Gone Medieval - Emma of Normandy

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

Matt Lewis continues Gone Medieval’s special series showcasing Medieval Queens with a look at Emma of Normandy, the Norman-born noblewoman who became the English, Danish, and Norwegian Queen through her marriages to Æthelred the Unready and the Danish King Cnut the Great. After Cnut's death, Emma continued to play an active role in politics during the reigns of her sons by each husband, Edward the Confessor and Harthacnut.Matt finds out more about Emma from historian Elizabeth Norton, author of England's Queens: The Biography and She Wolves: The Notorious Queens of Medieval England. This episode was edited by Joseph Knight and produced by Rob Weinberg.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code MEDIEVAL - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. This is the third of our four-part special on Queens Who Rocked. And this queen has such an incredible story, yet it rarely gets a mention. So I really wanted to devote an episode of this series to her. Emma of Normandy was queen to two kings of England, a mother to two more. But that's only part of her incredible story. We know so much about that story because she also commissioned her own biography to leave us her version of what

life threw at her and what she threw back at life. I actually hunted today's guest across several continents to get this episode. Elizabeth was on holiday when I pestered her about doing this, so I should probably begin with an apology for interrupting her holiday. Elizabeth Norton is a writer, historian and broadcaster who specialises in the queens of medieval and Tudor England. Elizabeth's books include Elfrida, the first crowned queen of England, the life lives of Tudor women and biographies of Margaret Beaufort and the young Elizabeth I, the first, as well as Henry the 8th's wives. Emma of Normandy features in Elizabeth's books, England's queens, the biography, and Shewools, the notorious queens of England. So I'm

looking forward to finding more about Emma. Welcome to God Medieval Elizabeth, and sorry for interrupting your holiday. Thank you very much, and it was no problem at all. You actually caught me at Uluru in Australia. Oh, wonderful. A place the medieval world never even knew existed. No. I wanted to begin with perhaps one of the most interesting and impressive things about Emma, I guess, the biography that she had written about her. How unusual is it for a queen or for any woman at this period to have their own biography commissioned? It's almost unheard of, particularly in England. It's almost completely unheard of. Emma's daughter-in-law commissions the life of King Edward who rests at Westminster, which was not a biography of Queen Edith, but very much praises her. But Emma really goes a whole whole whole.

no shrinking violet and she produces, well she orders to be produced, the encomium M.A. Regina, which basically means in praise of Queen Emma. And it's her take on everything that's happened to her in her life. And it's really setting out just how wonderful she is. And she doesn't hide behind a man, which is unusual for the period. And how careful do we have to be with the encomium as a source? I mean, it is very much Emma's side of the story, isn't it? It is. It is very much Emma's side of the story. And again, she's a big character and very much has her own point of view. So we do have to be very, very cautious with it. And there are a lot of areas where we know for a fact that it diverges quite far from a historical record. Most notably, she doesn't

make any mention of her first marriage to King Ethelred, Ethelred, Ethelred the Unready. Instead, she implies that she's been the wife of King commute. She talks about his family background, his conquest of England, but she doesn't mention Ethelred, which, she causes some problems when she mentions her sons by Ethered in the Encomium. She actually just fudges it a bit and says there are some other sons that happen to live abroad. But we know that she makes some things up. When Keneut married her, her first husband has died, England is busy being conquered. She's actually a prisoner. And the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle very bluntly says that Knoot fetched Emma as his wife. In the encomium, she very much implies that she has been courted.

implies that she's in Normandy at the time and that Canute searches for this most noble wife and he finds her in Normandy and he sends people to woo her and to persuade her to marry him. It's much more likely that she's in fact, Ceneut's prisoner, he wants to marry the Queen of England, he does marry the Queen of England. So you do have to be very, very careful. It's her point of view, it's her political point of view and she very much wants to portray herself in the best light possible. Even bearing all of that in mind, for a biographer, does this source mean that we know more about her than we do about most queens or women during the period? Absolutely. Anglo-Saxon queens are notoriously obscure. In fact, it's quite often said and still said in history books that the Anglo-Saxons

didn't even have queens. And this is based on Acer's life of King Alfred all the way back in the ninth century where he says the kings of Wessex don't make their whites queen. It's rubbish. There are loads of Anglo-Saxon queens, including. of course, Emma, but they are very obscure. Ethelred's first wife, we barely even know her name. We don't really know who she is. And she's married to him for quite a long time. There are plenty of Anglo-Saxon queens where we can't even identify them. Emma's mother-in-law, Elthrith or Elfrida, she leaves a surviving letter behind, but that's it. And this is really the only sources we have for the voices of Anglo-Saxon queens until you get to Emma with her encomium.

and then later Queen Edith with her life of King Edward. So the fact that the Encomian exists at all is wonderful, because yes, it's very inaccurate. But partly, of course, the inaccuracies are there with Emma's approval, which tells us something important about Emma and what message she wants to present. But it also gives us sources about her background to some extent, her relationship with her sons to some extent. And again, she's implying that everything is perhaps rosier than it really was. But it gives us an insight into her psyche and into her mind because she commissions this book.

It's presented to her. She obviously reads it and it's contempt with its contents. And so even especially if you can bear in mind where it diverges from the known history and things like that, it's still such a gift to have, as you say, a woman's own voice, her political take. It allows us to see how she wanted to be remembered by history, how she wanted people to understand the ways that she behaved and why she'd done things. and we just don't get that for virtually any other woman in the period. Not at all. Even post-conquest, we're not getting this sort of female authorship, if you like. It's really her political manifesto. It's written at a point in her life where she is very much trying to cement her position in England.

It's when she is Queen Mother, when her son, Hartha Canute is King of England. She's brought back her son, Edward, as her spare. and she's very much trying to position herself as the power behind the throne. In fact, we can see from the frontist piece for the manuscript, it actually shows Emma enthroned as her author presents the book to her and her two sons peering in, looking on, but very much off to the side. So this is Emma as a central figure, and I cannot think of another similar document for an English queen for absolute centuries.

It's really unique. And you mentioned that the Encomium tells us a little bit about Emma's background. So what do we know about her family when and where is she born? So in common with most royalty in the period, we don't know exactly when she's born. She's the eldest child of Richard I, the First Duke of Normandy, and his wife, Guno. And by wife, it's slightly loose. In the period, marriage is quite loose. It's probably not a church-sanctioned wedding. Guna is a Danish woman of quite high birth, but probably not high enough to be Duchess of Normandy, exactly. So, Emma.

as the eldest child, she's born in the 980s. That's really the best that we can say. Probably earlier in the decade than later, but again, that's the best we can do. Her father dies when she's quite young and her brother Richard succeeds Richard II. And then her mother really comes into her own as a strong character. She rules as regent in Normandy. She's really dominant. And I think we can see where Emma perhaps gets some of her independence from. Yeah, interesting. So she had a strong woman as a model and a template as she was growing up. It's quite interesting given how that affects the way her life plays out. How prestigious then is her marriage to Ethelred the unready? So she's the daughter of a Duke of

Normandy, but she marries a king of England. Why was that match made? Why was it of interest to both parties? So England is one of the wealthiest kingdoms in Europe at that point. It is very, very powerful. It's obviously been under attack by the Vikings on and off for some time. Ethel Red is, of famous as the king who buys off the Vikings, which doesn't work because it simply demonstrates just how Rich England is and they keep coming back. England and Normandy have had quite a troubled relationship. The Normans are, of course, the descendants of the Vikings. The first Duke of Normandy, Emma's ancestor, is a Viking who's permitted to settle in northern France in the hope that they'll then stop raiding France. We know that in 991, Ethelred and Emma's father are in dispute over the

fact that Richard is harboring Viking ships and raiders. So the relationship is fairly troubled. Certainly the Normans are sympathetic towards the Vikings. So it's quite likely that Ethelred makes the first moves for the marriage as a way of trying to bring Emma's brother on side, if you like, so that he won't harbour his enemies. Ethelred is a widower, previously married to probably a noble woman. And actually, most Anglo-Saxon queens aren't foreign royalty in the period. They tend to marry members of their court or the daughters of members of their court. So it's quite an unusual marriage in that sense. Emma is certainly higher-born than most previous queens of England. But the relationship is an unequal one in that Ethelred is much, much older than Emma. And certainly,

he is the one sort of asking for her hand, and she is very much sent to England. And they marry in 10-02. It's interesting that that might be a change in tactic from Ethelred, who, as you say, is famous for buying off the Vikings. And here's an effort to shut down maybe some of their support. and find a different way to prevent the attacks on England. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's quite a shrewd political mood, in that you would hope that it will bring Normandy to more friendly terms with England,

which does seem to be the case. It's quite useful for Ethered that at this moment he has an opening for a queen. You tend to only get one queen in England in the Anglo-Saxon period, whether it is the wife of a king or the mother of a king, and they then overshadow anyone else who potentially could be a queen. So Ethelred's mother, Elthrith, has very much been the queen.

Totally overshadowed his first wife. And she dies not long before Ethelred marries Emma. So I think he is able to offer Emma queenship, which he hadn't been able to do before. And that's quite attracted to the Normans, because of course they're dukes, they're not kings, they're not monarchs. So he is offering something quite important to Emma. And she is crowned, which is unusual for an Anglo-Saxon queen. And given that you mentioned Emma doesn't talk about her time, as Ethelred's wife in her own biography, do we see much evidence of her role as Ethelred's queen?

Do we know how active or how influential she was? So there's very little on Emma when she's married to Ethelred. He is much, much older than her. He's got adult sons. He's a widower. And I think really, although she's crowned as queen, she doesn't find a place politically at his court. She gives birth to three children during the marriage, two sons, Edward and Alfred and then also a daughter Godgifu. And that's about all we know about her. She's not a major witnesser of his charters.

This is how we can tell how influential people are. It's where they witness on the charters. So when a king grants a charter, he'll ask the prominent members of his court to witness it. So the king goes first. And then sometimes the queen, more often actually the bishops and the princes were witnessed before the queen. And Emma just isn't a frequent presence on Ethelred's charters. so it's likely that they don't spend all that much time together, and particularly actually that only three children are born in a marriage that's sort of 14 years duration. And I guess then if they have three children, as prestigious as this match was from a Norman point of view,

they must have always been aware that her children were likely to be junior in terms of succession to Ethelred's existing adult children. So they were always going to be in a slightly precarious position maybe? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there is in fact a Norman claim. that Ethelred promised to make Emma's sons his heirs over his elder children. And there's some precedent for that, actually. If you go back to King Ethelwalth, who's the father of Alfred the Great,

he seems to have promised Charles the Bull, King of the Franks, that when he marries his daughter Judith, then his sons by her will become king rather than his elder sons. So there is some level of precedent for that. The fact that she is crowned would have been quite concerning for Ethelred's elder sons because their mother, as far as we can tell, was not crowned. and in the period, a coronation of a mother before her children were born was seen as making the children more throne worthy. So Emma probably did harbour some ambition for her children to succeed Ethelred.

And had he lived longer and the political system been more stable, I think if Edward, her eldest son, had been an adult when Ethelred died, she might have had a go at it. Again, Ethelred, in fact, was a younger son. His elder brother, Edward became king before him, but only after a considerable succession of disputed. So there is precedent for a younger son of a more legitimate wife potentially becoming king. So I think Emma probably did harbour hopes that Edward would succeed. But I guess you always had to be a little bit wary that her sons could be targets that Ethelred's adult children by his first wife might view them as a threat and that that could put sort of targets on their backs.

Absolutely. It's amazing how many Anglo-Saxon princes die suddenly and young in the Anglo-Saxon period. And there's only really one instance where you can prove it was murder. Well, a couple of instances, Edward the Martyr, is murdered possibly by Ethelred's mother. And Edward, the elder, one of his sons, is murdered by his half-brother King Athelstan. But in general, they just seem to drop dead. And I think it's probably fairly suspicious that this happens. So yes, Emma certainly would have been concerned about her adult step-sons, who are, of course, older than her.

And just before we get Ethel Red into his grave, if he does manage to lose his crown for a period to swain Fortbeard, what happens to Emma and her children during that period? So they all head off to Normandy. England gets conquered by Swain Fortbeard, and Ethelred with Emma and their children flee to Normandy. So this is an advantage of the marriage, as far as Ethelred is concerned.

It's probably an unlooked-for advantage, but it does give him a place of exile. Quite what Emma's family would have thought about the return of the English royal family, I'm not sure. Certainly it is very unpopular in England, and Ethelred is very much seen as having abandoned his kingdom, which of course he has done. He's lucky that Svain Fortbid dies the next year very soon, and he's able to come back, but he has to promise that he'll rule in a better way than he has before.

And Emma, and probably the children also come back at this stage. And so when Ethelred is finally dead, you know, he dies fairly peacefully, given all the trouble that he's had with Vikings, what kind of position is Emma in when it is her stepson, Edmund, who becomes the next king. Did she find herself in a dangerous position under Edmund, or did she find herself on good terms with him? So Ethel Red's death was hugely difficult for Emma. He dies in 10-16.

So her children, they've been married 14 years, her children are not old enough to succeed to the throne. Nobody's going to support them. And he also dies during a major Viking invasion. Canute, the son of Spain Fortbid, very much considers himself to be king of England. And so he is actively invading England at that. stage. Emma seems to have been with Ethel Red when he died. He dies in London. We know that she's

there. And certainly initially, she throws her support behind Edmund Dian's side, her stepson, which is normal. You would expect that. She knows at this stage at her children are not going to be old enough to rule. And Edmund's really her only hope. It's a precarious position. Because as you said, her sons are certainly potentially targets for Edmund, especially as they grow up. It's a difficult position she finds herself in. is also in a difficult position because of Knewit's invasion. In fact, he doesn't survive 10-16. He dies probably in London rather than Oxford, actually, which is often suggested. Emma's also probably still in London at this stage. And this leaves Knewit as the sole king of England.

Does Emma take any steps then to have her children recognised as Edmund's heirs in any way? Because Edmund doesn't have any children, does he? He's got one of the coolest epithets in the history of English kings. Being called Edmund Ironside is very, very cool. But he doesn't have any. Yeah, so do we see Emma at all positioning her sons to perhaps succeed Edmund? So at this stage, I think the position is so precarious that she's just got to go with Edmund. Certainly she will have hoped that her sons would succeed. Edmund's wife is pregnant. She may even give birth before he dies.

She certainly gives birth to twins, boy twins at some point, who are exiled by Knew. They actually turn up in Russia and then Hungary later on. So yes, I suspect she does still hope that her sons would succeed, but I think in 1016, she's pragmatic enough to know that her best hope for the future is to stick with Edmund and see what happens. And then how significant is the decision for Canute to marry Emma? And as you said, it does seem like it's Canute who decides he's going to marry Emma, irrespective of what Emma wants, even if she paints herself as this princess who is sought out by the new king of England. Why does Canute want to marry Emma?

Yeah, so Emma has no choice in it as far as we can see. she is effectively a prisoner in London at the time and Ceneut orders her to be fetched. It's a really important marriage for him because by marrying the queen of England, he to some extent legitimises herself. And of course, he's not the reigning queen, but she is a crowned queen. And it does sort of bring him into the dynasty. In fact, I mean, if you look at family trees of royal history that have been produced over the centuries, in fact, Cunute is almost always included on the family tree due to his marriage to Emma. It just provides enough legitimacy that it's ties him to the royal family. So it's a really important marriage for him. And although it's a

forced marriage for Emma, it's actually quite a good marriage for her. And this is really the point where her life changes from slightly disenfranchised queen, a bit of a non-entity, to becoming really politically important. I guess if we move forward about a century, we get Henry I first marrying Matilda of Scotland for similar reasons. You know, it gets that sense of Englishness of legitimacy into a foreign invading king, if you like. I mean, that's a really good comparison, actually. I think that's exactly right. And of course, Matilda of Scotland is a member of the House of Wessex, the old English dynasty. But it provides you with just enough legitimacy that you can say you haven't just taken a throne by conquest. You've also taken it through marriage.

Henry the 7th, of course, will do that with Elizabeth of York to some extent in the 15th century. It's quite a sound policy. And of course, as far as con you, it's concerned, he's not marrying into the dynasty, except he's marrying the widow of the queen. But it's enough to provide quantitative. continuity and legitimacy. And she's been styled as an English queen since she arrived. Weirdly, to modern ears, the name Emma is considered to be so outlandish when she arrives in England that they change her name to Elf Gaff Gaffoo. So she's always known as Elf Gaffoo in England, although, again, I mean, actually she always refers to herself as Emma. Wasn't Canute's first wife called Elf Gaffaou as well? Yes. Canute is a polygamous, so he has two wives called Elf Gaffaou at the same time, Elf Gaffaouf,

who's an English woman and, of course, Emma, Elf Gaffaoo. I guess it means he can just write all of his love letters to Elf Kufu, and then it doesn't matter who finds them. Yeah, well, he's never going to get the name wrong, is he? So really, it's quite sound. I don't think the two women were very fond of each other. No, but if you're thinking of Biggamy, I guess it's a way to go. Did this marriage save Emma and particularly her children by Ethelred at all?

Or did it put them in a new form of threat? Canute is undoubtedly a threat to Emma's children by Ethelred, regardless of the fact that he's married her. And Emma knows this. Around this time, the children are spirited away, and they go to Normandy. Most likely Emma has arranged this, because Knewit would certainly kill his step-sons.

Edmund Ironside's infant sons, in fact, are sent to Sweden to be murdered. The story goes that the king took pity on them and helps them flee. But again, Knute, it's in his interest to remove the male members of the House of Wessex. So it is a sign that Emma has some autonomy, even at this stage that she's able to remove her sons from this situation.

But it, of course, has a major effect on her relationship with her elder son because she won't see them for about 20 years. I was going to ask as well whether, to some extent, the marriage helped to protect England from perhaps greater ravages of a conquest. But I guess that can't have been any of Emma's concern because she didn't have a choice in the matter anyway. Yeah, I think it helped reconcile the English with Canuta's King. And I think that's a real positive in that less fighting against it.

And he is a very good king of England, which is surprisingly given the origins. I mean, until quite recently he was regularly referred to as Can Eat the Great. That seems to have been dropped slightly in England, at least over the past century. But in general, he was a strong and relatively sort of reasonable ruler. I mean, obviously, he's still a sort of no-slitting biting if you upset him. But I think in general, the marriage does reconcile the English to the fact of the Congress because their queen elf Gaffoo is now still queen. She's a queen of Canute.

And Canute, you know, he's an incredibly impressive figure, as you say, not just King of England, but of Denmark and then of Norway as well. So he controls this kind of Anglo-Scanadian Empire, which Emma kind of becomes queen of all of that as well. So do we see her being more influential during Canute's reign than she was during Ethelreds? Emma is incredibly influential under Canute. She is quite a bit older than him. She's probably around 30 when she marries him and he's much,

much younger. And there are signs of her being able to dominate the relationship to some extent. He relies on her to some extent for his knowledge of England because, of course, he is an invader. He's a conqueror. He's Danish. So I think this is where she's able to come into her own. And although initially in the marriage, she witnesses quite low down his charter witness list, actually within a few years, she's right there next to the king, which shows how important she is. It's been referred to almost as a co-regency to some extent. She's very influential on depictions from the period. She's right there next to commute. And he's quite an enlightened figure for his time, actually,

in that he sends his first wife, Elfkathu of Northampton, off to Norway to reign in Norway on behalf of their young son, fully intending Elfifu to be the regent of Norway. So he's okay with female rule, which is quite interesting for the period, actually, because certainly Ethelred has very much kept Emma away from power. So I think this is the point where she gets her taste of power and political influence. And we can see it in the encomium.

She entirely omits the marriage to Ethelred. It probably wasn't a very positive period in her life. But she's very proud of the fact that she's Ceneut's wife and of her role as the queen during that period. And I think really we should listen to her own words on this. And actually she really is saying this is the point in my life that I want to promote, that I want people to know about. So I think that's really significant. Yeah, absolutely.

We said it's so rare to have that voice that it would be crazy not to listen to it and appreciate what it tells us when we do have it. I guess Emma was in an unusual position as well in the sense that she's acceptable to the English as Ethel Red's widow, but her Norman connections also give her Viking connections that Canute could maybe relate to as well.

So she's perhaps quite a good intermediary figure. To some extent, although I think the presence of her sons in Normandy does slime. she mightly skew her relationship with her homeland. And we can see later on she's actually forced into exile after Cunut's death. And she goes to Flanders rather than Normandy, which I suspect is representative of her relationship with her family. I think the relationship with her English sons is troubled. And we can see this later on and we'll come to it later in the story. But I think by marrying Cunuch, she very much has set herself apart from her English sons, Edward and

Alfred. And to some extent, I think that probably does skew the relationship with Normandy. So how does Emma fare then after Knoot's death? Because again, she has to see a stepson on the throne rather than her own children. How does she manage that situation? Yeah. So Emma has given birth to a son by Knoot, Hatha Knoot. And it is probably Knoot's intention. It's certainly Emma's intention that Hatha Knew will succeed to the ancestral kingdom of Denmark and also to England. And that does. seems to the intention. Arthur Knut's actually already in Denmark when his father dies and is able to quickly take possession of the kingdom. Canute has sons by his first wife, Elskofuufu,

Northampton, who's still alive and really doesn't like Emma. And one of them, Harold is in England when Canute dies. And Emma is powerful enough that she's able to prevent Harold's accession for a time. She's able to get the Wittan, the Anglo-Saxon Royal Council, to agree that, that Hatha Knoot really is the king, but that Harold can rule as regent until Hatha Knewch comes back from Denmark. So that's quite important that they reject this elder son of Knoot in favour of her more legitimate son, as she would say, who's in Denmark. However, Hatha Knoot then doesn't come back. And 10-36 a year after Knoot dies, it's looking difficult for Emma, because if Hatha Knoot doesn't come back at some point, Harold is going to be crowned as king. She's been involved

in a smear campaign against him. There are claims that he is the son of a shoemaker, not the son of King Canute. They clearly don't get on very well. And it's at this point that a letter is written purporting to be from Emma to her sons in Normandy. And it basically says, you need to come to England and claim your birthright. I want one of you to come over. And she doesn't specify which one. Emma will later claim that this letter is a forgery. It probably isn't a forgery, but because the way things turn out, it's not something she necessarily wants to remember, I think, or, you know, accept that has happened. Because unfortunately for Emma, both her sons set out from Normandy separately.

Edward comes to her at Winchester. We don't know anything about the reunion. It's probably somewhat tense after 20 years. Alfred, who is the younger son, hasn't got the Norman support that Edward has. So he becomes independently and by a more circuitous route. And unfortunately for Alfred, he is intercepted by Godwin, who is, of course, the father of Harold Godwinson, and he's working for Harold.

Alfred is captured, he's blinded, and he dies following the blinding. When Edward discovers what's happened to his brother, he immediately returns to Normandy, leaving Emma completely unprotected. She's then exile to Flanders, and Harold Harefoot, her stepson, becomes king of England. It's all hugely confusing, but Harold becomes king in 1037, leaving Emma really in quite a precarious position. But I guess amongst that tragedy and the way that it ends up quite precariously, it's interesting that she was able to hold off a king of England from being created. You know, she was powerful enough as a woman and a former queen to hold the wit on behalf of her sons. Absolutely. It shows how powerful she is, that it takes Harold Harefoot a couple of years to be crowned, because he's the only,

son of Ceneut, who is in England, and Hatha Ceneut really is showing no signs of coming to claim the crown. So it's really Emma. She's incredibly important and incredibly powerful, and I think she doesn't get enough credit for this period, certainly with the negativity over the death of her son Alfred, because of the letter, she certainly is considered blameworthy in that, although, of course, she can have had no idea that her son was going to be murdered. But I think it does show just how powerful she is. And the fact that she contacts her son in Normandy shows herself, shows Emma trying to make a play for the throne. If Hatha Canute won't come, then she's going to put one of her other sons on the throne. But Hatha Canute does end up as king of England, and then he's followed by another one of her

sons as well. So how does that play out? Yes. So Emma is in Flanders, and eventually Hatha Ceneut comes to her there, and they sort of agree they're going to invade England and depose Harold. It's around that point that Harold actually drops dead and half the canute is able to land in England with Emma and be acknowledged as king in 1040. So she's finally got one of her sons on the throne. It's her youngest son. He's actually still a teenager. So he's very young and she's clearly the power behind the throne doesn't know very much about England. It's certainly not about ruling in England. So again, Emma is able to step forward and say, I've been queen here for quite a while. It's nearly 40 years. Let me take over. It's at this point that she commissions her encomium. And it's also at this

point that she really does take steps to ensure her future because she's able to persuade half the commute to invite Edward, her eldest son, back from Normandy. In Comium, Emma presents this as almost a co-regency, the two sons ruling together with their mother's advice. But it's certainly her attempt to ensure her survival, her political survival, because if something happens to half the commute, then she's got this other son in reserve who's ready to take the throne. And something does happen to half a commute. He dies in 1042 quite suddenly. Emma seems quite good at making the most of the fact that she has experience of things that the Kings of England don't have. You know, she could help Canute. She can help

Hartha Canute who's been off in Scandinavia. And then presumably she can help Edward, who spent the last couple of decades in Normandy and doesn't know England very well either. Absolutely. I mean, when you look at the royal family at this stage, she's the one who's there. By the 1040, she's been queen for nearly 40 years. Kings have come and gone. Sons have come and gone. But Emma's always there. So although she's Norman by birth, she's very much become an English queen. And she's positioned herself quite well. Really for her, the problem comes with the fact it's a personal issue.

And it's that Edward is not very keen on her. He's obviously spent a very long time in exile in Normandy. And he seems to have blamed his mother for this. He certainly later claims that he felt she didn't do enough for him during her marriage to commute, which is possibly true, but it was a difficult position. and at the very least he survives, which is something that wouldn't have necessarily have looked likely when he became king. Yeah, I mean, it feels like a great big soap opera, isn't it?

Where, you know, he's blaming her potentially for his exile, but also the death of Alfred and all of that kind of thing. And she's obviously written a book saying it wasn't my fault, I was doing my best. There seems to be a whole lot of family drama going on around all of this. But does she find herself excluded to an extent when Edward becomes king then? Yeah, I mean, this is the point really where matters don't go well for her. She's had to throw her lot in with Edward, and she must, of course, be aware that the relationship's difficult. He's obviously much more mature than Arthur can meet as well, and she really hasn't seen him very much since his childhood.

Not long after he becomes king, Edward actually deprives Emma of her possessions and sends her into retirement. And this is on account of the fact that she hadn't done enough for him during his earlier life. And this is something she's not able to come back from. In fact, she remains in retirement. She's still present at times. She does appear at court occasionally. She's on the charter witness list, but in general she seems to have been retired and eventually she dies in 1052.

This Edward is Edward the Confessor as well, so this saintly figure was actually quite mean to his mum. Yeah, I mean, there's Edward the Confessor. It's barely debatable how saintly he was. I think partly that rests on the account of his wife, Queen Edith, who commissions the life of King Edward, who rests at Westminster. I think there's somewhat a debate. I mean, I always think it's suspicious how many people drop dead suddenly at feasts around

Edd with the Confessor. His half-brother, Arthur Cunuch, stands up to toast at a wedding and then drops dead. And then later on, Edward's father-in-law, El Godwin, also drops dead while eating at a feast. So I think Edward is possibly a bit more political and a slightly nastier when we give him credit for. Yeah, and maybe a bit more Anglo-Saxon English in that he's obviously picking up that old game of making sure airs don't survive very long and rivals are mysteriously banishing and dying unexpectedly. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a huge amount more to sort of the machinations of the Anglo-Saxon royal dynasty

than the sources give credit to. And there's a lot of politicking going on. And Edward is a political figure. He holds the crown for more than 20 years. He's able to position himself as a credible candidate for the throne in spite of the fact that his dynasty has been gone in England for some time and he's been raised in Normandy. Partly that's due to his mother, but also he is clearly quite a politician himself. I'd say he takes after his mother more than his father. in that regard. And Emma's physical remains, I mean, they undergo a little afterlife of their own, don't they? People can still go and see where they're located today, or at least where we think they are. Absolutely. Emma dies at Winchester, and she is buried at Winchester Cathedral, along with, in fact, with

Canute and Hartha Canute. In the English Civil War, or the War of the Three Kingdoms in the 17th century, the mortuary chests and the bones of the Anglo-Saxon royal family are broken up by parliamentary soldiers and scattered around the cathedral. And they're sort of all shoved back into six mortuary chests, all a jumble. And actually, that's where you can see her, so you can see her mortuary chest. Interestingly, they were actually analysed a few years ago. And actually they picked out the bones of someone and they think is Emma. She's the only mature woman in the mortuary chest.

And actually a replica of her bones are on display in the cathedral, which is worth going to look at. It's not certain it's Emma. They haven't been DNA tested, at least. They weren't, as far as I know, they weren't able to get usable DNA from the bones. And in fact, there were more individuals in the mortuary chest than they thought there would be. So there are a number of unidentified individuals. So it's likely that this mature woman is Emma, but I think it's not certain. It would be lovely if at some point it could be proven definitively to be Emma,

but it's really the best we have. But certainly, she's a rare example of an Anglo-Saxon Queen where we know where she's actually buried at least, and it probably is her in the mortuary chest. Yeah. And aside from that kind of physical afterlife, what would you consider to be Emma's legacy? She seems to me to have been someone who was simultaneously a great unifier, but a divisive figure as well. Yeah, I mean, I would agree with that. I think Emma was out for Emma to some extent.

I mean, see this in the Encomium. It's the Encomian Emma Regina. It's not the incommium for King Canute, for example. She hasn't hidden behind a man. I think her ultimate goal is to ensure Emma's. continuing prosperity and political dominance. She clearly likes being queen. But I think her legacy is interesting and quite wide-ranging. Partly her legacy is the Norman conquest, because it is through her that William the conqueror has whatever tiny claim to the English throne he had.

He's her great nephew and is able to claim the throne as King Edward's kinsman. So that's one legacy. But I think the more important legacy is in her queenship. She is the first undoubtedly outedly, internationally prominent queen of England. And she very much sets a scene for how Queen Consorts, how powerful Queen Consorts can be. The Norman period will seem to very powerful Queen Consorts and the early Plantagenet period. And I think to some extent they are basing themselves on Emma.

She very much sets the precedent. She follows a powerful Queen Consort, her mother-in-law, Elthrith. But actually, Emma really is hugely politically dominant for such a long period. and it's an international level, not just because she's a foreign princess, but also she's active in northern France, she's active in Flanders, she's active in the Scandinavian world to some extent. So I think she's a really good example of a powerful queen. And I think if anyone ever says to you that the Anglo-Saxon didn't have queens, just say Queen Emma. I mean, a truly international figure who is incredibly politically powerful, who writes her own biography and leaves behind her own story. Why don't we talk? talk about Emma Moore. And again, it's unfortunate. It's a symptom as a Norman conquest. When you look at books on the Kings and Queens of England, they start with William I. It's very rare to break through the Norman conquest. And to some extent, that's our tragedy in that it means that we don't think about these hugely important early medieval figures. You can't really tell

the story of England without looking at the Anglo-Saxon period. And there are some really big names there. There's Alfred the Great. There's King Athelstan, the first king of England. England. But I would say there's also Queen Emma. And I think she is an overlooked figure, partly because she is not English by birth, partly because she's female, largely because she's pre-1066. But I think if we are telling the pre-conquest history of England, you have to include Queen Emma. Well, hopefully we're doing her justice now and we're bringing her a bit more to the fore for listeners. But thank you very, very much for joining us, Elizabeth. It's been great to talk about Emma of Normandy. Oh, you're welcome. It's been an absolute pleasure, and I'm really

glad to see Emma being brought out of the shadows. Absolutely. Elizabeth Books, England's queens, the biography, and Shewaves, the Notorious Queens of England, will tell you even more about Emma, as well as plenty of other interesting queens. And Elizabeth's other books are well worth looking out too. There are new episodes of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please do join us next time for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us wherever you get your podcast from and to tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. If you get a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us. anywhere that you listen to your podcasts, really does help new listeners to find the show. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis, and we've just gone medieval with history hits.