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HistoryExtra podcast
The royal threesome that rocked Anglo-Saxon England
00:37:56
Katherine Weikert explores what stories about the coronation sex romp of Anglo-Saxon king Eadwig can reveal about contemporary attitudes to authority
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- [00:00]
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- [01:47]
David Musgrove
Welcome to the History Extra podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. In the year 955, Eadwy became king of England. And in quite a fashion, according to 10th century sources, this Anglo Saxon ruler nipped out of his own coronation feast to engage in a sex romp with both his wife and her mother before being dragged back into the feast hall by one of his leading churchmen. But. But can we really trust this salacious account? Well, in today's podcast, David Musgrove speaks to Dr. Catherine Wyckert, author of the brilliantly titled article Eadwe Has a Sex and the Breaking of authority in the 10th century, to find out what on earth was going on.
- [02:45]
Carvana Customer
So King Eadwi came to the throne in the mid 10th century, and during his coronation feast, he left the meal to engage in some sort of sexual acts with two women who may have been his wife and his wife's mother. Now that's quite a story. Did it actually happen?
- [03:02]
Shopify Representative
Likely, no. But it's a great story. We can't just Pretend it's not there, can we? Because it's also too good to pass up in terms of a king just deciding to leave his coronation feast and basically go have a menage a trois. It's the kind of story that needs and demands attention, I think, and whether it happened or not, honestly, doesn't really matter.
- [03:20]
Carvana Customer
Let's get into this, then. So we've got this guy, King Eadwy. What do we know about him? When did he come to the throne? And what was his pedigree?
- [03:28]
Shopify Representative
So he is actually from the line of Wessex. He is the great grandson of King Alfred. So that gives us a really clear kind of delineation in terms of who he is in this royal family. He comes to the throne in 955. He's actually inherited after a couple of different uncles have been on the throne, after his father has been on the throne. So it's not a contested succession. He is quite young at the time, he's only about. About 15. But he and also his slightly younger brother are the very clear heirs to the throne after his uncle passes away, his uncle Yadred, who was king before him. So he comes to the throne in 955, but he comes to the throne both as a young man, but as a young man whose entire royal court is kind of dominated by certain figures, politically speaking, who have been a part of the royal court for at least a couple of generations at that time. So he has kind of an uphill battle trying to think about how he's establishing himself, establishing his royal court and his rule when he comes to the throne in 955.
- [04:25]
Carvana Customer
And in 955, what was he king of? Because Athelstan, a few years earlier is sort of famous as the man who's supposed to have united all of England, all of Britain, some people said. What polity did Eadwy actually rule?
- [04:40]
Shopify Representative
That's a really good question, because throughout the 10th century, essentially, Northumbria is kind of hit or miss, whether it's actually a part of England or not. It makes it sound quite smooth. You know, Alfred kept the Vikings out and Aethelstan then conquered the north, etc. But what happens after Aethelstan's death, about, you know, a year or two after, is that the north revolts again. And so the kings following Aethelstan are basically hit or miss, you know, conquering and reconquering Northumbria and York. So by the time we hit 955, the Kingdom of York has actually been sort of disestablished. Eiryk Bloodaxe has been thrown out. The last king of York was thrown out in 954. So, technically speaking, Eadwy comes to the throne, king in the south and in the north, so essentially king of the English at this time.
- [05:24]
Carvana Customer
And you said that he had a smooth succession, which is unusual in this period, isn't it?
- [05:29]
Shopify Representative
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle makes a great show of essentially pretending that all of the succession of the kings were perfectly fine, nothing to see, nothing happened. But throughout the 10th century, it was relatively fractious in terms of who is established when and where. So when Iadwi comes to the throne in 955, his uncle Eadred had been king since about 946, just shy of about 10 years. He was active at first, but it seems as if he had some kind of a chronic illness, and we don't know what that is, perhaps, but there's records of him and chronicles sort of mentioning him being in ill health. He was not married, he did not have any children. So it became pretty obvious at some point, I think, late in his reign that his brother's sons were going to be the ones who would inherit the throne. And that's Eadwy. So Eadwy is the son of Edmund, who had been king before Eadred. It's all a very confusing family tree. It's all very much a family drama. It's like watching some great soap opera from the 80s. So Eadwy comes to the throne after Eadred dies, but he and his brother had kind of shown up at court around a year or two prior to that. So it is, relatively speaking, a smooth transition at that stage. It doesn't stay that way throughout his reign, of course, because, you know, what is the mid 10th century accepted nightmarish mess of family politics in England, so far as I'm concerned.
- [06:45]
Carvana Customer
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- [06:50]
Shopify Representative
It does, doesn't it?
- [06:53]
Carvana Customer
Just to recap so I'm clear and listeners, clear. So Eadwi's father, Edmund, he was king before Eadred. Edmund was killed in confusing circumstances, possibly in a feast in 946. We'll come back to that. Maybe then Eadred, Edmund's brother Edwy's uncle, is on the throne, and then we get to Eadwi. So he comes to the throne in 955, and then we get to this coronation feast. What do we know about feasting in this period? Would this have Been a normal thing. Would you have a great feast to celebrate your coronation?
- [07:25]
Shopify Representative
Absolutely. This is a part of the business of being king, is to kind of demonstrate your kingliness, to demonstrate your kingship. So after you go through this great ceremony, the ordo, the coronation, you have this great sacred ceremony that invests you with being the king, and then you and your noble and all of your men that you're both trying to impress, you're trying to show your largesse, you're celebrating. And it would be a moment of really demonstrating your kingship, really kind of telling everyone, I am here, I am king, I can provide, look at how well I can entertain you, look at how well my house is fitted, look at how well I'm performing being king in front of you. So it's really quite an important statement to the royal court that you are performing your kingship, you're doing the kingly things and the appropriate kingly actions, which includes this great feast.
- [08:13]
Carvana Customer
So I'm imagining some great big stone hall or timber hall, benches aligned along the side, a roaring fire and loads and loads of drinking. Is that the sort of way that you would imagine it as well, or am I just sucking in by TV depictions?
- [08:27]
Shopify Representative
Well, it's not bad actually. I mean, I would probably sub in a big wooden hall rather than a big stone hall at this point, but you've got the right kind of gist. I mean, Beowulf is a lot earlier than this. But if you can think about the great hall at Harriet, you know, the fires and the passing of the drink and the food being circulated, plenty of good cheer, probably some great proclamations, people maybe standing and saying something in honor and lots of cheers and lots of prost and nice sense of bonhomie to the entire occasion. It's meant to be a great time. And then the point of it is that you'd have the king on the high end of the hall, so visible to everyone, with his top men, with his wife, showing off their place within this world, showing off that they're at the highest status part of this hall.
- [09:10]
Carvana Customer
Well, with that in mind, if this is all about him being and it being a performative exercise, it seems rather unlikely that he would have chosen to go off and have a threesome with his wife and his mother in law. What on earth was going on? What do we know about this story?
- [09:27]
Shopify Representative
Well, I mean, as with everything in history, it really depends on who you believe, doesn't it? It's a great story. It shows up for the first time about 40 years after his actual coronation. So it's not particularly contemporary, but the person who's writing it is someone who says that he was in exile with the Abbot Dunstan, who was a really significant part of that royal court, and Abbot Dunstan was a part of these alleged actions around this threesome. So this is the first time we HEAR it is 40 years after. But what he says about this is that, in essence, in the middle of the feast, the king gets up and he removes himself from the hall and he goes into a different area, a different place within the palace, where he finds himself essentially having a dalliance with a woman and her mother. You know, scandal. Not just a woman, but also her mother. And so, because this is not the right thing to do as a king, never mind the idea of the sex that's going on. You know, as a king, you're meant to be in that hall, you're meant to be showing yourself off, you're meant to be performing your kingliness. So because of this, the Archbishop Odo asks Abbot Dunstan and his kinsman Chenisiga to go retrieve Eadwy, to go bring him back to the hall so he can be seen being king. He's not supposed to withdraw like this, never mind the sex, he needs to be seen. So Dunstan and Cynosiga go to this place where Iadwi is dallying with these women. They find him in an inappropriate position with two women, to say the least. Most poignantly, his crown has been cast onto the floor and forgotten about. So the symbol of his kingship just sort of there left, you know, on the floorboards while he's having this thing. And, you know, he talks about Iadwi wallowing like pigs in the mud with these two women. You know, great metaphor, but it kind of gives you, I think, a bit of a sense of what Dunstan feels he's walked into here. And so Dunstan has to take charge. You know, Yadwy is not doing the right thing in a number of different ways, and he commands him to come back to the feast and then he physically removes him. He actually puts hands on the king and removes him from the situation, takes the crown and crams it back onto his head, and then takes him back to the feast in order to be seen feasting. So there's the sins of the sex, there's the fact that he's not at his own coronation feast. It just all adds together to this banging story, no pun intended, about what might happen when kingship goes wrong in essence.
- [11:51]
Carvana Customer
Right. There's a lot we need to unpack here, isn't it?
- [11:54]
Shopify Representative
Absolutely.
- [11:55]
Carvana Customer
The woman in question, was that actually Eadwe's wife, or is that a point of contention already?
- [12:04]
Shopify Representative
It's a point of contention, but I think it is meant to be Eadwe's wife, Alf Gifu. So the women aren't named in anything but one of these texts that talk about this and then they talk about the mother. Actually, if this is meant to be a real scenario, it's going to be Elf Gifu in this real scenario. And I think that's something that plays into how this is written. Because she's not named Alf Gifu had the potential to be a real power player within this royal court. But if she needed to be sort of removed from the power spheres, she shouldn't even be named as a wife. She shouldn't even be seen as Eodwy's wife. So that's one reason why I think she's not specifically named. And as well as that, they were separated, actually. So they Married probably in 955, but by 957 or 958, they had an annulment. Archbishop Odo had them annulled on grounds of consanguinity, which means, essentially, they were too closely related. Now, the fact that they were too closely related is something that will have been known more than likely at the time of their marriage. But sometimes it's politically expedient to let the marriage go through, just in the same way that sometimes it's politically expedient to annul it, to get it out of the way. So if this woman was Iadwi's wife, and I think there's pretty powerful reason to believe that it would be. There's a lot of reasons why she isn't named as Iadwi's wife, because the political faction and the writing at the time really needed for that very potentially strong political alliance to not be real, to not be taken seriously, and to be discredited as much as possible. Still getting around to that fix on your car?
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- [14:06]
Carvana Customer
Tell us more about Elf Gifu? What was the political role that she played, what power did she bring to the marriage with Eadwe Alf Kifu's family.
- [14:16]
Shopify Representative
Is a little bit hard to trace. There's a couple of different lines of thought. So she could be either from part of the Mercian royal line. She could have also been a part of a dispossessed part of the Wessex family line. Either way that it might go means that she was potentially someone who could act as a power broker in the guise of being the king's wife. She had political connections, she would have kinship connections in important areas that Iadwi needed some alliances, would need some people, some kin on his side. So we're coming from a tradition of the last couple of decades here, where actually it was Ead Gifu. So the wife of Edmund the Elder, who was the mother and then the grandmother of these kings, was acting in the royal court throughout almost all of this time, and especially in the reigns of her son Yadred and Edmund. She appears a lot. And some people, like Pauline Stafford says, they almost appear as like a triumvirate in essence. So two kings, two brothers and their mother acting in consort with each other. And there's a lot of good evidence to indicate that she was especially involved with Eadred towards the end of his life, when he was ill. So as the king's mother being alongside of him, taking care of him as the king's mother. So Eodgifu had been basically this major court faction throughout most of the mid 10th century. And so then you have a new wife show up. So Iadwi's quite young, he's 15. He's coming into a court that's dominated by his father's people, his uncle's people, but also his grandmother's people that are all very entrenched within the royal court at this point. So if he wants to sort of make a bit of a stand, if he wants to be seen as a bit more independent, he needs these other connections. So a marriage to Alph Gifu, whatever genealogy she has, is going to be a really crucial part of building these kinship relationships, that he could put these men into places within the court and throughout the realm that would be in support of him, sort of building his own political network. And that marriage was really key to doing that.
- [16:11]
Carvana Customer
Let's just take a pause here for a second, because you mentioned Wessex and Mercia in that answer, just to make sure our listeners are fully aware. So Wessex and Mercy were two of these kingdoms that were sort of coalesced together to become the England we now speak of. And that happened sort of in the preceding few decades to the events that we're talking about.
- [16:29]
Shopify Representative
Exactly right. That was starting around the reign of Edward the Elder. So basically the Earldom of Mercia and the Kingdom of Wessex working in consort to take out the Vikings, in essence sort of fight in the north. And then Mercia gets kind of subsumed into Wessex through family relationships. So by the time we hit this period, Mercia is definitely within the kingdom of Wessex. It always feels a little bit awkward sometimes, so you need to have basically people in locations on side.
- [16:55]
Carvana Customer
I'm just going to try and recap here because there's a lot going on. So we've got Eadwi, he's got his wife, Eolf, Gifu, his mother in law, Efel Gifu, his grandmother, Ead Gifu. They're all presumably in this fee space. One of the really interesting things about this story is the fact that you've identified these really important female power players in the royal court. Are you saying that actually there's a loss of power behind the throne or maybe just in front of the throne or next to the throne?
- [17:26]
Shopify Representative
I think all three, actually. We tend to think of this as a masculine, you know, fighty, blokey, swords and shield kind of moment. But you also have politics that are happening and royal women in this period have a lot of power that they can wield depending on where they are in the order of things. Now, Ead Gifu had been, let's say, fortunate enough to be a part of the royal court for decades on decades. She disappears a little bit during the reign of Aethelstan, who was her stepson, but then comes back because Aethelstan is succeeded by her own sons. So it might be a matter of she was raising her children to the point where they become heirs, but once we hit the ground running with her two sons as kings, she's really deeply involved in the royal court throughout this entire period.
- [18:10]
Carvana Customer
Okay, so we've got those three women, we've got Eadwi, the other person sort of in this story, who you've talked a little bit about, but I think we need to know a bit more about is Dunstan, who was he and what happened to him afterwards? Because presumably it's not that clever an idea to manhandle your king.
- [18:26]
Shopify Representative
Yes. And the way that it's presented, actually, it's the women who are angry because we have to be slightly misogynistic and blame the women for the situation. But Dunstan, if you think of him as a character rather than a historical figure. He is a gift that keeps on giving. He's around for most of the 10th century as well. He starts out as abbot of Glaston and that's where he is in this scenario. So when Iodhwy is king, he is abbot of Glastonbury. And Glastonbury is a really important monastery. So as abbot, he has a lot of power, he has a lot of control and he's in a really good position. And as this, he also has a position within the royal court. So he was also very close to Eodgifu, Eadwy's grandmother. So at this stage, then, Abbot Dunstan is a part of this, as a part of the power base that Iadwi has within the royal court. So it's Dunstan who goes and kicks the women out and brings the king back to the feast. Of course, like I said, you know, it's represented as the women get really mad at him. So shortly after the coronation feast, he's exiled and he goes off to the continent. This is not particularly unusual in this period and it's not necessarily a permanent exile by any stretch of the imagination. He's recalled after Iadwi's death, and then he goes into more powerful positions from there, such as eventually becoming the Archbishop of Canterbury, where he's one of the most powerful churchman in the entire realm. But alongside of this, you know, there's no simple idea of a separation of church and state. Dunstan's a part of the royal court throughout his life, and he's even more influential as a part of the 10th century reforms, so monastic reforms that happen under King Edgar slightly later in the century. So Dunstan at this moment, you know, it feels like he's taken the downfall, in essence, for the king's misbehavior, but he gets his own. He comes back and he's perfectly fine and very powerful. And I think, in fact, it's really worth pointing out that initially, the way that we know of the story of the coronation threesome is from hagiography about Dunstan. So hagiography are books written about saints. It's a saint's lives, so they're filled with trials and tribulations, but also miracles and fantastic stories. So this particular story, the first time we hear it, is in one of these hagiographies. So there's a really vested interest in making certain that Dunstan looks really good in this. Right? The king is obviously misbehaving. There's a lot of sin going on Dunstan is sturdy and firm and upright and he's the one who has the moral authority to go and take care of the situation and put everything back to where it should be. So if you want to talk about bias in your sources, obviously there's a very vested interest in making Dunstan look really good in some of these sources. But historically speaking, he's again a part of the royal court throughout the 10th century and remains a really strong character.
- [21:02]
Carvana Customer
Eadweg's Reign finished in 959. We've already identified it started in 955. So that's not a super long reign. Would I be right in assuming it wasn't a roaring success after this rather unfortunate start?
- [21:17]
Shopify Representative
You can look at his reign in a number of different ways. There's a number of ways that people have said, well, it's a really unsuccessful reign. So to start with, within the first couple of years he's issuing charters, he's issuing land, he's granting lands to, to numbers of people. And we have more surviving charters, you know, in this four year period than we do in some other entire reigns of English kings. So in the first year or two, it seems that he's distributing land, he's rewarding people or he's getting people on side. You know, it's not quite bribery, if you see what I mean, but it's definitely bringing people along with you. But then you can also read it as in the first year of his reign there were four distinct charter issuing sort of moments throughout the year. So we can track the charters to being issued at four separate services, four separate royal gatherings. And that means also an indication of control over the royal apparatus. You know, it's not being issued willy nilly. These aren't emergencies per se, they're just regular issuing of charters, just a large number of them. So if you read that in a different way, he's still got control of what might count as the royal chancery, if there is one at the time, he's still got control of the apparatus that makes the king be in charge of the realm. Now one other indication about his reign, whether it's successful or not, comes in 957, because at that point actually his younger brother Edgar gets made king in the north. So essentially north of the Thames and south of the Thames, Jadwig is king south of the Thames and Edgar is king north of the Thames. Now this can go back to any number of circumstances because remember, the north is always a bit south, sketchy at this point. So maybe the north needed a particularly strong hand. Someone on sight, perhaps. It also indicates, perhaps there's rising support behind Edgar, his slightly younger brother, who would be the next in line for the throne anyhow. And so that often is read again as an indication of weakness. But you can read it in different ways as well. There's no change of personnel, so the men who are in place in the north stay in the North. They don't move one side or the other because they're a fan of one brother or the other. Same with the men in the south. It seems like this might be a bit more of a pragmatic position behind it. But for whatever reason it is, his brother becomes sort of co king in 957. They share the kingship for two years before Eadwe dies.
- [23:33]
Carvana Customer
And you mentioned earlier that Eadwe's marriage to Elfgiffu was annulled during the course of his reign because they were too closely related. Presumably that wasn't a good thing for him.
- [23:45]
Shopify Representative
No, he's losing perhaps his best political ally in Elfgifu and her family alongside of him. She goes into self exile at this point she also goes to the continent. We don't hear from her for quite another few years. But he loses that sense of the legitimacy that he gets through her family as well.
- [24:01]
Carvana Customer
Now you mentioned at the start of this conversation you think it's unlikely that this tale of the threesome actually happened because we don't hear about it for a good four decades after it's supposed to have occurred. Presumably if it had happened there would have been some more references to it at the time. And making a further presumption, I'm imagining it would have been very bad form indeed to have had sex with your mother in law. That wasn't an okay thing to do, right?
- [24:30]
Shopify Representative
No, no, not at all. Goodness no. I did say, you know, slightly questionable now and definitely bad idea then. So yeah, it actually falls in line with incest in essence. It's sort of like degrees of relationship. So if this had happened, if Eodwy had a threesome with his wife and her mother, it's actually first degree incest with all of them as how incest was figured out at that stage. So your mother in law is your first degree relative. That's not someone who's not related to you in the eyes of the church. You are first degree relative with that person. So it's just a bad idea all the way around. It's improper sexual, but more than that, it's bad for your soul. You know, this is seriously significant transgression from what might be considered proper sex. In no world was this any kind of proper sex. If that threesome had been what was.
- [25:16]
Carvana Customer
Happening, do we know what sort of punishment someone would have been in line for if they had committed this sort of offence.
- [25:21]
Shopify Representative
So punishments could include things like excommunication, long term penance. You could be removed or you'd be banished from the Church. Generally speaking, the idea is you do penance to be brought back into the Church. So it's not something that's punishable by death. That's not something the Church really gets into at this point. But the idea is the more significant the transgression, the sort of longer and bigger your penance would be, which could include no sacraments, being excommunicated from the Church and then significant penances that you'd need to do before you could be accepted back into the religious community.
- [25:52]
Carvana Customer
So let's assume that the episode never happened. What was going on? Why was this story concocted and who was trying to blacken the reputation of Eadwe and presumably Elfgifu by the time.
- [26:06]
Shopify Representative
This story is written down for the first time by this author who claims he was with Dunstan in exile and sort of knows personal things, knows about Dunstan really well. This is the reign of King Aethelred ii, so it's many years after the fact, obviously. But Ethelred II is a descendant of King, King Edgar, so Iadwi's brother who becomes king after him. So you've got that on board. You need to make certain that, you know, your current king needs to look like he's descended from a good line and he's not descended from a yadwy. A yadwi is a bad line. The other thing that you've got going on here though is that reverb from the political factions at the court. So you have what the scholar Shashi Jayakumar called the Elf Gifu Dunstan axis at court. So within this sort of 30 year period, Dunstan AlfGFU and then alongside them Archbishop Odo of Canterbury and then an Ealdormun called Aethelstan half king called that because he basically was in charge of a lot of lands out towards the east. These four people were the ones who are kind of consistently the court power throughout the 940s and into the 950s. So when IADWI comes to the throne in 955 and for whatever reason he decides that he wants his own court, he wants his own status, he wants to, I would Suspect stand on his own two feet as king. He marries this woman with significant connections within different royal spheres and starts then building his own court. So he's appointing his own men into Ealdormens, he's putting people into position in the shires, in his own court. So that could be seen very easily as a threat to people like Ead Gifu, Dunstan, Odo, Aethelstan, half king, who have had the habit of being in control. The court has been theirs essentially for a number of years. That marriage between Iadwi and Alf Gifu was a significant political threat. It's not just a great match for your kinship connections. It could be, in essence, a direct threat to the influence that's been held at court for years. So if you want to make certain that this potential threat is, shall we say, neutralized, you've got to make certain that that marriage isn't just annulled, but you've got to make certain that everyone understands that it's not just that it didn't happen, it wasn't appropriate, it was not a good thing. It was actually imperiling their souls to do this. That imperils the soul of the kingdom. So in all senses, this marriage just had to be discredited. It was too much of a threat. This had to be destroyed. In essence, it just had to be erased. And so that's where the story, I think, gets the real head from it. The people who are become in charge. It's worth their while to make certain that that little blip in the kingship, in essence, is not seen as anything worth really thinking about or talking about.
- [28:44]
Carvana Customer
I'm getting a sort of a Shakespearean vibe here. It feels like this is kind of Shakespeare writing about Richard III because he needs to big up the Tudor. Is that the sort of thing that's going on here?
- [28:54]
Shopify Representative
Yeah, maybe so. I mean, I think a little bit like Lady Macbeth, to be honest with you. Sometimes it's probably a bit more vicious. But, you know, I think if we wanted to cast Shakespearean characters, we absolutely could. I mean, I think it'd be pretty easy to. I also think it can be really easy to cast women into these really negative roles as well. So, you know, Yad Gifu can be thought of as the evil stepmother to some sense in some or the evil grandmother, just in the same way that elf Gifu and Ethel Gifu had to be cast as these sort of more or less licentious women, loose women, like, running around the court, influencing the king. So I think it's Sort of the difference between telling a good fiction and telling a good story. And also, you know, understanding the power that women could have and rather than villainizing it, making it into something that we think of as a normal, regular thing in the early Middle Ages for women to be able to hold royal.
- [29:40]
Carvana Customer
Power, we need to wrap up. But I suppose just thinking of the idea that there's no smoke about fire, do we think there's anything in Eadwee's personality reactions that might have started this rumor?
- [29:51]
Shopify Representative
I really want there to be something in that, to be honest with you. I would love for there to been something like slightly naughty going on at the coronation feast to sort of feed into this. I mean, it's only speculation. I just want it to be true. I mean, I fully accept it's probably not, but I think, you know, it's too great a story to let down. That's why we're still talking about it a thousand years later.
- [30:10]
Carvana Customer
One last thing to finish with. Eadwe dies in 959. You've already said that. Does he die in his bed? And what about Elfgithu? What happens to her? Does she have a long life? After this whole unfortunate episode, Yadwy just dies.
- [30:24]
Shopify Representative
We don't have a lot of information. It definitely wasn't in battle. There's no sense of him being murdered or assassinated. He's just in the records. He's just dead. And that might be again, casting Anglo Saxon chronicles, casting it a bit later, just kind of, you know, smoothing over that line of succession again, like they like to do with the Wessex family. So he just dies. There's no hint of wrongdoing. He's quite young, he's about 19 at the time. So catastrophic illness or something, who knows? It's again, just not really spoken of now. Elfgifu had gone into self exile when they were separated, the two of them. And so around 957, 958, she's probably over in the continent. We see more of her in Edgar's reign. Then she comes back, she somehow manages to make peace with her former brother in law. She regains some estates, she regains some land and some place within her status, and I think her status is within a royal family somewhere within the kingdoms of England. Probably helps her along that way. Helps her survive and be able to come back and take on a position, take on some land and be a part of this society again. When she dies, she leaves a will. So the woman who is probably the same elf, Gifu, we have her will. She's leaving almost all of her land, all of her belongings to King Edgar. So again, her former brother in law. This could be, again, a lot of different interpretations. She might have been granted royal land for the time of her life and so she was returning royal lands into the royal stock. It might be some kind of a repayment for being allowed back in, allowed back into the circles, allowed back into land we don't really know. But by the time of her death, she was again high status, well known, wealthy within the realm, and a part of the systems that could own land, create wills, give gifts to the king and the queen as a part of their will. So she survived, she comes back. I'd say she probably even thrives to some degree.
- [32:16]
David Musgrove
That was Dr. Catherine Wykerd, senior Lecturer in Early Medieval European History at the University of Winchester. Catherine's article, called Eadwe Has a Threesome, Sex and the Breaking of authority in the 10th century, is a chapter in the edited volume, the Reigns of Edmund Eadred and Eedwi 9:39- 9:59, which is edited by Mary Elizabeth Blanchard and Christopher Rydell. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Daniel Kramer Arden.