Exactly what constituted a queen in ninth- and tenth-century England is a key topic of Matthew Firth‘s new book, Early English Queens, 850-1000: Potestas Reginae. Queenship is not always easy to define. On the one hand, it is an oversimplification – if a useful one – to equate the title ‘queen’ with the king’s bed companion; on the other, it would be anachronistic to consider ritual anointing as definitional to queenship in this period. Only Judith, the consort of King Æthelwulf of Wessex (d. 858) and Ælfthryth, consort of King Edgar the Peaceful (d. 975) are known to have had this sort of formal investiture of authority in the period. As Janet Nelson observes, in contrast to the relatively clearly delineated early medieval institutional categories of male power such as kingship, lordship and ecclesiastical office, it is ‘much harder to identify anything that could be called “queenship”’ (1978, p. 39). Nonetheless, numerous West Saxon consorts of the period are named as queens in charters and chronicles. As Pauline Stafford notes, ‘writers of the sixth to ninth centuries knew a queen when they saw one’ even if ‘they rarely clarified what they understood by the term, or how a woman rose to that dignity’ (1983, p. 127). It is also the case that there are several overlapping terms in Anglo-Saxon documents, each with its own nuances, which can be translated as ‘queen’: seo hlæfdige, cwen and regina.

The term regina is a relatively straight-forward indicator of queenship, but only begins to be used systematically by Ælfthryth, coupling with the term rex in such a way as to underline the link between the king and the queen, and so establish that her potestas stemmed from his. Cwen is the closest Old English word to regina and the source of the modern English ‘queen’. Throughout the late ninth and early tenth centuries, though, hlæfdige was the more commonly used term to identify the king’s wife, though it was not specific to queenship. Rather, it had a meaning akin to the Latin domina, which could be used of the lady of a farm, or household, or of a noble or royal court.

The primary problem that presents itself in defining queenship is the widespread practice of concubinage within the West Saxon dynasty. Several of its kings have been characterised as ‘serial monogamists’, reflecting the practice of setting one consort aside in order to take another (Sharp, 2001, p. 82). Concubinage facilitated a king’s ability to repudiate his bed companion. These were monogamous unions, recognised by tradition, but lacking in the formality of marriage and thus provided kings with the flexibility to easily set their consort aside. The decision to do so was usually made as a result of the king’s political concerns and the need to balance the powerful families of his kingdom. Repudiated consorts often found second careers as abbesses or as women in lay vows, though many also disappear from the historical record. Little censure appears to have been attached to royal concubines – Ælfgifu, consort to King Edmund (r. 939–946), even appears in the witness list of charter S514 as concubina regis (the king’s concubine). Yet there was clearly a distinction made between a wife and a concubine. Ælfthryth, for example, witnesses charter S745 as legitima regis coniunx (legitimate wife of the king), a clear, public assertion of status that would surely have been important to a woman who was her husband’s third consort. This distinction between royal wives and concubines became a more prominent concern in the hands of twelfth-century Anglo-Norman commentators who reflected on Anglo-Saxon history through the lens of later marriage practices. The question then, is whether the term ‘queen’ should be restricted only to those women who enjoyed formal marriage to the king.

It is, perhaps, necessary to take something of a broad approach to identifying queens and queenship if those terms are to have any real meaning. To restrict their use solely to known wives excludes not only concubines, but numerous consorts whose marital status is never explicitly defined in the historical record. The experiences of the women who were companions to West Saxon kings between 850 and 1000 varied greatly, as did the status, authority and political agency that they derived from that role. Moreover, the woman who arguably held the greatest potestas throughout the period – Æthelflæd (d. 918) – was not consort to a king at all. Though the daughter of one king and the sister of another, her husband was styled as dux (lord) of Mercia, and she as domina (lady), even as she reigned over the region as its sole ruler for seven years. The question of relative status among royal women in ninth- and tenth-century England is a complex one. To encapsulate all these complexities, Stefany Wragg proposes a simple definition of a queen as ‘a woman who was intimately related to the king’ (2023, p. 7). For this period, though, with its multiplicity of princesses and attendant inter-dynastic marriages, this is a little too broad. A queen was more than just a woman who was intimately related to the king, she was one who was empowered to exercise royal potestas.

This passage is an adapted excerpt from Matthew Firth’s new book, Early English Queens, 850-1000: Potestas Reginae. Early English Queens offers a comprehensive, biography-led examination of queenship in England between 850 and 1000, tracing the development of the queen’s role from bed companion to institutional office. It is available to buy now at all book vendors.