Much of the preparatory work to this volume had to deal with a very simple question: were there queens in early England? The existence of the office was itself a query, dogged by a combination of the narratives spun by the ninth-century West Saxon dynasty which largely effaced the office of the queen, and uncertainties over how earlier society understood the unions of its kings, and whether there was a distinction between concubines, wives and queens. Although there were not necessarily official, documented coronation rites, it now seems very clear that queens were a recognised and expected part of early English society, just as much as kings were. Early sources distinguish between wives and concubines, and deploy the term regina explicitly; vernacular sources like Maxims and other heroic poetry outline clear expectations of how queens should behave. A queen was usually heavily involved with treasure and riches, and used her generosity as a means to promote relationships and loyalty, or advance favoured religious communities.
Queenship certainly developed over the two centuries which form the scope of this study, approaching at times the office that was outlined in the 973 Regularis Concordia. The patterns observable in early English queenship, however, bear strong resonances with the practice of queenship in contemporary Francia, and patterns of queenship reflected in historical Old Norse sagas. These women all derived their ability to channel and shift power via their male relations. Maternity was often an important factor of a queen’s office, but so too was the advice she had to offer, principally to her husband. As a queen, she was almost always an ‘outsider’ within the dynasty, descending from a different family, yet at the same time forming the nucleus at the heart of the royal family itself, and therefore also the royal household. Like most women of the era, her existence is marginal in the majority of primary sources available to us, and so the prominent position these women occupied in society has often been glossed over.
Much of the queen’s office was tied up in relationships. Because of her exceptional proximity to the king, she served as a valuable advisor; her alterity from the direct royal family, with knowledge of other families, other kingdoms, and other loyalties, gave her a valuable perspective to advise her husband on everything from family to policy matters – which were, in fact, often one and the same. This proximity and alterity, and the tension this paradox engendered in the office of queen, meant that she fundamentally occupied a medial position. She was both the queen of the people, and therefore a powerful advocate and intercessor for them, and at the same time, often a foreigner. This paradox at the heart of queenship also left her exposed, and could be a significant challenge to her acceptance by her nobles. This is doubly true in circumstances in which the queen had been part of a peaceweaving marriage, that is, where her marriage had been intended to prevent future conflict, often in circumstances where conflicts were already raging.
At the heart of her ability to bring peace also lay at its core her ability to produce a physical manifestation of her union with the king: an heir. Although primogeniture was not the dominant mode of succession in early England, the responsibilities and traditions of maternity in the early medieval world saw queens who were mothers nurture, protect and teach their offspring, though, as we have seen, this could take different forms. Mothers could educate their children in the Christian faith, model queenship for their princess daughters, or nurture the saints’ cults of their children after an untimely and unfortunate demise of an heir, which often destabilised the succession of the kingdom. Christianity was perhaps the most dominant cultural force and influence on the office of queen. The best-documented queens tend to be related to saints or saints themselves, particularly in the conversionary era of the seventh century. These generic principles help to fill in the absences which form the majority of what constitutes what we know of queens in the years between 650 and 850. In the regnal tables in the Introduction to this book, it is apparent just how many absences there are in our knowledge of individual queens. The vast majority of known kings do not have any known name for a queen, or even whether they had a recognised queen. Yet it seems unlikely that bachelorhood was the majority practice for kings in this period, given how the vociferous Boniface was in his criticism of Æthelbald of Mercia for failing to take a Christian wife. Rather, using the better-documented queens to inform a more vibrant and detailed picture of just what queenship was in early England provides a sort of outline into which to contextualise the lives of the more obscure queens, women like Cynewise, or Eormengyth.
What has emerged is a clearer impression both of early English queenship in the years between 650 and 850, and more detailed sketches of the individual queens who occupied that office. As this volume is part of a biographical series, the focus has been on their individual lives and lived experiences, and the extent to which we can identify any features of these women. Queens like Eormengyth of Wessex are often forgotten, or, like her sisters, Domne Eafe and Eormenburg, confused: two individuals accidentally conflated into one. The reputations of other queens are often coloured by biases, whether overwhelmingly positive, as with the many queens who were also revered as saints, or with hostile accounts, as with Cuthburh of Northumbria, whose reputation is polarised in surviving documentation, or Eadburh of Wessex, who is demonised in later accounts.
This work is part of a growing body of studies examining not only queenship, but also women more generally in early England. Queens often feature in such studies as some of the most influential and powerful figures, both historically and figuratively. It is difficult to avoid discussing women in early England without referencing the most exceptional of these queens, such as Æthelthryth of Ely and Cynethryth of Mercia. Yet the study of queenship occupies a somewhat awkward and tense position within the study of women more generally, part of a larger trend in social history, which looks to illustrate the lives of the marginalised in the past. In some sense, these queens are marginalised: they literally occupy margins and side notes in the greater overarching macro-narrative of the history of early England. Yet at the same time, they are by definition not marginal. These were the most powerful women in secular society. Even after they had relinquished their office as queen, they continued to exert influence by nature of their identity and the office which most queens took as dowagers: that of abbess. There, they used their networks of power and their family alliances with powerful men to advance their interests, whether of their own biological family or of their monastic community. A biography of Seaxburh of Kent, for example, fails to see all of her character if we consider only her time as queen consort, but discount her career as abbess, in which she was responsible for the early promotion of her sister’s cult, especially overseeing the translation of Æthelthryth’s body in 697.
Although the lives of nearly thirty queens have been examined here, there is ample room for future enquiry. With some of the frameworks and trends established in this book, there may be the possibility of further studies, whether temporally or geographically structured, or more detailed appreciations of some of the individuals examined here. Extended studies of networks of influence and power, with a focus on female relationships, could also be a fruitful path of enquiry. Other studies of queenship, whether of individual queens, expressions of feminine power, or studies of marginalised individuals using similar methodologies would be worthy additions to the emerging understanding of these early medieval women and the world they inhabited.
Matthew Firth’s subsequent volume in this series, Early English Queens: Potestas Reginae, offers a more in-depth view of the queens of the tenth century – Æthelflæd, Eadgifu and Ælfthryth – and the ways in which their queenly power manifested. This is aided by the increase in detail and survival in the documentation of this era, in which it is more apparent what a queen was, and how she could wield the power available to her.
In this volume, then, we have seen reflections of different queens, in their identities, their reputations, their offices. In so doing, we return to the image and traditions suggested by the subtitle of this book: speculum reginae. Modelled loosely on the speculum principis, a genre of literature written to offer an idealised account of how to be a good ruler to a prospective king, the work here has given different images of queens and their lives and experiences. These are themselves reflections: reflections of the ways in which these queens were documented in their own lifetimes, or represented and reimagined in later works in which they feature. Like an image reflected in multiple mirrors, as it is repeated, it distorts and shows a reflection of a reflection, rather than the original on which it was based. The accounts here embrace that distortion in the sources, and use context as a reference point to bring into focus the aspects of the original which can be seen in the representation. The image which emerges is by no means a lifelike representation of the original, but the light shone by the examination here has certainly brought the picture more clearly into focus.