#elfrida

[unteriors]

N Highway 191, Elfrida, Arizona.

[wonder-worker]

Ælfthryth appears as a witness in a significant number of her husband [Edgar's] charters. Moreover, Ælfthryth is the first royal woman in England to regularly subscribe charters as regina. And, of course, Ælfthryth is the first recorded native-born English woman to be crowned as a queen consort to a king of the West Saxon dynasty. Arguably, however, all these legitimating activities placed her in better stead to exercise power as queen mother than as queen consort. For all the unprecedented recognition she receives as queen during her tenure as royal consort, it is in the early years of Æthelred's reign, as the mother of a minor ruler, that Ælfthryth truly reached the apex of her agency as queen.

— Matthew Firth, Early English Queens, 850-1000: Potestas Reginae

While the transmission and adaption of Ælfthryth's reputation over time is a fascinating subject in its own right, it is unfortunate that the biography of the first-known crowned queen consort of England has been overshadowed by a single moment of scandal. The woman who comes into focus from contemporary sources was a remarkably adept player of the politics of the kingdom. While her agency remained delimited by her relationship to the king, she can also take great credit for testing the boundaries of what it meant to be a queen in late Anglo-Saxon England. Like the men who surrounded her, she understood the importance of making and maintaining political alliances. She recognised the importance of patronising the Church and forging relationships with ecclesiastical lords. She realised the opportunity that acting as an advocate at court for women and for clerics would afford her. Most of all, when Ælfthryth saw an opportunity for personal political advancement, she took it. As such, whether intended or not, Ælfthryth set new precedents and prerogatives for her successors and so materially moved the role of the queen towards one of political office.

[textless]

[fatchance]

Snow squalls and high winds near Elfrida. It was a great day for tumbleweeds.

[septembergold]

Vintage engraving from 1851 showing Princess Elfrida (Ælfthryth) of Wessex (died June 7, 929), the last child of Alfred the Great, the Saxon King of England and his wife Ealhswith.

[wonder-worker]

Queen Ælfthryth (964–975) wife of Edgar the Peaceable (959–975) was described in contemporary sources as something like a “super abbess,” a religious superior over female monastic houses in England, responsible for defending them all. Ælfthryth embraced a judicial role as an advocate or forspeca for female religious. Thus, she moved between two spheres of the early English world—the sole woman who could enter the male legal world of the English to represent voiceless nuns. This separation was underscored, however, not weakened by the idea that only one special royal woman could span it. The cases in which Ælfthryth acted, moreover, record explicitly that it was her gender that allowed her to advocate for monastic women. There are seven cases extant for her and only one involves a male claimant—the abbot of Bury St. Edmonds. What Ælfthryth offered in these cases was mediation—an intervention that was an institutionalised adjunct to the royal court. Ælfthryth’s formalised juridical activity is the first inkling of such a role for English queens.

— Laura L. Gathagan, "Mathilda of Flanders: Innovator", Norman to Early Plantagenet Consorts: Power, Influence, and Dynasty

[wonder-worker]

Ælfthryth must have been very much aware of her vulnerability in the case that Edgar died. She had arrived at a court where there was already a male heir to the throne and from which two consorts had already been expelled. In ensuring that her legitimacy and that of her son was publicly declared, Ælfthryth may well have been planning for a future without Edgar. After all, none of the West Saxon kings were especially long-lived.

Observing the patterns of Ælfthryth's charter witnessing, it is notable that no authentic charter gives her the title regina until 968. Whatever moves were being made to distinguish her from other queen consorts, in her early years in the role this was limited to public acknowledgement of her as the king’s wife. Ælfthryth witnessed only one other legitimate charter in 966 in which she appears as fifth witness with the title coniunx regis (wife of the king) (S739). Edmund does not appear, perhaps this charter was issued before his birth, but Edward subscribes as second witness where he is designated as clito, his father’s heir. Ælfthryth, named as Edgar’s ambilis coniunx (beloved wife), is also given another estate by Edgar this year, this time in Dorset near her family’s powerbase. Ælfthryth appears in no charters in 967.

Not only does Ælfthryth begin to attest charters as regina from 968, but she also starts to appear more regularly in administrative documents, if not in a more prominent position. She witnessed ten authentic charters from this year through to Edgar’s death in 975 and appears in the corpus of several others. The question is, what changed in 968? There are likely several factors at play. In the first instance, Ælfthryth had given birth to a second son, Æthelred, around this time. The birth of another heir prompted Edgar to further augment his wife’s status. However, the idea to designate Ælfthryth as regina was unlikely to have been his alone. By this stage, Ælfthryth's key allies held prominent positions at court. Æthelwold appears first among the bishops of the realm in charter witness lists, while Ælfhere and Ælfheah are usually at or near the head of the list of witnessing secular lords. This trio may have advocated for Ælfthryth to be styled as regina in the hope that she in turn would be better positioned to advocate for their interests at the court. Finally, it is important to recall that any such political manoeuvres were taking place against the backdrop of the tenth-century Church reforms of which Edgar was an enthusiastic supporter. Sacral kingship was one of the key ideas being promoted by the reformers and, as evidenced by the Regularis Concordia issued only two years later, Æthelwold, in particular, envisaged that a queen would stand at the king’s side and share in his duties to the Church. It may then represent the year in which Æthelwold’s theory was put into practice, though it is probably a combination of these factors that saw Ælfthryth formally adopt the title of queen in that year.

— Matthew Firth, Early English Queens, 850-1000: Potestas Reginae

[b-lightwalker]

A note of Elfrida I don't remember making.