The earliest hagiographical narratives relating [Edward the Martyr’s] death are near contemporary, composed within the lifetimes of its antagonists. These early accounts of the martyrdom are politically cautious for, as Keynes notes in reference to Vita Oswaldi (presuming it enjoyed a wide dissemination), it is reasonable to assume “that the author’s indiscretions would be punished.” It is an understandable circumspection granted that the murder occurred in Corfe on lands controlled by Edward’s stepmother, and that her son succeeded to the throne. As Stafford highlights of Vita S. Dunstani—silent on Edward’s murder, but vociferous in condemning Ælfgifu and Æthelgifu—political commentary was safer when made of the dead. Thus, while Edward’s assassination is described as a political event from its earliest recounting, the motif of the treacherous woman does not enter the narrative until relatively late in its transmission. The entry for 979 in the D-text of the Chronicles rages that the murder was the worst deed the English had committed “since first they came to Britain,” while refraining from any direct accusations. Likewise, Vita Oswaldi is vociferous in its condemnations, but vague in its denunciations, the author Byrhtferth laying the blame on unidentified rebellious thegns who murdered Edward in order to place his more compliant brother, Æthelred, on the throne. Even Wulfstan of York, in his famously hyperbolic homily Sermo Lupi ad Anglos does not implicate Ælfthryth, simply stating that “Edward was betrayed and then killed.”
Preaching in 1014 at the height of England’s political unrest, Wulfstan’s intent was to decry the moral depravities of the English that had led to divinely administered depredations by Danish forces. Particularly reprehensible to Wulfstan was “that a man should betray his lord to death, or drive him in his lifetime from this land,” both acts which he declares “have happened in this country.” Interestingly, as Wulfstan goes on to describe these betrayals, the manuscript traditions diverge. Three manuscripts refer only to Edward’s assassination, while the remaining two also reference Æthelred’s exile during the brief reign of Sweyn Forkbeard (1013–1014). The omission of Æthelred’s exile by scribes is understandable in a political milieu governed by an ascendant Danish dynasty, yet the inclusion of both events is the logical conclusion to Wulfstan’s rhetoric and seems genuine to the composition. That Wulfstan mentions Æthelred’s exile alongside Edward’s death as crimes committed by the English people indicates that Wulfstan did not believe Æthelred to be culpable in the king’s murder. While Wulfstan’s silence on the person of Ælfthryth means that this argument cannot be extended to her involvement, to undermine the now dead queen would have been to undermine the legitimacy of Æthelred’s reign at a time when the English needed a united political class. That Wulfstan, unlike the hagiographers, does not seek to enhance this retributive narrative through a condemnation of feminine power reflects the political milieu in which he was preaching. Irrespective of any truth that may underlie Ælfthryth’s potential involvement in Edward’s murder, there was no political benefit to be derived in the early eleventh century by accusing the queen-mother of complicity.
Clearly the political environment of England had changed by the time of the authorship of Passio Eadwardi (1070 x 1080), which does cast Ælfthryth as the treacherous woman, conspiring against her political rival and effecting his death through murderous agents. As used by the Passio author, the trope is precisely parallel to the structure underlying the characterisations of Cynethryth and Cwoenthryth and, as with these other ‘wicked queens,’ once the motif entered the hagiographical tradition it became the dominant narrative transmitted in subsequent accounts. Henceforth Ælfthryth is portrayed as the archetypal treacherous woman, the text explicit in describing her motivation to be “that her son, the child Æthelred, may rule in [Edward’s] place.” However, it cannot pass without comment that Passio may indeed preserve a memory of a genuine betrayal; suspicion of Ælfthryth’s involvement is a logical conclusion drawn from the location of the murder and the political benefit she derived from it. The contemporary accounts of Edward’s martyrdom may reflect a deliberate political amnesia that did not need to be maintained after 1016 with the protagonists dead, a new dynasty on the throne, and the political danger removed. Yet it must be reiterated that, though a plausible theory, no contemporary source supports a murder accusation levelled at Ælfthryth.
Nonetheless, the Passio narrative of the murder was the most prominent version transmitted into the twelfth century, and the trope of the treacherous woman came to dominate portrayals of Ælfthryth. John of Worcester, for example, stated that Edward was murdered “at the command of his step-mother,” while his contemporary, William of Malmesbury declared that Ælfthryth, “with a step-mother’s hatred and a viper’s guile ... laid plots against her stepson’s life.” Geffrei Gaimar, writing a mere decade after William and John, pushed the motif of the “wicked queen” further with a salacious narrative of treachery and betrayal, while Henry of Huntingdon, writing in the 1130s, went so far as to place the murder weapon in Ælfthryth’s hands. Continuing that theme, in the late twelfth century Walter Map described a scene in which Ælfthryth offered a poisoned cup of wine, while Roger of Wendover in the early thirteenth century added a sexualised dimension to the “wicked queen,” Edward stabbed as Ælfthryth beguiled him with caresses, kisses, and wine. There is little doubt these characterisations of the queen-mother were intrinsically linked with the perceived failures of her son’s reign. All the aforementioned chroniclers, with the exception of John of Worcester, associate Æthelred’s coronation the following year with ill-portents, with Roger of Wendover explicitly linking the misfortunes to come with Edward’s murder. Yet it is also true that Ælfthryth was a powerful woman: an anointed queen-consort, queen-mother and regent in Æthelred’s minority, a noble woman who diplomas attest as politically active in the reigns of her husband and son. She was, in short, antithetical to good queenship as perceived by clerical authors of the late eleventh century. Thus, as the narrative became removed from the historical event, Ælfthryth lost any personal differentiation or political nuance, primarily serving the needs of hagiographical narrative as the antitype to the royal saint. Once isolated from the immediate political events following Edward’s death, the transmission and development of the treacherous woman in Passio Eadwardi becomes stereotypical […]. Perhaps the most salient political comment being made through the person of the treacherous woman of Edward’s passio is that noted by Klein, and also present Jezebel topoi—a warning of the dangers of queenly power.
Matthew Firth, ‘The Character of the Treacherous Woman in the passiones of Early Medieval English Royal Martyrs’, Royal Studies Journal 7 (2020)
