ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the transmission of West Saxon queens and queenship into later texts. Æthelflæd, Eadgifu, and Ælfthryth all leave legacies in the historical record of the post-Conquest Middle Ages. Æthelflæd is highly regarded in the Gesta regum Anglorum of William of Malmesbury, as is Eadgifu in Vita Æthelwoldi. Ælfthryth, in contrast, as one of the most obvious beneficiaries of her (soon to be sainted) stepson’s murder, came to be characterised in Passio S. Eadwardi regis et martyris as an archetypal ‘wicked queen’. However, the three queens at the centre of this book are not alone among the royal woman of the years 850–1000 to pass into the pages of Anglo-Norman histories, hagiographies, and literature. This chapter traces the legacies of those women who have prominent roles in such texts, identifying how those legacies differ from the historical record, and what influences are at play in such characterisations.
