Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians

Vulgar History Podcast

Æthelflæd, Lady of Mercians

March 17, 2020

Ann Foster:                                                                                                                                 Hello, my name is Ann Foster, and you are listening to the Vulgar History podcast. This is a feminist women’s history comedy podcast, and this is Season Two. The season’s theme is Women Leaders in History and the Men Who Whined About It. Thus far, we’ve been looking at basically women who Roman men got angry at for being cool and women who also killed a lot of people. The people they killed… It’s sort of like, everyone was killing everyone. So, we looked at Cleopatra, we looked at Agrippina, we looked at Boudica. It was sort of a situation where it’s everyone is killing everyone so the fact they killed people isn’t, like, super weird for the time. 

But also, this week, things get a little different. We’re jumping ahead in time. So, those three all were around the same time, more or less, within a century of each other. We’re going from minus 50 BCE, up to like, the year 50 AD, and now we’re leaping ahead in time, 800 years to the year 861. We’re staying in the island of what we now call United Kingdom, which is where Boudica was but lots of things have passed. So, just imagine like, if this was a movie, there’d be sort of a montage of, you know, years going by and Romans being there, and then Romans being driven out, and then Vikings coming in, you know, things being built, things being abandoned. .800 years pass. Like, 800 years ago from now was the year 1200… Yeah? God, I don’t know… Was the year 1220. So, that’s an incredibly long expanse of time. So, just know that lots of things have happened. 

A couple highlights include Christianity being introduced to, again, the island that we call now the United Kingdom, the country you know now is England; Boudica’s Iceni tribe, not really a thing any more; Romans, long gone. And what we have now are basically, we have the Anglo-Saxons, we have the Vikings, and those are kind of the main groups of people we’re going to be looking at today. But guess what? There’s lots of little subgroups within those groups, no one got along with anyone.

We’re going to learn today about a woman whose name is Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians. And there’s a lot of really interesting Anglo-Saxon-type names in here. They all start with that letter that’s like A and E smushed together, which I believe is pronounced like an ‘A’, that’s what I’m going with. But you’ll see in the show notes, these names all just look really cool, visually. So, Æthelflæd is who we’re going to be learning about. And let’s get to it. 

So, little history lesson. So, prior to the year 927, and again, we’re fully in AD territory, all the before the year 0 stuff, that’s all behind us. Years go in the expected chronological order. That’s what’s going on. So, the area now known as England prior to 927, so in 927, it all joined up to become Englande, you know, in oldie time writing with lots of vowels. But before that, it was seven kingdoms, which were called East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Mercia, Northumbria, Sussex and Wessex. These had been founded around the fifth century. So, this is again, Boudica was around the year, like, 50. This is we’re talking the fifth century, the 400s. So much time has passed; clothes have changed, languages have changed, the way that people fight wars, new weapons, just like, a lot of stuff has happened and changed. But basically, these places, the seven kingdoms, and you’re getting if you’re getting sort of Game of Thrones-ish vibes, guess what? George R. R. Martin just took all the cool bits from every era of history and made Game of Thrones, added dragons, that’s what it is. I keep rediscovering as I find new things in history that are exactly like Game of Thrones. So anyway, we have these seven kingdoms. England does not even exist at this point. 

So, these seven kingdoms had been founded by immigrants from the Germany/Holland area. So, they were the Saxons because the Germany/Holland area was Saxony, but they came over to the island and they became the Anglo-Saxons and that’s where that term comes from. So, these groups—obviously, as illustrated by every time in history when there’s been a group, various groups of people sharing an area—they did not get along with each other. So, they’re all basically at war with each other constantly. 

And then, just to add some more drama, so the Romans, long gone, the Romans had left behind a lot of their old infrastructure, though, so there’s still a lot of, sort of, towers and battlements and stuff that these groups could kind of use for themselves as well. But in the absence of Roman invaders, guess who comes? Viking invaders from Norway and Denmark. They kind of just blitzed through and they realized like, “Oh, cool, there’s these seven kingdoms, they’re all fighting against each other. So, we, the Vikings, can just…” They’re not going to team up against the Vikings, so the Vikings are able to sort of divide and conquer, which is exactly what the Romans did. So, long history of the different groups on that island not getting along very well. Foreshadowing to the year 2020? Who’s to say? 

Anyway, so these Norwegian and Danish Vikings came in and they just started seizing and taking control. So, they started taking over towns, they started taking over land, they started taking over property, the farms. If the Anglo-Saxons at this point had been able to set aside their differences and team up together (like Boudica had gotten all the warring tribes to team up together) maybe they could have stopped the Vikings from becoming quite as widespread, but everybody was much too stubborn for that. So, by the time our story starts, the 9th century, which is the years 800 to 899, 9th century. So, five of these seven kingdoms were almost entirely conquered by the Vikings. The Vikings had taken over most of what we would now call England. The only bit that was not conquered was the Kingdom of Wessex, and that is where Æthelflæd was born and she is today’s heroine. 

So, she was born around the year 870. This is the sort of time when everybody’s too busy being at war constantly with each other to bother taking a lot of written records of the birth dates of people, especially young girls. But we know about her, well because of what she’s going to do. But also, we know kind of around when she was born because she was the oldest child born to the king. So, her father is called Alfred the Great, and he was the king of Wessex. Her mother is called Ealhswith, and she was from Mercia, which is one of the other seven kingdoms. So, the two of them had gotten married and that kind of meant, that represented that there was a… What do you call it in Survivor? An alliance between the Wessex and the Mercians. So, she was half Wessex, half Mercian. Her name, Æthelflæd, by the way, so it’s a combination of two words, Æthel means ‘noble’ and flæd means ‘beauty,’ so her name means basically ‘noble beauty.’ The noble part was really important to sort of represent that she was a princess, she was a royal person, she was a noble person, she was a special, important person. 

She was also the eldest of the children of the king. So, she had some sisters, some brothers, and one of her younger brothers, four years younger than her, was a boy named Edward, who was later going to become known as King Edward the Elder. And unlike in every story so far we’ve done this season, Æthelflæd had a good relationship with her family. No one was trying to kill each other. She and her brother got along, there was no incest, people weren’t poisoning each other. It’s like, truly, 800 years have passed from just sort of the nonstop chaos of the ancient Roman stuff we were looking at before. Things are a bit calmer in general. Some people are going to die in this story at convenient times, but the culture is such that no one even now suspects that people were secretly poisoning each other. That’s kind of the setting for this story. So, we can all just kind of calm down a little bit… They could kind of calm down a little bit vis-à-vis, are they going to be murdered by their family members? They couldn’t calm down in the sense of constant Viking attacks. 

So, also by this point, Christianity was popular in this area, and it had been for a couple hundred years. So, her family were Christians, which is notable, perhaps that’s part of why they’re not all murdering each other, their branch of Christianity was one where maybe you didn’t poison each other all the time…? Not sure. But basically, it also meant that they celebrated Christmas every year and that’s important because we don’t know a lot about Æthelflæd’s early, early years, but we know when she was 8-years-old during the Christmas celebrations, the royal family was attacked by Vikings. She and her family had to flee for their lives. And just bear in mind, this is December in the year 878 in England, and I don’t think December in England in the year 2020 is especially a great place to be weather-wise. I think it’s a little chilly, a little messy, snow and slush. So, this is, you know, not a great situation for them. So, they had to flee, they were fleeing the Vikings, they could be killed at any point. It was cold and they ended up running out in sort of marshlands, like, sort of swamp, and they made their way out. 

So, this is, one would imagine, formative experience for 8-year-old Æthelflæd and her 4-year-old brother Edward and the others. Her father, Alfred, though, is a skilled negotiator, and he’s able to broker a peace deal with the Vikings. So, they sort of agreed that Wessex, the kingdom where they all live, was divided in two. So, Albert was in charge of the western part, western Wessex, and the eastern part was absorbed into the Viking territories, which was called the Danelaw. So, sort of the Danish Vikings’ land all together was called the Danelaw. So, Wessex divided in two, but they got half of it, and they also weren’t murdered, so things are looking okay considering the alternatives at this point. 

So, what Alfred did, though, after escaping with his family’s life, he started reinforcing the leftover Roman settlements, like, the buildings and stuff, in his part of western Wessex. So, he fixed up these old Roman walls and structures and built new similar ones to better protect themselves from the Vikings, because he knew this is what was going on. If you’ve watched The Lost Kingdom, the TV show, when you make a deal in this time and place between the Vikings and the Saxons, everyone’s not like, “Cool,” and no one ever attacks each other again. Like, obviously, the Vikings were going to attack him again at some point, and he wanted to be ready for that. So, these fortified towns that he was working on were known as burhs, which is an oldey time word that would go on to be today’s contemporary word, “boroughs” like the boroughs of New York City. And Alfred, during his time doing this, he completed about 33 of these fortified towns. 

Another important bit of background information is that Albert— Alfred, sorry, Alfred. Education was really important to him. So, he was super religious, he was very serious about his piety and his spirituality, and also about education and scholarship. They were sort of connected to him in a sort of way where he thought that the better-educated people are, the more religious people are, just the better society will be. So, he set up a national program, and again, this is the year, what, like 800-whatever. When we think about what people sometimes call the Dark Ages or the Middle Ages or whatever, you think about these people just sort of, like, wandering around and nobody’s reading books and I don’t know, I don’t know. Everyone’s just, like, watching jousts or whatever, but he was really into education in a really serious way. So, he set up a national program to encourage schooling for all of the children of Wessex. So, not just his children, definitely including his children, but all the children, boys and girls. This is just, like… History can be surprising when you dig into stuff and set aside your stereotypical expectations of what people are going to be like. 

So, that being said, Æthelflæd was able to get this really great education living in a situation where her father thought that scholarship was so important. He brought in male and female tutors to tutor all of his children, his daughters, his son. So, she was given the same educational opportunities as her brother and so she became very well-read and also all of them just growing up in this situation became very Christian, very religious. So, both studious and very religious and that’s just kind of what their personalities were like, that’s what the world was like, but also very aware of the fact that Vikings could attack at any moment and so you have to be ruthless and smart. 

Also, as per you might expect, I’m going to call this a medium patriarchal society. If we put Rome at the worst treatment of women, like ancient Rome era, this is medium. She was allowed to go to school. That’s good! She was allowed to learn how to read. She got a name that wasn’t just her father’s name, feminized. So, things were, like, better than ancient Rome, but that’s not saying lots. This was the sort of time and place where noble-born boys inherited titles and jobs, and noble-born girls were expected to either become nuns or to marry into useful alliances and that’s just kind of what the world was. She wasn’t standing on a soapbox being like Jo March in Little Women saying, “This isn’t the life for me!” She’s just like, “Here’s what’s up. I respect my father, I respect my family, and this is what I need to do to help keep this kingdom as strong as it can be.” She’s just, again, after the Romans, it’s refreshing to me to have someone who… Not someone, but just a situation where this family is just, like, okay to each other and they’re not killing each other. It’s just, it’s a nice little change. 

So, in 886, a marriage was arranged for Æthelflæd, who is at this point 16 years old, and this was a total alliance-based scenario. So, she was being married to the Lord of the Mercians. So, her mother was from Mercia. She, herself was half-Mercian, but from Wessex. So, this was very much just sort of solidifying this alliance between Mercia and Wessex by marrying her to the Lord of the Mercians. And he had a name that is so similar to her name, I’ll try and pronounce it very clearly differently, so you know who I’m talking about when, but her name is Æthelflæd, her husband is Æthelred. He was Lord of the Mercians, not King of the Mercians, because Alfred, Æthelflæd’s father, he was the King of Wessex, and the King of Wessex was sort of in charge also of Mercia, in a way. Like, Mercia was sort of a sub-kingdom under him. So, Æthelred, the husband, was sort of a sub-king, so he couldn’t be called king specifically because only the person was to be the king. So, if you watched The Last Kingdom, the TV show, he is played by Toby Regbo from Reign, super dreamy-looking, and Æthelflæd herself is played by Millie Brady, super badass. They show them basically about the same age, he’s like a bit older than her. In actual history, he was way older than her, like, a fully grown, much older man who is also not in amazing health, and that’s going to affect things as we go on. 

So, the kingdom of Mercia was located in what we’d now consider the middle of England. If you’re from England, I’m sure you’d call it something else, but I’m in Canada and I don’t know those minute details off the top of my head, so sorry. Mercia had been one of the more peaceful kingdoms until the early 9th century when the person who was King of Wessex before Alfred had mostly conquered the territory. So, remember how Æthelflæd’s mother was a Mercian noblewoman? She was married to Alfred partially to sort of ease the peace between the two places and to ally the two kingdoms together against the Vikings. So, by this point in the story, Alfred the Great was King of Wessex and Mercia, leaving the day-to-day rule of Mercia to a Lord. The people of Mercia were very independent-minded and didn’t love that they had been, sort of, taken over by Wessex. “Through this marriage, Æthelflæd fulfilled the Anglo-Saxon role of a peace weaver, meaning someone whose marriage literally weaves together two groups who had been enemies,” making them all in-laws so hopefully they would stop attacking each other and try and fight off the Vikings as a team. 

So, in 886, the same year that Æthelflæd was betrothed to Æthelred, “the combined forces of Alfred and Æthelred were able to reclaim London from the Vikings and make it part of Mercia again. Upon the royal marriage, Alfred appointed Æthelred in charge of London.” So, do you remember London was called Londinium when we were doing the Boudica episode, and it was sort of like this little emerging city in Boudica burned it down and it was awesome? So, London is still sort of a major city, just called London now. So, Alfred appointed Æthelred in charge of London, partly to appease the Mercians who were sort of under Wessex but were so independent that they needed to get some scraps. They needed to get some stuff that was their own because otherwise, the alliance might break up, et cetera. So also, potentially, London itself was maybe part of Æthelflæd’s dowry, like a bonus prize that her husband would get for marrying her, whatever the motivation. 

So, Æthelflæd at this point moved to London, and when she married Æthelred she gained the title that she became known as, that we’re going to call her, the Lady of the Mercians. So again, there’s not a queen and there’s not a king of Mercia, it’s because there’s only the king in Wessex, they’re like one step below. But as it turns out, becoming consort to the Lord of the Mercians was an incredible stroke of good luck for Æthelflæd. “Back in Wessex, women weren’t given much political power. For instance, her mother Ealhswith wasn’t given the title of Queen even though she was married to the king. Mercia, however, had a tradition of granting female consorts power in their own right.” So, between Æthelflæd’s being half-Mercian, her new title as Lady of the Mercians and just local culture, she was able to have much more power and control than she ever would have had back in Wessex. So, it kind of worked out. For it to work out, she had to marry a much older man who was also constantly sick, but you know what? Could be worse. 

So, she was 16 and was also way better educated than a lot of people around her. She had lived through Viking sieges, she had learned from her father how to be strong, how to be a strong and successful military leader, how to be crafty and clever. She’d been educated in, you know, army-type things, not specifically fighting with a sword, but just strategy and that sort of stuff. And also, her husband was super sick. So, instead of just being kind of wife of the Lord, she sort of co-ruled alongside him sort of in a partnership-type situation. Like, there are documents they both signed together; eventually, she started signing them on her own. She really stepped up in a way that sort of shows she was super smart, super capable, knew what she was up to but also that people listened to her. Her whole self, her charisma was such that people were okay with her taking on quite a bit of power in this situation where women could have some power, but this was, like, more even than usual for them. 

Also, she was popular there because she was half-Mercian, her mother was from there, and because people liked her— Oh, my cat’s visiting. Hey, there. Hi! [Hepburn meows] This is one of those podcasts with a cat, I guess now. So, people liked her, which meant that people were more willing to like her father/the fact that he was the king over top of them and it made the people of Mercia less likely to rebel. So, this is her whole peace weaver deal coming up again. She and Æthelred had one child together, a daughter who they named Ælfwynn, a name that means ‘friend of the elves,’ which is just like, do you have a person or a cat to name? Consider the name Ælfwynn, it’s adorable. So, they only had one child, which is unusual for this sort of time and place because of women, especially in this sort of situation, were expected to have lots of kids to really cement the alliance. Also, people weren’t into birth control and whatnot. So, they only had one child. 

One school of thinking is that the birth process was so traumatizing for her, which like, yeah, it was the year 800 whatever, I’m sure it was horrifying that she was just like, “Guess what I’m never doing again? Giving birth. That’s it, we have a daughter. Everything’s fine.” The other thing to bear in mind, of course, is that her husband was sick, like sick to the point that she was doing a lot of the day-to-day ruling stuff. So, it’s entirely possible just like, physically, they weren’t able to conceive again. Anyway, so they had one daughter, I kind of love the story that she was just like… I love, I love the thought that maybe she just was just like, “Screw that. Guess what we’re being now? Abstinent together.” 

So, when Alfred the Great, Æthelflæd’s father died in the year 899, her younger brother Edward took over as the King of Wessex/sort of King of the Anglo-Saxons, which sort of all the areas that weren’t Viking controlled, basically. And Æthelflæd stayed, well, she was still married to Æthelred, but the two of them were in charge of Mercia/mostly her because her husband was so sick. So, it was kind of like a brother-sister situation. So, Edward, her brother, was the main king, and then she was sort of like a supportive, helping him out behind the scenes type. But what worked out really well is the two of them were such a good— They grew up together, they got along fine, and they could sort of divide, literally divide and conquer or conquer back, like, work at getting the Vikings out and getting Anglo-Saxons in more places, as a team. 

So, in the year 902, a group of Norse Viking refugees came to see Æthelflæd, who again, her husband is not dead, but everyone’s just treating her as the person to go to when you won’t need stuff, the person who’s in charge. She was all but officially in charge of Mercia. So, a group of Norse Viking refugees came to see her with a wild request. So, they’d just been kicked out of Dublin up in oldey-time Ireland, which had been a Viking place, because everything was a Viking place. Anyway, these Norse Vikings have been kicked out of Dublin by the Irish, they had nowhere to go, and they just, I don’t know why, went to see Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians to ask if she could maybe give them some land to live off. Like, bold move Vikings, just to ask but also unexpected, and I kind of like it. It’s interesting also in the sense that they came to talk to her. They said, “We’d like to talk to Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians,” they didn’t say “We want to talk to Æthelred and his wife,” they’re like, “We want to talk to her, we know who’s in charge here.” 

So, the Viking refugees requested this land and Æthelflæd was like, “All right,” she let them stay on some land just outside Chester, which was a fortified town that was within her boundaries. So, one of these fortified towns that her father had helped kind of like rebuild from the Roman stuff. So, why did she give them land? So, potentially to try and make nice with them so that the Norse Vikings would team up with her against the Danish Vikings because the Norse Vikings and the Danish Vikings didn’t like each other. It’s just like, literally… It’s Survivor, just everybody’s out against everybody else, alliances all over the place. But once the Vikings saw their new home, they decided that Chester— Sorry, so she set them up in a farmland just outside of Chester. The Vikings arrived on the farmland, they’re like, “You know what looks nice though? Literally Chester, this fortified town next to the farmland that Æthelflæd gave us.” So, they decided to try and take over the town. Æthelflæd kind of suspected this might happen so she had been kind of preparing for this to happen, and this is going to get amazing so just… 

Okay. So, Æthelflæd had some of her troops wait on top of the town’s fortifications because remember, it was like walls around the whole town to keep an eye out for the Vikings. When the Vikings approached, the Mercians who were standing on top of the fortification used their height advantage and they just started throwing stuff over the wall at the invaders, stuff including, for instance— This is going to get amazing and it’s going to get even more amazing, so just wait. First, they threw boiling hot ale, like beer. Boiling beer, cauldrons of it, they just poured it over and apparently, it was so hot that it stripped the skin off their enemy. Boiling beer! And then the Vikings realized what was happening and they’re like, “Oh shit.” So, they held animal skins over their heads as sort of shields. So, you know, smart. But then, but then! Æthelflæd had her team throw all the town’s beehives at them, like, filled with bees. They were on top of these battlements; first, they poured hot beer on them, and then they threw beehives full of bees on top of them. And then apparently, they were being stung so much they couldn’t move their arms or legs. Bees like also like sugar and stuff, don’t they? So, I’m sure the beer was extra appealing to them. But just like attack bees! Oh my god, like, can you even? 

So now, as per everything in the story, mostly because her whole story exists kind of in the shadows. There’s just a couple of counts of what she did. We have to sort of piece together, as per women’s history constantly… Fuck off, the patriarchy. Anyway, the thing about the attack bees, caveat, it only appears in one chronicle that was written by a guy who was very dramatic. But at the same time, the fact that he wrote it down and people believed it means it could have happened. But it also means that Æthelflæd had developed this amazing reputation of being clever, skilled at battle, and super creative, and just someone that you don’t want to attack your towns. In the following years, Chester went on to become a particularly prosperous city in part due to Æthelflæd’s town planning. So, like her father, she thought that religion and school was really important so she built lots of sort of infrastructure there so that people could be educated, like a church, places for people to gain knowledge about religion, and learn to read and just really cool, cool stuff she’s doing. 

She also, and this is as per every previous episode in this season: coin corner. I think I need to make this an official part of every episode because there’s always this coin moment. She had coins minted for Chester and they didn’t have her face on them, but what they had on them was the shape of a building, potentially a church, which kind of solidified that she was building these buildings, she was Æthelflæd, she was the builder, she was the daughter of Alfred who had also done building, like, through building beautiful buildings, she was getting everybody together and fighting off the Vikings. 

In the year 909, the brother-sister warrior team of Æthelflæd and Edward, they combined their forces, so Wessex people with Mercian forces went up to Northumbria to try and retake some land from the Danish Vikings. This campaign lasted for five weeks and ended successfully. Æthelflæd and Edward victoriously reclaimed this land and they also reclaimed what was on this land, which was some relics of saint Oswald of Northumbria. 

So, a note on that. So, saintly relics, if you don’t know, are sort of bits of bones, like, organs or bits of the body of dead saints were thought to have sort of supernatural powers. So, saint Oswald, and this was back in the time where it’s like saint Oswald had lived not that long ago, just like, I forget how long ago, a couple hundred years ago. Anyway, saint Oswald was a former Northumbrian king who had been killed by Mercians years ago so he was a really important saint to the Mercian people. And for a monarch to be in possession of saintly relics sort of meant, like, if you had them, it’s sort of they had these supernatural powers, but you having them sort of meant good things to you, it meant that your reign was blessed. To have them gave you sort of superpowers as well. So, Æthelflæd did during her various campaigns, there was a lot of sort of shuffling around of relic bits so that they would be where she was and so everybody could see how blessed she was. The relics of saint Oswald specifically were taken to an abbey in Gloucester, which was renamed. So, this was an abbey that Æthelflæd had had built originally, I believe, as part of her sort of city-building stuff. So, they renamed the abbey St. Oswald’s Priory in honour of the relics that were there. 

So, the Danish Vikings were mad about this: they were mad about Northumbria being attacked, retaken, they were mad about the saint Oswald relics being taken. So, in 910, a bunch of them came, climbed onto a boat and came sailing down the river for some revenge pillaging in Mercia. They thought that they would be safe to do this because Edward, king of Wessex, was off somewhere else attacking some other groups of Vikings, but Edward had found out about the plan. Edward and Æthelflæd were just like, I’m really impressed with both of them, they’re really good intel and they’re always prepared for everything. It’s great, sort of Cleopatra-esque. So, Edward found out that the Vikings were doing this, and he dispatched his troops to intercept the Vikings on their way back. He was able to connect with Æthelflæd. So, this is again, we’re having a brother-sister team where each is on a different part of the country, worked to cover twice as much ground. So, she sent along some Mercian forces as backup. All of this meant that the Vikings’ trip back home was unexpectedly interrupted by this army, the brother-sister army, and the ensuing battle became known as the Battle of Tettenhall. 

Throughout all of this, so Edward’s away, Æthelred, the husband is sick back in London. So, Æthelflæd may have led the troops in this battle. She might not have been out there, like, literally fighting with a sword, but just kind of being there on a horse, being sort of a rallying cry. The Wessex people loved her because she was the daughter of Alfred, the sister of the current king, Edward; the Mercians loved her because she was half-Mercian, she’s Lady of the Mercians, so just being there sort of a figurehead, very Elizabeth I-y of her. At this battle, the Anglo-Saxons soundly defeated the Danish Vikings, inflicting thousands of casualties, including three of the main Northumbrian Viking leaders, which was devastating to them to lose three of their main leaders. This victory was major. It ended the threat of Danish Vikings in the north and meant that Æthelflæd and Edward were now able to turn their attention to drive out the rest of the Vikings, basically, and to reclaim all the seven kingdoms as a single country under their rule, of course. 

Shortly after this battle, Æthelred, her husband, died and things become much more interesting. Also, just like, again, side note, this was not a situation where people were murdering each other. I don’t think she killed him, he was sick for a long time. It’s not a sneaky, poison-y sort of story, so I don’t know how this is going to affect her Scandalicious score later, but he died, and it doesn’t seem to be anything untoward about it. Usually, when a male ruler died in this time and place, the wife would retire to a nunnery and then the new man would come in and take over. So, like, the dead king’s son or his brother or whatever. But what happened here is that Edward appointed Æthelflæd the official leader of Mercia, Lady of the Mercians, in her own right. So, not just as the wife of the Lord of the Mercians, but like she’s now in charge. She had basically been in charge and now she was officially in charge. 

This is a singular event in Anglo-Saxon history. It’s the only time a woman ever took or was given sole control of a kingdom. It really speaks to how much trust and faith Edward had in his big sister. And why wouldn’t he? She was amazing. Also, she was so popular among the people of Mercia, like, he was always trying to make them not rebel and want independence. So, just her presence there was good, soothing, continuity, and she was great. And the brother-sister team got to, I don’t know, like, the removal of Æthelred via his death, it changed some things technically, but like, what was actually happening continued on the same. She was in charge. Everybody loved her. Everything was great. 

Æthelflæd becomes even more powerful and fearsome. So, where her father had struggled for much of his reign with the infighting between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, having Æthelflæd and her brother be allies, no question, like, this was never an issue. So, they were able to strategize effectively and coordinate their attacks. And so, they both continued on with what their father had done, overseeing the repair and/or construction of more of these burhs, these fortified towns left over by the Romans. So, not just defensive ones for protection, but also they started building new ones right on the front lines to support their aggressive raids into Viking territory. So, the brother-sister team, they both were super well educated for this time, both were experienced in battle, both were just really smart, really clever on their own, and they both were outside-the-box thinkers. And just the fact that they’re such a good team, such a good duo, flipped the balance of power firmly towards them. 

So, Æthelflæd, her reputation just continued on and people far and near, far and wide, heard about her and thought she was amazing. But unfortunately, the people in the Welsh Kingdom of Brycheiniog had not heard this, much to their detriment. So, in the year 916, King Hwgan of Brycheiniog heard that again, they heard, “Oh, Edward’s out of town. Let’s just attack some places.” It’s like, ugh, Æthelflæd is, come on… Just because Edward’s out of town doesn’t mean no one’s paying attention. So, King Hwgan decided to attack Mercia as part of this raid. He oversaw the murder of one of Æthelflæd’s abbots, one of her church official type guys, which… I mean, she was mad that they were attacking in general, but killing her abbot, she took seemingly incredibly personally. So, three days later, she herself showed up in Brycheiniog with revenge on her mind and with her army. The Brycheiniog forces surrendered because she and her army were so formidable. And then the Mercians seized the royal fort and, Boudica-style, burned it down. They took 34 captives back with them, including the Queen, because Hwgan himself, ironically, was out of town and unavailable to be captured himself. So, that’s just example of her being badass, don’t cross her. 

In 917, Æthelflæd and Edward launched simultaneous campaigns to try and reclaim even more land from the Vikings. This was the first time that Æthelflæd led her first offensive campaign, like, taking the charge, not just fighting against somebody who was invading her, and this was her biggest success called the Battle of Derby. 

So, the Battle of Derby. Derby was a fortified town that the Vikings were living in, the Danish Vikings. Well, I guess the Danish Vikings were living there, but they were off… Everyone just keeps attacking when people are out of town. So, she went to attack Derby, to steal it back from the Vikings. Guess who was there just, like, randomly in Derby? King Hwgan from the previous story I just said. So, now minus his queen, his fortress, and 33 of his friends because Aethelflaed had destroyed them. So, he decided to team up with the Danish Vikings against Æthelflæd because he was so mad at her. At this battle, four of her most trusted nobles were killed, apparently by Hwgan himself. But then when the tide turned and it seemed obvious Æthelflæd’s side was going to win, “King Hwgan took his own life rather than losing in battle to a woman.” Because I mean, good riddance, but also just like, augh! Fuck off.” So, this victory was a massive success for the Saxons and allowed them to annex this entire region back from the Danish Vikings into Mercia. So, they’re just getting more and more and more land back all over the place. Amazing. 

Her diplomatic skills were also top-notch. She’s credited with negotiating an alliance of mutual protection against the North Vikings with Constantine II of Scotland— Well, he was from Alba, which is part of modern-day Scotland. So, they were allies there. She also, part of that same alliance that she negotiated, involved Owain ap Dyfnwal of Cumbria, which is part of modern-day Wales. So, they were just like, “You’re a woman and you’re in charge of Mercia, that’s cool. Let’s just make this treaty altogether. We’re not judgmental about that. We see you’re amazing. Let’s do it.” So, in 918, “Æthelflæd provided much-needed support to Constantine II of Scotland against Norse Vikings in the Battle of Corbridge. During this battle, the Vikings were forced deep within the woods, at which point Æthelflæd is said to have commanded her troops to cut down the trees with their swords” so they could kill all the Vikings, and this happened. So, the Vikings went to flee into the woods. Æthelflæd was like, “You know what? Outside the box thinking, let’s cut down the trees.” And then killed— So smart, so clever! Bees, cutting down trees, boiling beer. 

“Her fame and reputation spread so widely that in 918 when she pulled up with her troops in Leicester to a place that was being held by Vikings, the Vikings pre-emptively surrendered.” They’re like, “We’re not even going to attempt to fight you. Like, obviously you’re amazing and you’re going to win.” Just like what happened with Boudica, where people are just like, “You don’t even need to attack us. Here, take the city back.” The same year, the Danish Vikings occupying the trading center of York offered her a pledge of loyalty rather than facing off against her and her troops in battle. “This offer basically meant that Æthelflæd could peacefully capture the entire northern part of England.” Like she just, her reputation did that. So, it’s notable about these offers, like the one from before, is that they were made to Æthelflæd herself, not to her brother, Edward. So, even though he was literally the king, and she was kind of like, the sub-king, they wanted to deal with her herself because she had that much power. And then, just when you’re getting so much momentum, getting all the land back from the Vikings, she suddenly died in the year 918 on June the 12th, aged 48, of a stroke. And that’s just like, what? How can it just stop? But that is how these things go. 

So, “Following her death, Æthelflæd’s body was transported in a procession to Gloucester where she was buried in St. Oswald’s Priory.” Remember, that was where she, that was where they had put the bones of saint Oswald, she had sort of had the building built, so it’s a suitable place for her. She was buried next to her husband, Æthelred. It’s potentially significant she was buried there and not back in the Wessex part or that she was buried there because they didn’t want her to become sort of a symbol of Mercian independence. They didn’t want her in Mercia. So, she died and when the Lady of the Mercians dies or the Lord, someone inherits it. And in her case, who inherited it but her daughter, Ælfwynn. This is the only mother-to-daughter succession in all of English history. Like, at no other point did a mother-to-daughter succession ever happen, which is like one of those things where you’re like, “Oh, that’s cool and interesting,” but also just like, augh, that sucks. I wish it happened lots more. So, Ælfwynn succeeded her mother as Lady of the Mercians. This is also only the first of two times that a woman-to-woman succession happened. The only other time this happened was when Queen Mary I passed the crown on to her sister Queen Elizabeth I. But then of course, this cool moment was short-lived other than that is just like a fact we all now know, because Ælfwynn took over duties for just six months because then Uncle Edward blew into town, claimed Mercia as part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom and basically forced Ælfwynn back to a nunnery in Wessex where she spent the rest of her life. I hope she had a nice time. 

Æthelflæd’s influence, though, “continued on after her death in the actions of her nephew Æthelstan.” So, Æthelstan is the son of Edward. Edward had two sons, he had two wives. Æthelstan was the son of his first wife. His other son with his other wife was called Ælfweard. He wanted Ælfweard to be his heir, but then Ælfweard randomly died and this is again where you’re like, “Was he murdered?” But it’s just, like, not that sort of story. I think he just died because of oldey-time reasons, leaving Æthelstan. So, ha-ha! What this means is that Æthelstan was Edward’s son from his wife he didn’t like as much. So, when he kind of ditched that wife, he sent Æthelstan off to live with Æthelflæd because well he just didn’t want to raise that son, he just didn’t think that son was going to be his heir, he didn’t think that son would matter, but also, he trusted his sister to raise him. So, Æthelstan was sort of like foster son to Æthelflæd. She was the aunt, but she raised him. So, he grew up in Mercian royal court under his aunt’s influence so as such, Æthelstan, she raised him the way that she and her brother had been raised, so super focused on education, teaching him to be clever and smart and religious, et cetera. 

So, Æthelstan ends up succeeding Edward as King of Wessex/Mercia in 924 and then three years later he became the first king of a united England when he sort of united the seven kingdoms again. So, Æthelflæd— Æthelstan, sorry, is personally remembered as one of England’s most effective monarchs, as was his grandfather, Alfred. “He was known for his effective and clever military leadership, keen intelligence, ability to unify people and skills as a negotiator.” Oh, what’s that? All skills that Æthelflæd also demonstrated, that maybe she passed down to him/taught et cetera. So, that’s kind of her in terms of legacy. He did amazing. She raised him. That’s a credit to her. 

In the 14th century, an Irish chronicle lists her as Æthelflæd, the most famous queen of the Saxons and recorded the date of her death in 918 as a notable historical event. Hers is the only Anglo-Saxon ruler whose death was mentioned in this whole source. It doesn’t mention Æthelstan, it doesn’t mention Alfred. It just highlights how famous and important her reign continued to be even centuries after her death, and yet her name and story have gone largely unsung. Why is that? Because people, sort of, skipped right from her father Alfred, to her nephew Æthelstan and skipped over everything that happened in between. People credit a lot of what happened… The Viking land that they got back is credited often to Edward because he was the king and she was like the sub-king, even though she was doing all this awesome stuff. And also, she’s a woman and people don’t give a shit. 

In summer 2018, celebrations were held to commemorate the 1,100th anniversary of Æthelflæd’s death in Tamworth, which is where she’s said to have died, as well as in Gloucester, where she is buried. And there’s been a number, I think around that same anniversary, quite a few, by quite a few, I mean, like, there used to be zero biographies of Æthelflæd and now there are several. I’ll put a link to them in the show notes, but I do want to especially shout out this cute little book, Æthelflæd: England’s Forgotten Founder by Tom Holland, which ends… I’m just going to read this, the very last paragraph of it: 

That a woman played a role in England’s creation quite as significant as any man should be better remembered than it is. Æthelflæd’s legacy has endured for 1,100 years. It is not too late to pay the Lady of the Mercians the credit that is her due.

So, she is amazing. I adore her. 

But how is she going to score on our Scandalous Scale? Is the question. So, the first category, the first category is… Well honestly, okay, this might just, like, increase with each category, because the first category is Scandaliciousness and there’s just not much. She was just like a straight, like, stand-up person. It wasn’t a situation where everyone was poisoning everybody, so she wasn’t poisoning other people. She married one time, we don’t know about any lovers. I mean, if you want to call scandalicious the fact she potentially declared a vow of chastity after having a horrible birth experience, like, is that scandalous or is that just sensible? I mean, I don’t know. I feel like she would almost be offended if I gave her Scandalicious points. I can’t… I can’t not give any. I’m sure… I’m going to give her 1. 1! I hope she makes it up in the other categories because I want her to score really well. 

Schemieness. Well, that’s a straight-up 10. Schemie-ness! Like, for other people, we’re looking at their schemes and it’s like, you know, figure out ways to secretly poison somebody or how to murder somebody or like have these secret assignations or whatever. But Æthelflæd, she’s just, in terms of scheming, it’s like warlike, like genius moves, like, “Oh no, the Vikings are coming. Why don’t we just throw beehives at them?” Come on! Like, “Oh no, the Vikings are hiding in the trees. Let’s just like cut down all the trees.” Genius. Schemieness, incredible. Like, how is that anything but a 10? 

Significance is the next category and that is really tricky because she is significant. The stuff that she did was monumentally huge. So, between her, her brother, and her father, and her nephew, the four of them, all of them combined were what got the United Anglo-Saxon kingdoms back from the Vikings. She was a crucial part of that. People don’t know about her, but that doesn’t mean she herself didn’t do a significant thing. Right? Hugely significant! The victory she made, like, the fact that people were calling her, making deals with her, skipping over her brother and her husband. Like, I’m going to give her an 8 for Significance, because without her, the next, whatever, a thousand years of history in England would have been potentially real different. 

Sexism Bonus is where we give bonus points depending on how the being a woman might have held them back. This is also an interesting one because she had the privilege of being the daughter of a man who respected her and educated her and treated her seemingly well, which is like, the first time that’s ever happened in this podcast, ever. And then her brother also respected her. She was able to get a lot of power because the men around her let her have that power. If she had been a man, she wouldn’t have been married off to Mercia, then she wouldn’t have accomplished a lot of what she did. It’s sort of like Agrippina, in the sense of, she had a lot of power herself but she wasn’t, you know, holding down a ladder to help other women gain the same amount of power. It’s just like she had this amount of power, and she did amazing things with it. If she’d been a man, I don’t know! I don’t think her sex held her back that much. But I mean, it did in some ways in the sense of like, she wasn’t allowed to be called the queen. If she had been a man, she would have inherited Wessex, she wouldn’t have been sent off to Mercia because the older child. Or if it wasn’t a sexist society where a woman could do that. I’m going to give her a 6. No, I’m going to give her a 7. 

This adds up to… Hang on one sec… 26. That is not bad at all. So, I score everybody at the end of these episodes just to kind of… It’s a nice way to wrap it up and also just to compare the different stories, how much stuff was in all of them, considering she had a Scandaliciousness score of 1, to get a 26, I think is great. You know who else is a 26? Tits-out Frances Howard, who got all of her points from Scandalicious and very little from Significance. She also had good Schemieness. I think the two of them, that’s where they both matched up. So, she’s sort of mid-range, Æthelflæd, and that’s, I mean… We’re not scoring like who’s the coolest person, who’s the best person, whatever. We’re just kind of seeing on this score, where does everybody land? And I think midway is respectable for her. But I’m also excited to have done a podcast talking about her because I want other people to know about her because she is amazing and unsung and did some really fucking cool stuff. 

So, this is the Vulgar History podcast, my name is Ann Foster. Here’s my little… I have notes, there’s so much stuff to tell you. All these things I want to remember to say. So, first of all, you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter @VulgarHistoryPod on Instagram, @VulgarHistory on Twitter. Right now, actually, on Twitter, because this is posting in March whatever, I’m doing this March Madness thing about who is the most scandalous woman in history. Æthelflæd is one of the people, I think, competing. So, if you go to @VulgarHistory on Twitter, you can follow along with this whole March Madness scenario. Yeah, it should be posting, and there’s still quite a bit of March Madness to go. It’s fun! I’m really interested to see who’s going to win because there’s 32 women competing and they’re all awesome in their own ways. 

If you want to support this podcast, you can go to AudibleTrial.com/VulgarHistory, that’s AudibleTrial.com/VulgarHistory and get a free trial of Audible. There are a lot of— Again, not a lot, a handful of books about Æthelflæd, none of them seem to be on Audible, but I will recommend the book (check) Matilda: Empress, Queen, Warrior by Catherine Hanley, which is about another super cool woman who led armies and was amazing in British history. Perhaps there’s going to be a podcast episode about her… next week, and that’s also a really good book. So, Matilda: Empress, Queen, Warrior by Catherine Hanley, available on Audible.