Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women's Power in Eleventh-century England

by Pauline Stafford

Through detailed study of these women the author demonstrates the integral place of royal queens in the rule of the English kingdom and in the process of unification by which England was made.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, British Literature, Medieval, Medieval History, European History

Paperback

First published July 1, 1997

About the author

Professor Emerita of early medieval history at the University of Liverpool. She has specialised on British history at and prior to the Norman conquest and has a particular interest in elite Anglo-Saxon women.

Reviews

[G. Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant scholarly study of the lives of Queen Emma and Queen Edith, but not the easiest read. A vast amount of detail is included here, and the facts, figures and writing are all interesting, but this is a book written for scholars and historians, I felt, and at times it felt a bit like wading through deep water. That being said, this is still an extraordinary book and one well worth reading if you are interested in Queenship, power, and the Anglo-Saxons

[Michael Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though women as rulers weren’t part of either the Anglo-Saxon or Norman traditions, two English women in particular changed things. Neither was a sovereign ruler but both had personalities of strength and authority. Emma (Ælfgifu after her marriage), sister of Duke Richard II of Normandy (though she carried a Frankish birth-name), was the queen first of Æthelred "the Redeless," Saxon King of England, and then of Canute, the Danish conqueror of the island. Edith, daughter of Godwine, Earl of Wessex, furthered her family’s dynastic ambitions by becoming the queen of King Edward the Confessor, and thereby Emma’s daughter-in-law. But this volume is considerably more than a dual biography, and more even than the "gender study" it intends to be. It delves deeply into the dynastic power structures of 11th century ruling families and the nature of royal patronage which helped keep rulers in power. The prosopographical appendix and the extensive bibliography also are excellent.

[Kevin Purdy · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I rated this book only on topic and writing skills, it would have easily gotten five stars. I'm a major fan of anything that happened anywhere within a century of 1066. So I looked forward to reading this book with great anticipation; and I wasn't disappointed. It is a very good book but falls just short of being a great read.

I was highly impressed by the research that went into this book and take my hat off to Pauline Stafford for a job well done!!

[Peter Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and women's power in 11th century England, by Pauline Stafford, 2004, 279 pages plus appendices,

This is a work in three distinct parts:

The stories
These are a great précis of the lifes concerning Emma and Edith. These are short, detailed and comprehensive. They're the sort of guides that could save someone tasked with actually reading them a lot of time and effort. These will be treasured by undergrads in a hurry for years to come.

The structures
These chapters form the bulk of the book and they go into what being a queen actually entailed with sections on the faces of the Queen (wife, mother, etc), family, household, queenship and fluctuating power. These were more of a mixed bag, with some more interesting than others. Edith's household and the political dimension of church donations were both solid, but the section on royal naming conventions was awesome.

The lives
The final section dealt with a run through of the events that are told through both books. These were independent histories, rather than a heavily annotated account of what was recorded and what the background behind, say line 25, was. I feel that that approach could have worked well. However, they are still both very useful.

This is a good book and one well worth reading, but I'd be lying if I said that I enjoyed all of it uniformly. I think that this book would have benefited from more ruthless editing as there were quite a few areas where there seemed to be a lot of words and something interesting hiding amongst them. With more concision this book would have been much improved. Stafford's paper in Mercia (Brown and Farr Eds) was very tightly worded and I found that to be an absolutely gripping read. If she had taken the same approach to all of this book then it would have been compelling reading.

There's a tantalising footnote suggesting that the political upheavals of the middle of the first decade of the 11th century had their roots in the fallout of Emma's arrival in 1002. It seems that those who were clients in some way of the former queen were if not, immediately vulnerable, certainly in a weaker position that could then be exploited by rivals or those wishing to take advantage of this change in contacts. Whilst this isn't the sole reason for the various blindings, deaths and other bits of unpleasantness, it is still very interesting.

My copy of this book wasn't printed very well. On a few pages the ink was a lighter shade than usual and the words didn't stand out properly. In addition to this the covers have a nasty way of bending, so this is a book that you want to rest something else on top of to try to rectify the curvature. Both of these were irritating rather than problematic.

[Julie Yates · Rating 4 out of 5]

** Absolutely need to have a strong understanding of Anglo-Saxon history in order to get anything out of the narrative
** This is not for the causal reader, but students of women's studies or a specific slice of English medieval history
** For the causal reader who already knows about the Encomium Emmæ Reginae and Vita Ædwardi Regis will find value in: chapters 4, part 2 of chapter 5, Chapter 6 and Part III
** Excellent biographies of Emma and Edith in Part III (Emma's is better)
** Overall a slog but worth it for Part III

Stafford's goal: The story of Emma and Edith is thus told 3 different ways:
Prologue (3 pages) Once briefly as a set of facts without interpretation
Part I The Stories: secondly through the various contemporary and near-contemporary chronicles of the 11th Century [Mainly a retelling of their sponsored works; they are not mentioned often in the chronicles. 22 Pages.]
Part III: Finally in the author's reconstructed and interpreted late 20th century narrative (73 pages)

The Bulk of the work (154 pages) is Part II: a study of the structures of 10th and 11th century queenship. “Neither Emma nor Edith can properly be understood without attention to the structures and frameworks within which they lived and to the roles and identities which they, as individual women, combined.” These chapters are not specific to Emma or Edith – and you absolutely must have a strong understanding of the reigns of English Kings of Athelstan (924-930) on (*especially to understand chapter 6 and 7)
3 The Faces of the Queen
4 Family: Structures and Ideals
5 Household, Land and Patronage
6 Queen and Queenship
7 The Fluctuating Power of the Queen: Witnessing and Identities

I found Family: Structures and Ideals interesting; Queen and Queenship was interesting – especially the part about the changes in the Queen’s ordination rite and a brief discussion of Regency (Which I felt could have been explored more fully IE Edith and Edgar AEteling
The Flucutating power of the Queen was fascinating because I love using data points (How many charters and where in the list of witnesses the queen signs) to explore the power of the queen

Part III, the actual biographies, was very informative and I wish I had more or less skipped most of this book and only read those.

Source: Interlibrary Load (from Texas)

Absolutely great quote:
Yet Emma had been a powerful woman. Reduction to widowhood was an acceptable and defensible way to treat her, but the pretext and the scale of the attack suggest that there was more to her fall, and that more was needed to remove such a woman ... Not all widows required three earls and a king to make them go gracefully. Nothing measures Emma's power like her leaving of it. pg 250

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not for the faint-hearted!!

I am a huge fan of this era and this topic, so I had lots of background knowledge going into my reading. I was pleased that it provided me with new information and interesting presentation. But even with that interest and background knowledge, I found the book to be a bit daunting at times.

If you're a fan of 11th century England, this book should go on your must-read list. It is well written & filled with fascinating details!!

[Andreas Larsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

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[M F]

Obviously I read this for an essay and not just for fun because you know how I feel about non-fiction (I struggle). Reasonably engaging though, and helped me get through a supervision. A LOT of names to keep track of, which I found fairly challenging; I'm bad at that kind of thing.

Also, fun fact: this book disappears from libraries at an unusual rate. It was missing from the Cambridge UL but also from UCL's main library, despite supposedly being available / not on loan. Fortunately I eventually got it when someone returned it to the EFL. UCL have now reported it missing, though. Mysterious, that.