00:00:00.000Hello, my name is Anne Foster, and you are listening to the Vulgar History Podcast. This
00:00:15.840is a feminist women's history comedy podcast. And this is season two. The season's theme0.99
00:00:21.440is women leaders in history and the men who whined about it. And thus far, we've been
00:00:27.320looking at basically women who roman men got angry at for being cool and women who also killed a lot0.98
00:00:36.180of people but the people they killed it's sort of like everyone was killing everyone so we looked0.90
00:00:41.480at cleopatra we looked at agrippina we looked at bodica it was sort of a situation where it's like
00:00:47.320everyone is killing everyone so the fact they killed people isn't like super weird for the time
00:00:52.260But 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 were 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.
00:01:17.400We're staying in the island of what we now call United Kingdom, which is where Boudica was, but lots of things have passed.
00:01:25.660So just imagine like if this was a movie, there'd be sort of a montage of, you know, years going by and like Romans being there and then Romans being driven out and then Vikings coming in.
00:01:37.020You know, things being built, things being abandoned, like 800 years pass.
00:01:41.420Think about what it was like 800 years ago from now was the year 1200.
00:01:45.600yeah god i don't know was the year 1220 so that's an incredibly long expanse of time so just just
00:01:53.680know that lots of things have happened a couple highlights include christianity being introduced
00:01:59.240to the again the island that we call now the united kingdom the england the country you know
00:02:04.840now is england um bodica's iseni tribe not really a thing anymore romans long gone and what we have
00:02:14.080now are basically, we have the Anglo-Saxons, we have the Vikings, and those are kind of the main
00:02:20.580groups of people we're going to be looking at today. But guess what? There's lots of little
00:02:23.840subgroups within those groups. No one got along with anyone. And we're going to learn today
00:02:29.820about a woman whose name is Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians. And there's a lot of really
00:02:36.500interesting Anglo-Saxon type names in here. They all start with that letter that's like
00:02:41.360a and e smushed together which i believe is pronounced like an a that's what i'm going with
00:02:47.200but you'll see in the the show notes these names all just look really cool visually so athelflad
00:02:54.020is who we're going to be learning about and let's get to it so a little history lesson so prior to
00:03:01.880the year 927 and again we're like fully in ad territory all the the before the year zero stuff
00:03:09.880that's all behind us years go in the expected chronological order that's what's going on so
00:03:15.840the area now known as england prior to 927 so in 927 it all joined up to become englandy you know
00:03:23.480an oldie time writing with lots of vowels but before that it was seven kingdoms which were
00:03:29.100called east anglia essex kent mercia northumbria sussex and wessex these have been founded around
00:03:36.160the fifth century so this is again like bodica was around the year like 50 this is we're talking
00:03:41.840the fifth century 400s like so much time has passed just clothes have changed um languages
00:03:48.860have changed the way that people fight wars new weapons just like a lot of stuff has happened and
00:03:54.800changed but basically these places the seven kingdoms and you're getting if you're getting
00:03:58.480sort of game of thrones-ish vibes guess what george r r martin just took all the cool bits
00:04:03.100from every era of history and made Game of Thrones out of dragons. And that's what it is.
00:04:07.320I keep rediscovering as I find new things in history that are exactly like Game of Thrones.
00:04:12.520So anyway, we have these seven kingdoms. England does not even exist at this point. So these
00:04:18.240seven kingdoms have been founded by immigrants from the Germany slash Holland area. So they0.99
00:04:25.200were the Saxons because the Germany slash Holland area was Saxony, but they came over to the island
00:04:31.820and they became the Anglo-Saxons and that's where that term comes from. So these groups obviously as
00:04:37.920illustrated by every time in history when there's been a group various groups of people sharing an
00:04:42.960area they did not get along with each other so they're all basically at war with each other
00:04:48.060constantly and then just to add some more drama so the Romans long gone the Romans had left behind
00:04:53.900a lot of their old infrastructure though so there's still a lot of sort of towers and battlements and
00:04:58.880stuff that these groups could kind of use for themselves as well but in the absence of roman
00:05:03.320invaders guess who comes viking invaders from norway and denmark and they kind of just blitz
00:05:09.200through and they realize like oh cool there's these seven kingdoms they're all fighting against0.52
00:05:14.480each other so we the vikings can just they're not going to team up against the vikings so the
00:05:19.060vikings are able to sort of divide and conquer which is exactly what the romans did so long
00:05:23.740history of the different groups on that island not getting along very well foreshadowing to the
00:05:30.700year 2020 who's to say anyway so these norwegian and danish vikings came in and they just started
00:05:38.020taking seizing and taking control so they started taking over towns they're taking over land they
00:05:43.600started taking over property the farms if the anglo-saxons at this point have been able to set
00:05:48.200aside their differences and team up together like bodica had gotten all the warring tribes to team
00:05:53.420up together. Maybe they could have stopped the Vikings from becoming quite as widespread, but0.54
00:05:58.300everybody was much too stubborn for that. So by the time our story starts, the 9th century, which
00:06:03.900is the years 800 to 899, 9th century. So five of these seven kingdoms were almost entirely conquered
00:06:11.560by the Vikings. The Vikings had taken over most of what we would now call England. The only bit
00:06:17.780was not conquered was the kingdom of Wessex. And that is where Aethelflaed was born. And she is
00:06:24.940today's heroine. So she was born around the year 870. This is the sort of time when everybody's
00:06:32.340too busy kind of being at war constantly with each other to bother taking a lot of written
00:06:37.940records of the birth dates of people, especially young girls. But we know about her, well, because
00:06:45.500of what she's going to do but also we know kind of around when she was born because she is the
00:06:49.340oldest child born to the king so her father is called alfred the great and he was the king of
00:06:56.140wessex her mother is called eelswith and she was from mersia mersia which is one of the other seven
00:07:03.280kingdoms so the two of them had gotten married and that kind of meant they represented the
00:07:07.520that there was a what do you call it in survivor an alliance between the wessex and the mersians
00:07:15.480And she was so she was half Wessex, half merchant. Her name, Athelflad, by the way. So it's a combination of two words. Athel means noble and flad means beauty. So her name means basically noble beauty. And 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.
00:07:39.980She was also the eldest of the children of the king.
00:07:44.480So she had some sisters, some brothers, and one of her younger brothers.
00:07:48.980So four years younger than her was a boy named Edward, who's later going to become known as King Edward the Elder.
00:07:55.100And unlike in every story so far we've done this season, so Aethelflaed had a good relationship with her family.
00:08:08.380there was no incest people weren't poisoning each other it's like truly 800 years have passed from
00:08:14.540just sort of the non-stop chaos of of the ancient roman stuff we were looking at before like things
00:08:19.580are a bit things are a bit calmer in general there's some people are going to die in this
00:08:24.240story at convenient times but the culture is such that no one even now suspects that
00:08:29.480people were secretly poisoning each other it's just that's kind of the setting for this story
00:08:34.480So we can all just kind of calm down a little bit. They could kind of calm down a little bit vis-a-vis. Are they going to be murdered by their family members? They couldn't calm down in the sense of constant Viking attacks.
00:08:45.340So also by this point, Christianity was popular in this area, and it had been for a couple hundred years.
00:08:55.400So her family were Christians, which is notable for perhaps that's part of why they're not all murdering each other.
00:09:03.140Their branch of Christianity was one where maybe you didn't poison each other all the time.
00:09:08.820But basically, it also meant that they celebrated Christmas every year.
00:09:12.500And that's important because the first, we don't know a lot about Aethelflaed's early, early years, but we know when she was eight years old, during the Christmas celebrations, the royal family was attacked by Vikings.
00:09:24.400so she and her family had to flee for their lives and just bear in mind this is december
00:09:28.980in the year 878 in england and i don't think december in england in the year 2020 is especially
00:09:39.660a great place to be weather wise i think it's a little chilly a little messy snow and slush so
00:09:46.340this is you know not a great situation for them so they were they had to flee they're fleeing the
00:09:53.140vikings they could be killed at any point uh it was cold and they ended up running out in sort
00:09:57.680of marshlands like sort of swamp and they they made their way out so this is one would imagine
00:10:03.480formative experience for eight-year-old ethel flad and her four-year-old brother edward and
00:10:08.260the others her father alfred though is a skilled negotiator and he's able to broker a peace deal
00:10:13.220with the vikings so they sort of agreed that wessex the kingdom where they all live was
00:10:18.100divided in two. So Albert was in charge of the Western part, Western Wessex, and the Eastern
00:10:23.580part was absorbed into the Viking territories, which was called the Danelaw. So sort of the
00:10:30.240Danish Vikings land altogether called the Danelaw. So Wessex divided in two, but they got half of it.
00:10:36.880So, and they also weren't murdered. So things are looking okay, considering the alternatives
00:10:43.940at this point so what alfred did though after after escaping with his family's life he started
00:10:51.400reinforcing the leftover roman settlements like the buildings and stuff in his part of western
00:10:57.720wessex so he like fixed up these old roman walls and structures and built new similar ones to sort0.96
00:11:04.340of to better protect themselves from the vikings because he knew because this is what was going on
00:11:08.880If you've watched The Lost Kingdom, the TV show, like people, 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.
00:11:24.300So these fortified towns he was working on were known as burrs, which is an oldie time word that would go on to be today's contemporary word boroughs, boroughs, like the boroughs of New York City.
00:11:37.680And Alfred, during his time doing this, he completed about 33 of these fortified towns.
00:11:43.980Another important bit of background information is that Alfred, sorry, Alfred, education was really important to him.
00:11:51.000So he was super religious. He was very serious about his piety and his spirituality and also about education and scholarship. And he thought that 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.
00:12:10.200So he set up a national program. And again, this is the year, what, like 800, whatever. This is when we think about like 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 everything. 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.
00:12:34.060So he set up a national program to encourage schooling for all of the children of Wessex.
00:12:38.300So not just like not just his children, but definitely including his children, but all the children, boys and girls.
00:12:44.420This 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.
00:12:53.480So that being said, so Athelflaed was able to get this really great education living in a situation where her father thought that scholarship was so important.
00:13:04.440He brought in male and female tutors to tutor his, all of his children, his daughters, his son.
00:13:10.620So she was given the same educational opportunities as her brother.
00:27:44.720Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust.
00:27:50.180Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world,
00:27:54.360praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight.
00:27:57.640But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins.
00:28:01.940This is old school adventuring at its most cruel.
00:28:05.120Your torch ticks down in real time, and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job.
00:28:11.320This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make.
00:28:18.860This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back.
00:28:23.600Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on youtube.com slash the glass cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day.
00:28:34.160See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.
00:28:41.280Welcome to the realms of peril and glory.
00:28:46.520Explore the mechanically magical vistas of Vale,
00:28:50.600the paranormal mysteries of liminal London,
00:30:21.920Also, and this is as per every previous episode in this season, Coin Corner.
00:30:28.340like i think i need to make this an official part of every episode because there's always this coin
00:30:32.960moment she coins minted for chester and they didn't have her face on them but what they had
00:30:38.480on them was the shape of a building potentially a church which kind of solidified that she was
00:30:43.020building these buildings she was athelflaed she was the builder she was the daughter of alfred
00:30:47.100who had also done building like through building beautiful buildings she was getting everybody
00:30:53.000together and fighting off the Vikings. So in the year 909, the brother-sister warrior team of
00:30:58.960Aethelflaed and Edward, they combined their forces. So Wessex people with Mauritian forces
00:31:03.500went up to Northumbria to try and retake some land from the Danish Vikings. This campaign lasted for
00:31:10.560five weeks and ended successfully. Aethelflaed and Edward victoriously, they reclaimed this land
00:31:16.700and they also reclaimed what was on this land, which was some relics of St. Oswald of Northumbria.
00:31:23.000so a note on that so saintly relics if you don't know are sort of bits of bones like literally
00:31:31.000organs or like bits of the body of dead saints were thought to have sort of supernatural powers
00:31:38.560so saint oswald and this was back in the time where it's like saint oswald had lived not that
00:31:43.320long ago just like um i forget how long ago a couple hundred years ago anyway so saint oswald
00:31:49.120was a former Northumbrian king who had been killed by Mercians years ago.
00:31:53.820And so he was a really important saint to the Mercian people.
00:31:59.000And for a monarch to be in possession of saintly relics sort of meant,
00:32:03.300like if you had them, like it's sort of they had these supernatural powers,
00:32:06.760but you having them sort of meant good things to you.
00:32:09.740It meant that your reign was blessed, like to have them gave you sort of superpowers as well.
00:32:16.840So Aethelflaed 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 sort of blessed she was.
00:32:27.400The relics of St. Oswald specifically were taken to an abbey in Gloucester, which was renamed.
00:32:32.640So this was an abbey that Aethelflaed had had built originally, I believe, as part of her sort of city building stuff.
00:32:39.440So they renamed the Abbey St. Oswald's Priory in honor of the relics that were there.
00:32:47.600So the Danish Vikings, mad about this.
00:32:50.340They were mad about Northumbria being attacked, retaken.
00:32:53.940They were mad about the St. Oswald relics being taken.
00:32:56.340So in 910, a bunch of them came, climbed onto a boat and came sailing down the river for some revenge pillaging in Myrcia.
00:33:03.200they thought that they would be safe to do this because edward king of wessex was off somewhere
00:33:08.600else attacking some other groups of vikings but edward had found out about the plan edward and
00:33:13.800athelflaed were just like i'm really impressed with both of them they're really good intel and
00:33:18.520they're always prepared for everything it's it's great sort of cleopatra-esque so edward found out
00:33:22.720that the vikings were doing this and he dispatched his troops to intercept the vikings on their way
00:33:26.420back he was able to connect with athelflaed so this is again we're having a brother sister team
00:33:30.720where each is on a different part of the country worked to cover twice as much ground so she sent
00:33:36.800along some immersion forces as backup and all this meant that the vikings trip back home was
00:33:41.480unexpectedly interrupted by this army the brother sister army and the ensuing battle became known
00:33:46.860as the battle of tetenhall throughout all of this um so edward's away ethel red the husband is sick
00:33:53.240back in london so ethel fled may have led the troops in this battle whether she she might not
00:33:59.200have been out there like literally fighting with a sword but just kind of being there on a horse
00:34:02.820like being sort of a rallying cry because the wessex people loved her because she was the
00:34:07.180daughter of alfred the sister of the current king edward the mercians loved her because she was half
00:34:11.840mercian she's lady of the mercians so just being there sort of a figurehead very like elizabeth
00:34:16.340the firsty of her um and at this battle the anglo-saxons soundly defeated the danish vikings
00:34:22.920inflicting thousands of casualties including three of the main northumbrian viking leaders
00:34:27.860which was devastating to them to lose three of their main leaders this victory was major it ended
00:34:33.540the threat of danish vikings in the north and meant that ethelflaed and edward were now able
00:34:37.780to turn their attention to drive out the rest of the vikings basically and to to reclaim all the
00:34:44.260seven kingdoms as a single country under their rule of course shortly after this battle um ethel
00:34:51.020red her husband died and things become much more interesting and also just like again side note
00:34:57.620this was not a situation where people were murdering each other i don't think she killed him
00:35:01.880he was sick for a long time she's not this like it's not like a sneaky poison-y sort of story so
00:35:07.300i don't know how this is going to affect her scandalous score later but he died and it doesn't
00:35:12.020seem to be anything untoward about it so usually when a male ruler died in this time and place the
00:35:18.720wife would retire to a nunnery and then the new man would come in and take over so like the dead
00:35:23.420king's son or his brother or whatever. But what happened here is that Edward appointed
00:35:28.480Aethelflaed the official leader of Mercia, Lady of the Merchians in her own right. So not just as
00:35:33.320the wife of the Lord of the Merchians, but like she's now in charge. And she had basically been0.72
00:35:37.820in charge. And now she was officially in charge. This is a singular event in Anglo-Saxon history.
00:35:43.540It's the only time a woman ever took or was given sole control of a kingdom. And it really speaks0.69
00:35:49.720to how much trust and faith edward had in his big sister and why wouldn't he she was amazing so and
00:35:56.520also she was so popular among the people of marisha like he was always trying to make them
00:35:59.640not rebel and want independence so just her presence there was like good soothing um continuity
00:36:05.580and she was great and the brother sister team got to i don't know like the removal of ethel red
00:36:12.980via his death it changed some things technically but like what was actually happening continued
00:36:19.600on the same she was in charge everybody loved her everything was great and ethelflaed becomes even
00:36:26.300more powerful and fearsome so where her father had struggled for much of his reign with the
00:36:30.820infighting between the anglo-saxon kingdoms having ethelflaed and her brother be allies like no
00:36:37.620question like this was never an issue so they were able to strategize effectively and coordinate
00:36:41.540their attacks and so they both continued on with what their father had done overseeing the repair
00:36:46.640and or construction of more of these burrs these fortified towns left over by the romans so not
00:36:52.480just defensive ones for protection but also they started building new ones right on the front lines
00:36:56.980to support their aggressive raids into viking territory so the brother sister team like they
00:37:03.780both were super well educated for this time both were experienced in battle both were just really
00:37:08.800smart really clever on their own and they both were like outside the box thinkers so it and just
00:37:15.020the fact that they're such a good team such a good duo flip the balance of power firmly towards
00:37:20.600them so ethel fled her reputation just continued on and people far and near far and wide heard
00:37:30.480about her and thought she was amazing but unfortunately the people in the welsh kingdom
00:37:34.500of bright chinyog had not heard this much to their detriment so in the year 916 king huygan
00:37:41.700of Breitjanyag heard that again they heard oh Edward's out of town let's just like attack some
00:37:46.360places like oh Aethelflaed is like come on just because Edward's out of town doesn't mean no one's
00:37:52.120paying attention so um King Huygen decided to attack Mercia as part of this raid he oversaw
00:37:58.900the murder of one of Aethelflaed's abbots so like one of her church official type guys um which
00:38:05.960I mean she was mad that they were attacking in general but killing her abbot she took seemingly
00:38:11.300incredibly personally so three days later she herself showed up in brighton yogg with revenge
00:38:17.700on her mind and with her army the brighton yogg forces surrendered because she and her army were
00:38:24.840so formidable and then the merchant seized the royal fort and bodica style burned it down they
00:38:30.860took 34 captives back with them including the queen because huigan himself ironically was out0.99
00:38:37.580of town and unavailable to be captured himself so that's just example of her being badass don't
00:38:42.580cross her uh in 19 sorry in 9 17 ethel flood and edward launched simultaneous campaign to try and
00:38:49.880reclaim even more land from the vikings and this was the first time that ethel flood led her first
00:38:54.380offensive campaign like begging people like taking taking the charge not just fighting against0.65
00:38:59.660somebody who's invading her and this was her biggest success called the battle of derby0.76
00:39:03.620so she attacked so the battle of derby derby was a fortified town that the vikings were living in
00:39:08.900uh the danish vikings well i guess the danish vikings were living there but they were off
00:39:13.220everyone just keeps attacking when people are out of town so she went to attack derby to steal it
00:39:18.960back from the viking guess who was there just like randomly in derby king huigan from the like
00:39:24.880previous story i just said so now minus his queen his fortress and 33 of his friends because
00:39:30.440athelflaed had destroyed them so he like decided to team up with the danish vikings against athelflaed
00:39:35.580because he was so mad at her at this battle four of her most trusted nobles were killed apparently
00:39:40.620by huygan himself but then when the tide turned and it seemed obvious athelflaed's side was going
00:39:46.780to win king huygan took his own life rather than losing in battle to a woman because i mean good0.99
00:39:52.780riddance but also just like oh fuck off so this victory was a massive success for the saxons0.99
00:39:58.900and allowed them to annex this entire region back from the Danish Vikings into Mercia.0.99
00:40:04.920So they're just like getting more and more and more land back all over the place. Amazing.0.95
00:40:09.080Her diplomatic skills were also top notch. She's credited with negotiating an alliance of mutual0.88
00:40:14.760protection against the North Vikings with Constantine II of Scotland. Well, he was from
00:40:21.440Alba, which is part of modern day Scotland. So they were allies there. She also part of that
00:40:27.360same alliance that she negotiated involved owen ap dwinful of cumbria which is part of modern day
00:40:34.140wales so like they were just like you're a woman and you're in charge of maretia that's cool let's
00:40:38.960just like make this treaty all together we're not judgmental about that we see you're amazing
00:40:43.760let's do it so in 918 ethelflaid provided much-needed support to constantine the south
00:40:49.280from scotland against norse vikings in the battle of corbridge during this battle the vikings were
00:40:54.260forest deep within the woods at which point ethelflaed is said to have commanded her troops
00:40:58.020to cut down the trees with their swords so so they could kill all the vikings and this happened so
00:41:03.560the vikings went to flee into the woods ethelflaed was like you know what outside the box thinking0.97
00:41:08.700let's cut down the trees and then killed like so smart so clever bees cutting down trees boiling0.81
00:41:14.780beer like her fame and reputation spread so widely that in 918 when she pulled up with her troops in0.81
00:41:20.520leicester to a place that was being held by vikings the vikings preemptively surrendered
00:41:25.220they're like we're not even gonna attempt to fight you like obviously you're amazing and
00:41:28.860you're gonna win just like what happened with bodega where people are just like we like don't
00:41:33.420even you don't even need to attack us like here take the city back the same year the danish vikings
00:41:38.760occupying the trading center of york offered her a pledge of loyalty rather than facing off against
00:41:44.400her and her troops in battle this offer basically meant that ethelflaed could peacefully capture the
00:41:49.200entire northern part of england like she just her reputation did that um so it's notable about
00:41:55.440these offers like the one from before so they were made to ethelflaed herself not to her brother
00:42:00.880edward so even though he was literally the king and she was kind of like the sub king they they
00:42:07.180wanted to deal with her herself she had that much power and then just when you're getting so much
00:42:11.780momentum getting all the land back from the vikings she suddenly died um in the year 918
00:42:16.760on june the 12th aged 48 um of a stroke and that's just like what how can it just stop but that
00:42:25.120that is how these things go so following her death ethel's body was transported in a procession to
00:42:31.060gloucester where she was buried in saint oswald's priory remember that was where she um that was
00:42:37.060where they had put the the bones of saint oswald she'd sort of had the building built so it's a
00:42:42.060suitable place for her she was buried next to her husband ethel red it's potentially significant
00:42:47.300she was buried there and not back in the wessex part or that she was buried there because they
00:42:52.540didn't want um her to become sort of a symbol of merchant independence they didn't want her
00:42:56.920in mercia so she died and when the lady of the merchants dies or the lord's inherited and in
00:43:04.800her case who inherited it but her daughter elfin this is the only mother to daughter succession in
00:43:11.380all of english history like at no other point did a mother to daughter succession ever happen which
00:43:17.880is like one of those things where you're like oh that's cool and interesting but also just like
00:43:21.520oh that sucks i wish it happened lots more so elfin succeeded her mother as lady of the mercians
00:43:27.140this is also only the first of two times that a woman-to-woman succession happened the only other0.91
00:43:32.520time this happened was when queen mary the first um passed the crown on to her sitter queen elizabeth
00:43:37.920the first and but then of course this cool moment was short-lived other than that is just like a
00:43:43.500fact we all now know because elfin took over duties um for just six months um because then
00:43:50.480uncle edward blew into town claimed marisha as part of the anglo-saxon kingdom and basically
00:43:55.860forced elfin back to uh nunnery in wessex where she spent the rest of her life um i hope she had
00:44:02.200a nice time ethelflaid's influence though continued on after her death and the actions of her nephew
00:44:07.020ethelstan so ethelstan is the son of edward edward had two sons he had two wives ethelstan was the
00:44:13.840son of his first wife his other son with his other wife was called ethel weird and he wanted ethel
00:44:20.480weird to be his heir but then ethel weird randomly died and this is again where you're like was he
00:44:25.200murdered but it's just like not that sort of story i think he just died because of like oldie time
00:44:30.080reasons leaving ethelstan so haha what this means is that ethelstan was edward's son from his wife
00:44:37.380he didn't like as much so when he kind of ditched that wife he sent ethelstan off to live with
00:44:42.120ethel fled because well he just didn't want to raise that son he just didn't think that son was
00:44:46.960going to be his heir he didn't think that son would matter but also he trusted his sister to
00:44:49.860raise him so ethelstan was sort of like foster son to ethel fled so she was the aunt but she
00:44:55.040raised him. So he grew up in Mershian royal court under his aunt's influence. And so as such,
00:45:02.400Athelstan, she raised him the way that she and her brother had been raised. So super focused
00:45:07.760on education, like teaching him to be clever and smart and religious, etc. So Athelstan ends up
00:45:15.000succeeding Edward as king of the Anglo, well, king of Wessex slash Mershia in 924. And then
00:45:22.800three years later, he became the first king of a united England when he sort of united
00:45:26.940the Seven Kingdoms again. So Aethelflaed, Aethelstan, sorry, is personally remembered
00:45:32.480as one of England's most effective monarchs, as was his grandfather, Alfred. He was known
00:45:38.300for his effective and clever military leadership, keen intelligence, ability to unify people,
00:45:43.380and skills as a negotiator. Oh, what's that? All skills that Aethelflaed also demonstrated
00:45:48.920that maybe she passed down to him slash taught him, etc. So that's kind of her in terms of
00:45:55.180legacy. He did amazing. She raised him. That's a credit card. In the 14th century, an Irish
00:46:00.600chronicle lists her as Æthelflaed, the most famous queen of the Saxons, and recording the
00:46:05.720date of her death in 918 is a notable historical event. Hers is the only Anglo-Saxon ruler whose
00:46:10.980death was mentioned in this whole source. It doesn't mention Æthelstan. It doesn't mention
00:46:14.340Alfred. It just highlights how famous and important her reign continued to be even centuries after
00:46:20.140her death. And yet her name and story have gone largely unsung. Why is that? Because people sort
00:46:28.740of skipped right from her father, Alfred, to her nephew, Æthelstan, and sort of skipped over
00:46:34.060everything that happened in between. People credit a lot of what happened. The Viking land
00:46:38.880that they got back is credited often to Edward because he was the king and she was like the
00:46:43.640sub-king even though she's doing all this awesome stuff and also she's a woman and people don't give
00:46:47.760a shit in summer 2018 celebrations were held to commemorate the 1100th anniversary of ethelflaed's0.76
00:46:53.920death in tamworth which is where she's said to have died as well as in gloucester where she is
00:46:58.740buried and there's been a number i think around that same anniversary quite a few by quite a few
00:47:05.720i mean like there used to be like zero biographies of ethelflaed and now there are several i'll put
00:47:10.400a link to them in the show notes but i do want to especially shout out this cute little book
00:47:15.000ethelflaed england's brought and founder by tom holland which ends i'm just going to read this
00:47:20.860the very last paragraph of it uh that a woman played a role in england's creation quite as
00:47:25.680significant as any man should be better remembered than it is ethelflaed's legacy has endured for
00:47:30.5401100 years it is not too late to pay the lady of the mercians the credit that is her due so she's
00:47:37.040amazing i adore her but how is she gonna score on our scandalous scale is the question so the
00:47:45.400first category the first category is well honestly okay maybe this might just like increase with each0.96
00:47:53.060category because the first category is scandalousness and there's just not much she was0.65
00:47:57.640just like a straight like stand-up person it was in a situation where like everyone was poisoning0.97
00:48:02.380everybody so she wasn't poisoning other people like she married one time we don't know about1.00
00:48:07.900any lovers I mean if you want to call scandalous just the fact she potentially declared a vow of
00:48:13.360chastity after having a horrible birth experience like is that scandalous or is that just like
00:48:18.060sensible I mean I don't know I feel like she would almost be offended if I gave her
00:48:23.340scandalous points I'm I can't I can't not give any I'm sure I'm gonna give her one one oh I hope
00:48:30.880she makes it up in the other categories because i want her to score really well uh scheminess
00:48:35.120well that's a straight up 10 scheminess like for other people who are looking at their schemes and
00:48:40.460it's like you know figure out ways to secretly poison somebody or how to murder somebody or0.96
00:48:45.820like have these secret assignations or whatever but ethelfledged she's just like in terms of
00:48:49.740scheming it's like warlike like genius moves like oh no the vikings are coming why don't we just like
00:48:54.960throw beehives at them come on like oh no the vikings are hiding in the trees let's just like0.99
00:49:00.720cut down all the treats like genius like scheminess incredible like that's how is that
00:49:06.700anything but significance is the next category and that is really tricky because she is significant
00:49:13.760the stuff that she did was monumentally huge so between her her brother and her father like
00:49:19.240and her nephew like the four of them all of them combined were what got the the united anglo-saxon
00:49:28.100kingdoms back from the vikings she was a crucial part of that people don't know about her but that
00:49:35.340doesn't mean she herself didn't do significant thing right like hugely significant like the
00:49:41.060the victory she made like the fact that people were calling her like making deals with her like
00:49:46.360skipping over her brother her husband like i'm gonna give her an eight for significance because
00:49:52.600like without her like the next whatever a thousand years of history in england would have been1.00
00:49:59.500potentially real different um sexism bonus is where we give bonus points depending on how the1.00
00:50:07.960being a woman might have held them back and this is also an interesting one because she
00:50:12.720had the privilege of being the daughter of a man who respected her and educated her and treated her
00:50:21.940seemingly well which is like the first time that's ever happened in this podcast ever and
00:50:27.840then her brother also respected her like she was able to get a lot of power because the men around
00:50:34.100her let her have that power not if she had been a man like she wouldn't have been married off to
00:50:39.400mercia then she wouldn't have accomplished what she did it's sort of like um agrippina in the0.99
00:50:45.600sense of she had a lot of power herself but it wasn't like she wasn't you know holding down a1.00
00:50:51.020ladder to help other women gain the same amount of power. It's just like she had this amount of1.00
00:50:54.600power and she did amazing things with it. If she'd been a man, I don't know. I don't think her sex
00:51:00.720held her back that much. But I mean, it did in some ways in the sense of like, she wasn't allowed
00:51:06.260to be called the queen. If she had been a man, she would have inherited Wessex. She wouldn't
00:51:11.300have been sent off to Marisha because the older child, or if it wasn't a sexist society where a0.99
00:51:16.340woman could do that i'm gonna give her a six no i'm gonna give her a seven so this adds up to
00:51:22.380hang on one sec 26 that is not bad at all so i score everybody at the end of these episodes just
00:51:30.360to kind of it's a nice way to wrap it up and also just to compare the different stories how much
00:51:34.300stuff was in all of them considering she had a scandalousness score of one to get a 26 i think0.93
00:51:39.100is great you know who else is a 26 tits out francis howard who got all of her points from
00:51:44.580scandalous and very little from significance she also had good scheminess i think the two of them1.00
00:51:49.440that's where they both matched up so she's sort of mid-range ethelflet and that's i mean we're not
00:51:55.100scoring like who's the coolest person who's the best person whatever we're just kind of seeing
00:51:58.760on this score where does everybody land and i think midway is is respectable for her but i'm
00:52:04.200also excited to have done a podcast talking about her because i want other people to know about her
00:52:08.420because she is amazing and unsung and did some really fucking cool stuff so this is the vulgar
00:52:17.100history podcast my name is ann foster here's my little i have notes there's so much stuff to tell0.86
00:52:22.500you all these things i want to remember to say so first of all you can follow us on instagram and
00:52:27.880twitter at vulgar history pod on instagram if you want to support this podcast you can go to
00:52:33.080audibletrial.com slash vulgar history. That's audibletrial.com slash vulgar history and get a
00:52:40.760free trial of Audible. There are a lot of, again, not a lot, a handful of books about Aethelflaed.
00:52:47.100None of them seem to be on Audible, but I will recommend the book Matilda, Empress, Queen,
00:52:52.500Warrior by Catherine Hanley, who is about another super cool woman who led armies and was amazing
00:52:59.320in British history. And perhaps there's going to be a podcast episode about her
00:53:04.280next week. So then that's also a really good book. So Matilda, Empress, Queen, Warrior by
00:53:10.340Catherine Hanley, available on Audible. I'm also on Substack, which is kind of like a social
00:53:16.220networking site. Like sometimes I put little jokes there too. But the main thing I do in
00:53:20.520Substack is I post Vulgar History a la carte, which is my fortnightly newsletter where I,
00:53:26.820Sometimes I profile a woman from history.
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