Stepmothers? And Cinderella thought she had it bad!

Putting the ‘sex’ back into Wessex — meet the original Wicked Stepmother

Older reader may recall the first TV series of this show aired in the 10th century and was called ‘The Only Way is Wessex’

I have a morbid fascination with Dark Age English history so let me tell you the tale of King Edgar the Peaceable (reigned 959–975) and his dark secret that would subsequently have disastrous consequences for the Kingdom of England.

Edgar, in common with most Saxon kings, practised what we’d now call serial monogamy. Kings would only have one wife or mistress/concubine at a time but they would be discarded — the consanguinity rules (or oops, did I really marry my cousin/sister) were a popular way of ending no longer convenient marriages — and sent to a nunnery when the monarch took a fancy to another woman.

So, for example, Edgar had a relationship with a woman called Aethelflaed by whom he had a son Eadweard (Edward). Then he had a relationship with Wulfthryth (Wifrida) by whom he had a daughter Eadgyth (Edith). And then along came Aelfthryth (Elfrida) by who he had two more sons: Edmund, who died while still an infant, and Aethelraed.

Edgar’s dark secret relates to how he first met and wooed Aelfthryth. The king had heard that an ealdorman called Ordgar, in what is now Devon, had a beautiful daughter whose mother was a member of the royal family of Wessex. As he was looking for a queen, Edgar commissioned…