AELFTHRYTH

AELFTHRYTH

Female 945 - 1000  (55 years)

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  • Name AELFTHRYTH,  
    Birth 945 
    Gender Female 
    Relation to Me 33 GGM 
    Royalty & Nobility Between 965 and 975 
    Queen Consort of England 
    Name Ælfthryth 
    Death 1000 
    Patriarch & Matriarch
    ORDGAR   d. 971  (Father) 
    Person ID I7275  My Genealogy
    Last Modified 15 Jul 2024 

    Father ORDGAR   d. 971 
    Relationship natural 
    Family ID F1783  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

    Family EDGAR, King I,   b. 943   d. 8 Jul 975, Winchester, Hampshire, England Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 32 years) 
    Children 
     1. AETHELRED, II,   b. 966   d. 23 Apr 1016, London, England Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 50 years)  [Father: natural]  [Mother: natural]
    YORK, Elfgifu of;   NORMANDY, Emma of  m. 1002
    Family ID F1782  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
    Last Modified 15 Jul 2024 

  • Photos
    800px-A_Chronicle_of_England_-_Page_072_-_Edward_Murdered_at_Corfe
    800px-A_Chronicle_of_England_-_Page_072_-_Edward_Murdered_at_Corfe

    Documents
    Ælfthryth, wife of Edgar - Wikipedia
    Ælfthryth, wife of Edgar - Wikipedia

    Albums
    Royal Connections
    Royal Connections (3)
    When you find a Gateway Ancestor in your family tree, it is almost impossible not to go down a rabbit hole of ancestry leading to connections with countless ancestors of the royal and noble classes. These lines have been extensively researched and documented by historians, so it is really just a matter of following the line. I've spent countless hours engrossed in the stories these royal lines have uncovered. In this album, I will link to ancestors who were members of the Royal class. Royalty refers to the ruling monarch and their immediate family. This includes kings, queens, princes, and princesses. The monarch is typically the highest authority in the land and has the power to grant titles of nobility.

    Keep in mind that it is not necessarily unusual to be descended from royalty. After all, many of these connections go back to my 25th great grandparents and beyond. Theoretically, we have 67,108,864 sets of 25th great grandparents (In reality, due to a phenomenon known as pedigree collapse, where ancestors appear in the family tree multiple times in different generations due to intermarriage within a community, the actual number of unique 25th great-grandparents a person has is likely to be much lower). With this many, it might be more unusual NOT to descend from royalty. However, what makes our ancestry so unique is that we can TRACE it that far back, person to person to person. Since my fascination with our ancestry lies in my curiosity about the stories of the individual people, this is beyond compelling to me. It is like getting lost in a series of medieval novels in which I have an actual connection to the characters. It brings history to life.

  • Notes 
    • The first king's wife known to have been crowned and anointed as Queen of the Kingdom of England. Mother of King Æthelred the Unready, she was a powerful political figure. She was linked to the murder of her stepson King Edward the Martyr and appeared as a stereotypical bad queen and evil stepmother in many medieval histories.

      King Edgar organised a second coronation on 11 May 973 at Bath, perhaps to bolster his claim to be ruler of all of Britain. Here Ælfthryth was also crowned and anointed, granting her a status higher than any recent queen.The only model of a queen's coronation was that of Judith of Flanders, but this had taken place outside England. In the new rite, the emphasis lay on her role as protector of religion and the nunneries in the realm. She took a close interest in the well-being of several abbeys, and as overseer of Barking Abbey she deposed and later reinstated the abbess.

      Ælfthryth played a large role as forespeca, or advocate, in at least seven legal cases. As such, she formed a key part of the Anglo-Saxon legal system as a mediator between the individual and the crown, which was increasingly viewing its role in the courts as a symbol of its authority as protector of its subjects. Ælfthryth's actions as forespeca were largely for the benefit of female litigants, and her role as a mediator shows the possibilities for women to have legal and political power in late Anglo-Saxon England.


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