyth was born into this family: a Wessex royal family that put far more emphasis and importance on sons, and whose father acted without thought for others. But she had the inspiration of her aunt, Æthelflæd. Eadgyth may have met her aunt relatively frequently. She certainly would have heard of her exploits, visited the towns she founded, received gifts from her. Her brother Æthelstan was raised in their aunt’s court. Yet Eadgyth was raised in a Wessex, not a Mercian, court. That will make all the difference.

We know almost nothing about Eadgyth. She signs no charters, builds no burhs, wages no wars. In many ways, she does nothing queenlike at all.

Until she does.

The first real sight of Eadgyth we have is through her marriage: to a man called Sihtric Caech (SE-trik KAY-eesh). Sihtric was the Viking King of York, and therefore of Northumbria as a whole. It was a prudent match: bringing together a daughter of one kingdom with the ruler of another. Probably one of the Danes expelled from Ireland in 902, he became King in 920 and spent the next five years harrowing Mercia – land under the protection of Æthelstan, Eadgyth’s brother.

Fierce battles raged between the two nations until 926 and the marriage of Eadgyth and Sihtric.

This marriage typifies the ‘trade’ of women, particularly princesses, to leading nobles and powerful men. The women were called frythwebba, or peace-weavers, this concept would have been familiar to all tribes in England, Nordic countries, and the Continent. Alfred’s own father – Eadgyth’s great-grandfather – made his second marriage to a daughter of the Franks (modern-day France) to improve diplomatic relations. This peace-weaving marriage is the most regal thing Eadgyth does.

It is easy to view peace-weaving as a female action in which women had no choice, the connection foisted on them by fathers or brothers. But that is to completely miss the point: there are two people in every marriage. Men, too, were forced to make political matches, not love matches. They married those they had never met, who spoke a completely different language, and who may or may not have even grown to like their spouse: Richard the Lionheart, Edward I, Henry VIII (arguably, too many times). These kings made tactical marriages – sometimes for peace, sometimes for profit, always for what was right for the nation.

Eadgyth herself appears to gain a relatively impressive deal from the situation. Sihtric does not seem to have been particularly unpleasant – never a guarantee. He does, however, break an important vow to Eadgyth. Not a marital vow; something far more important. A vow that cemented her peace-weaving – the very purpose for the marriage itself.

Sihtric had vowed to convert to Christianity.

It is easy to forget how nebulous religious belief was at this time. In fact, spiritual faith was just as complex, regional and, in many ways, cultural in the 920s as it is today. Though perfectly clear now that Sihtric only pretended to adopt Wessex’s Christian faith to appease his in-laws to marry Eadgyth, it evidently wasn’t to his wife. Her realisation that Sihtric had no true faith seems to have been the ultimate dealbreaker, and she does something unheard of.

She leaves her husband.

Women in Anglo-Saxon England did not leave their husbands. There was a semi-formal system of ‘repudiation’ in which a man would set aside his wife, and we’ll see plenty of it. Reasons for repudiation include a political situation changed, an alliance with a family no longer useful, or infertility (hence no heirs and the husband wishes to essentially ‘try again’ with another). There are even cases of men just … getting bored of their wives.

I told you the people of this time weren’t that different from us.

So, plenty of reasons for a man to repudiate his wife and take a second (or in some cases, a third). What we don’t see in the record is women repudiating their husbands.

But that appears to be precisely what Eadgyth did. The purpose of her peace-weaving marriage now broken, she left Sihtric and founded an abbey in Tamworth. The records tell us she dedicated herself to works of charity and caring for the poor – which we’ll take with a pinch of salt, as almost every noblewoman who enters an abbey is described the same. In truth, most noblewomen who ‘retired’ to abbeys did so in luxury. They were permitted servants, had their own personal cooks, played games, welcomed visitors – some even went into hiding there. It sounds more like a luxury gated community than a strict religious life. Eadgyth’s strong personal faith may have meant she was a little more religious, giving up her richly decorated cloth and warm furs for something a little more austere, but to be honest, I suspect probably not.

How a woman who had left her husband and was clearly not welcomed back by her family had the money to found an abbey we’ll never know. I personally believe it was with her morgen-gifu (morning gift), the gift husbands would give their wives the day after their marriage.

We don’t really know much of what happens to Eadgyth after this. She disappears from our sights.

And if she had been queen?

She was married for alliance, and unhappily. Happy wives don’t repudiate their husbands so swiftly if they have found any sort of affection with their spouse. Treated as a pawn by her brother, ignored by the rest of the royal family after founding her abbey, Eadgyth broke the mould of royal daughters and proactively chose a religious life, a different life for herself.

I like to think that if Eadgyth had been the æthling chosen by the Wessex witan, she would have been happy to make a peace-weaving marriage for herself. Not as a pawn, but as the queen on the board deciding her next move.

Her faith was clearly important to her. I think she would have been a significant supporter of abbeys, monasteries, shrines, nunneries, and churches. Her grandfather’s and father’s focus on education may have spilt into this, leading Eadgyth to found something akin to church schools. She may have been too soft and pious for the continuing invading Viking horde, but that would of course have depended on whom she married. Perhaps she would still have married Sihtric. Perhaps if she had come to the marriage as an equal partner, a queen ruling in her own right, Sihtric may have made more of an effort to conceal the fact that his Christian faith was merely a pretence.

Perhaps Eadgyth the Pawn could have been Eadgyth, Bringer of Peace.

EDITH THE SAINT, 961/965–984(daughter of Edgar)

I’ve decided to give Edith (yes, she was also Eadgyth but I’ve got to try to distinguish between them somehow) the moniker ‘the Saint’. This is in direct defiance to her beginnings, which, if you believe the most popular historical record, were very much mired in sin.

But first, let’s take a step back and consider what’s going on with the menfolk in her family.

We’ve had a few kings since Eadgyth. On the throne now is Edgar, Edward’s grandson. Edgar’s personality was … complicated. He certainly wasn’t the prim and pious monarch Eadgyth would have been. In fact, even the ‘heathens’ – their word, not mine – had difficulty with Edgar claiming the title of Christian king. To quote William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Pontificum:

Cnut was at Wilton one Pentecost, when, with his customary bloody-mindedness, he burst into a frightful peal of laughter against the virgin herself [Edith]: he would never believe that the daughter of King Edgar was a saint, seeing that the king had surrendered himself to his vices and was a complete slave to his lusts, while he ruled his subjects more like a tyrant.

Which brings us to Edgar’s unconventional marital life.

His first wife, we think, died around 962. We think that because she disappears from the record, not because we’re told what happened to her. It’s possible Edgar repudiated her, as we’ve seen Eadgyth do to her husband. We know he wasn’t married in c.961 when Edgar … married? Maybe? We’re not quite sure. His second companion, Wulfthryth, has two stories in the historical record and one is far juicier than the other.

Let’s start with the boring one. Edgar needed a wife, so he went to Wilton Abbey. Sounds strange but, remember, abbeys and monasteries are not only religious communities but also retirement locations for ladies unwilling – or unable – to engage with the world, and schools for the children of royals and nobles. It was as a young woman still undergoing studies that Edgar met Wulfthryth (WOLF-thrith), took a fancy to her, married her, welcomed their daughter Edith, then decided to repudiate her in favour of a third wife. Mother and daughter return to Wilton Abbey, Wulfthryth becomes the abbess, and they spend the rest of their lives there.

That’s the dull version. It’s also, no surprises here, the official version. The version most often told. One writer of the time argues the split was completely amicable.

But it does seem a little … sanitised. Even reading it with the best of intentions and thinking the best of Edgar, it does sound contrary to his personality – and odd. There were plenty of women – noble, royal, connected to great powerful military men, or with great wealth – that Edgar could have chosen. Why after just one daughter does Edgar repudiate Wulfthryth and marry another woman? Was he convinced she couldn’t bear a son? Surely not.

So what’s the other story?

Well, this one starts off the same. Edgar is wife hunting and goes to Wilton Abbey. He spots Wulfthryth. He takes a fancy to her. He offers marriage.

And this is where the story diverges. Wulfthryth, much like Eadgyth, has a true religious faith. She intends to take holy orders and become a nun. She doesn’t want to leave Wilton Abbey. Crucially, she commits the greatest crime a woman could in the 960s. She doesn’t obey a man. She doesn’t obey her king.

The story continues with Edgar abducting Wulfthryth from the abbey, forcibly taking her home, marrying her against her will, and ‘imposing’ himself upon her. Once he gains his fill, he immediately repudiates her. He returns the now ruined and pregnant Wulfthryth to Wilton Abbey, where she and her child live in relative obscurity but, thankfully, peace.

It’s easy to see why the second story catches the eye. It has all the components of a great drama: a rich and powerful man, a woman who attempts to deny him, abduction, rape, unexpected pregnancy, shame, and an ignored child. Though this is hard to swallow, abduction as marital foreplay was not uncommon during this time and would remain so for hundreds of years. When women were vital for creating the next generation and proposed alliances could be turned down, simply taking one’s chosen bride was often the surest way to get the wife you wanted. There are even cases, fiercely argued over by contemporaries as well as historians, in which the woman may have been entirely willing, but it was her family who refused to give consent. Hers was freely given, so the ‘abduction’ is more accurately an elopement.

But this wasn’t the typical story. Wulfthryth wasn’t under the protection of family who refused Edgar’s advances. She was away from her family, unprotected by father or brother, in a religious house, and quite firmly did not give consent. Edgar’s contemporaries were outraged. To do such a thing was obscene. Not only was it a cultural atrocity but it was so at odds with Anglo-Saxon culture that it was built into the law. Medieval lawcodes operated on wergelds, or payments made after a crime. This was to prevent blood feuds and compensate the victim.

A man’s wergeld was 200 solidi in the Salic law code. A woman of childbearing age? Triple that, at 600.

It’s perhaps now easier to see why so many of Edgar’s enemies considered him such a nasty piece of work. St Dunstan, one of the king’s advisors, apparently criticised him to his face to such a degree that Edgar agreed to do penance.

The penance he chose? Not wearing his crown for seven years.

This is astonishing. For a king in a world without modern tools of communication, who would need his crown to demarcate him immediately in a crowd, not to wear his crown? I’m not entirely convinced, either by Edgar’s true contrition or whether he actually forwent the crown. I think he had too high an opinion of himself to actually go without such a treasure. But it demonstrates how viscerally people at the time responded to Edgar’s mistreatment of his wife or concubine – remember, everything is in flux. It’s not just kingship which is nebulous and undecided. It’s the very core of what relationships are; even marriage is being defined and redefined. Concubinage, wives, mistresses – these terms are being stretched and twisted, re-examined and redefined when convenient. Or inconvenient.

When Wulfthryth gave birth to a daughter, she was named Edith. A royal name, but she was never a true member of the royal family. She lived in the royal nunnery of Wilton, choosing the path of least resistance. Perhaps her mother was terrified of her daughter facing the same fate she suffered. Perhaps Edgar preferred to keep Edith, the physical reminder of his crime, out of sight. Perhaps Edgar’s heir, Edward, wished to keep Edith unmarried and without children. Remember, any male members of the line would become æthlings and potential challengers to the throne.

We know Edgar didn’t pretend she didn’t exist; he ensured her education by sending tutors, Radbod of Rheims and Benno of Treves, proving again it wasn’t sex or gender, but class that impacted your education during this time. Educated Europeans coming from Europe to the Wessex court had become standard practice in Alfred’s time, but sending them to Wilton Abbey to teach a princess? Not that usual.

A rumour from 978* is tantalisingly intriguing: on the death of her half-brother, the witan turned up at Wilton Abbey and did something unparalleled.

They offered Edith the crown.

Imagine it. No woman had ever been offered this before. Æthelflæd ruled thanks to her Wessex blood and Mercian marriage, but couldn’t successfully transfer power to her daughter. Eadgyth had a small taste of power in her peace-weaving marriage to Sihtric, but swiftly retreated from both him and the world when her faith was offended.

But Edith? Despite the scandalous circumstances of her birth, despite the fact there were three of Edgar’s sons who were royal æthlings – male æthlings! – available for the throne, she was given an opportunity to do the unthinkable.

Rule.

But Edith was smart. At the very least, she had a greater sense of self-preservation than Æthelred the Unrædy, her half-brother who accepted the crown. Edith refused. Why, precisely, we will never know. A few historians doubt the story entirely, though I have to admit, I like it.

And if she had been queen?

It’s not a huge leap to say Edith saw her mother’s experience of royal life and swiftly decided it was not for her. Better to stay, safe and sound, in the abbey that had been her home for the first fifteen years of her life. Based on the upbringing she received, Edith may have been the sort of ruler to seek peace at any cost.

Perhaps if she had not died before her mother, she would have succeeded Wulfthryth as abbess at Wilton. It’s certainly telling that Edith personally appeared on the seal of Wilton Abbey, physically embodying the importance of the place: royal, virginal, and a potential queen.

The only ‘direct’ quote we have from Edith is probably completely made up, but I like it so wanted to include it. When criticised by the Bishop of Carlisle for wearing lovely clothes, she replied that ‘as true a heartbeat beneath her gold embroidery as beneath his tattered furs’.

Edith the Saint. Perhaps Edith I, if she had accepted the crown.

EADGYTH THE BETRAYED, ?–?(daughter of Æthelred the Unrædy)

If you thought we didn’t know much about Eadgyth and Edith, you’ll be astonished to discover just how little we know about …

Eadgyth. Sorry. It’s a popular name, like how so many daughters will be called Mary in a coming century.

This Eadgyth was the daughter of Æthelred the Unrædy (ETH-el-red the un-RED-ee), Edith’s half-brother, whose punny name is lost on us now unless you know Old English. His name means ‘well advised’, but as he was almost continuously and consistently poorly advised, his epithet means ‘ill advised’.

Mr Well-Advised the Ill-Advised. Maybe you had to be there.

Say what you like about Edgar, he was a determined monarch who made brash decisions and carried them out, through the power of his personality and the power of his army.

Æthelred had neither.

What he did have was children. His first wife gave him at least ten and, unusually for an Anglo-Saxon king, Æthelred was loyal to her until her death in 1002. In case ten children wasn’t enough – and for reasons we’ll soon see, it wasn’t – Æthelred married a Norman woman called Emma and had three more children. Remember her. We’ll be meeting Emma again.

It was vital that Æthelred kept having children because being under 5 in the early medieval period was dangerous. We think three of his thirteen children didn’t make it past this age, and two others predeceased their father through natural causes. Two more were later killed, after Æthelred’s death, by his enemies. That left five daughters and one son still living in 1017, the year after Æthelred died. Not brilliant for a family that had decided a few generations previously that daughters could not inherit. While Æthelred still lived, however, he put his daughters to use peace-weaving. Here’s how Æthelred gained his ‘Unrædy’ moniker.

Everything we know about Eadgyth is that she married Eadric Streona (ED-rik stre-OH-na). That’s it. We don’t know when she was born or when she died, and there is no mention of any children from their union. As we know comparatively a great deal about the other queens who should have been in this chapter, it’s a bit of a let-down.

But we do know quite a bit about Eadric, so though it pains me to do so, we’re going to have to make guesses about Eadgyth by examining the life of her husband.

On paper, Eadric should have been the perfect son-in-law. He was an ealdorman of Mercia. Eadric may not have been liked or respected, but that was an occupational hazard of being ambitious then, as it is now. By 1009, Eadgyth had married him. Æthelred probably patted himself on the back. Four years later, Eadgyth’s husband betrayed her entire family.

To understand how – and why – we’ve got to pause and look beyond the highly complex Wessex royal family. The Viking raids Wessex fought against had reached a higher pitch than ever before. Now it was not raiders or land grabbers turning up on English shores. It was kings.

Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark and Norway, to be precise. Sweyn (suh-WAIN) began raiding parties in England from 1002–05, 1006–07, and 1009–12. This wasn’t a careless approach designed to pick up a few trophies. This was a calculated attack against a nation and its king, Æthelred, who had in 1002 ordered a genocide of all Danes in the land. This was neither a smart nor a kind move from Æthelred. It had ramifications for all English history. By 1013, Sweyn was leading full-scale invasion forces deep into English territory. Æthelred had three sons-in-law, however, tied to his cause through his peace-weaving daughters. He would be fine.

He was not fine. Æthelred’s inability to inspire troops or his followers meant London and huge swathes of Wessex submitted to Sweyn. More followed. Æthelred sent his remaining sons to Normandy then followed them into self-imposed exile. On Christmas Day, 1013, England had a new king.

But not for long. Chance, fate, perhaps assassination, we’re not sure, but by 3 February 1014, Sweyn was dead. Æthelred returned to England and it appeared the Anglo-Saxon English line had been restored. And that was why in 1015 it was devastating when Eadric switched sides.

Eadric was not a popular chap. His increasing power over Æthelred was disliked by his contemporaries, drawing envy from his peers. Osbern of Canterbury, writing a generation later, said Eadric was ‘a man of somewhat low origin, whose tongue nevertheless gained him wealth and high rank: he was crafty by nature and a smooth talker, and surpassed all his contemporaries in malice and perfidy, as much as in pride and cruelty.’

Betrayal of a kinsman was not unheard of in this time, but it was scandalous and deeply offensive. It reduced your honour to nothing, reduced your oath to lies, and reduced your opportunities to make connections with other houses. Eadric obviously thought Sweyn’s son, Cnut (kah-NOOT), was the winning side.

It’s easy to look back on this time from the comfort of my desk and tut at Eadric’s betrayal. I don’t have to make life and death decisions. I don’t live in a world in which death comes swiftly, even to the loyal. I don’t have to make choices that affect my whole family’s safety. Eadric made the error in 1016 of switching back to the Anglo-Saxon side, to Edmund, the new king after Æthelred’s death … just before a catastrophic battle that killed Edmund and his two brothers-in-law. Eadric escaped with his life – only to be executed by Cnut the following year for his treachery.

So, that’s the boys’ story. But what about Eadgyth?

What Eadgyth thought of her husband’s betrayal of her father, brothers, sisters and in-laws, we’ll never know. The personal thoughts and opinions of women were hardly ever recorded at this time, and it would have been a miracle if they survived long enough for us to read. But I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to presume she would have been outraged at Eadric’s behaviour. He had given his word – then betrayed his liege lord. She watched him destroy England as she knew it. She had to live under an entirely different royal family, one that did not respect her beliefs, sullied her family’s name, and likely gave her very few options for remarriage.

And if she had been queen?

I think it could have gone one of two ways. If she took after her father, Eadgyth would have been too trusting, too willing to accept her enemies’ word – perhaps the word of her own friends and family. She would have been blinded by promises and all too easily betrayed. But perhaps not. I like to think of Eadgyth railing against her husband, critiquing him at every turn, in private at least, for the way he behaved.

Perhaps Eadgyth would have swiftly seen the danger of Sweyn and used one of the few tactics available to her, peace-weaving, and suggested an alliance with Sweyn’s eldest unmarried son, Harald. Perhaps she would have looked further afield, to the continent, for a bold Frankish prince to bolster her claim. If the accounts of the sheer power of the Danish invasion are to be believed, and we have no reason to discount them, it seems certain that at least for a time, the line of Alfred would be removed from the throne. Perhaps Eadgyth would have been betrayed, no matter whether she sat on the throne or rode out alongside her husband to fight the invaders.

Eadgyth, Edith, Eadgyth. Three women who could have been queens, but weren’t. Although Æthelflæd got close, after her reign – such as it was – her power didn’t endure.

We simply don’t know enough about these women. It’s a travesty we know so much about their brothers and fathers, and almost nothing about them. Not just the way they laughed, the jokes they found amusing and their favourite colours, but also their political decisions and whether they sided with their fathers or critiqued them in private. Whether their piety was convenient or committed. Whether their husbands were truly favoured or treated frostily.

Though severely limited by the society and culture around them, each of these women was, in her own way, pushing the boundaries of what characterised a princess.

And as we leave the early Anglo-Saxon age, we have to ask ourselves: if Æthelflæd had been permitted to set a new template, a new definition of how a woman could be queen, what would Eadgyth, Edith, and Eadgyth have achieved?

Let’s see how the next dynasty of princesses answered that question.

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* The rumour comes from Goscelin, a monk who travelled around England collecting stories about saints from different holy orders and wrote them down. We have to assume the rumour had persisted over a hundred years, as we think he visited Wilton in the 1070s/1080s, but it’s perfectly possible.

T