Queen Emma and Queen Edith

Queen Emma, wife to both Æthelred the ‘Unready’ (d. 1016) and then to Cnut (d. 1035), and Queen Edith, wife to Edward the Confessor (d. 1066), lived through some of the most turbulent and interesting politics of the early medieval period.

We are permitted unusual access to their lives through eleventh-century texts either directly about them (the Encomium Emmae) or commissioned by them (the Vita Edwardi). Stafford wonderfully brings to the fore their pivotal roles in English politics across the eleventh century, and, in doing so, shines the spotlight on the position of women in medieval society more… show more.

Going back into the Anglo-Saxon period, Pauline Stafford’s joint study of the powerful Queens Edith and Emma is essential reading. Stafford’s research into these two women is peerless, providing the most comprehensive study of late Anglo-Saxon queenship to date. She has left no stone unturned in her research, giving fine detail to the lives and activities of her subjects. Stafford’s book certainly disproves the common misapprehension that the Anglo-Saxons did not have queens.

Men tend to dominate accounts of Anglo-Saxon history, which focus on kings, bishops, and warlords and men who wrote about them. Stafford’s important joint biography, interweaving the lives of Queen Emma and Queen Edith, redresses the balance by rewriting that history through the lens of women’s experiences. Stafford compares Emma and Edith in the familial, domestic, and political spheres, throwing into sharp relief the power dynamics of queenship through six desperate decades of conquest and disputed succession. In this fascinating setting, queens emerge as the survivors, while the men frequently succumb to violent or premature ends.