Emma of Normandy
Emma of Normandy (c. 985 – 6 March 1052) was the daughter of Richard I, Duke of Normandy, son of the King of West Francia. Through her marriages to Anglo-Saxon English king Æthelred the Unready (1002–1016) and Cnut the Great (1017–1035), she became the Queen Consort of England, Denmark, and Norway. She was the mother of three sons, King Edward the Confessor and King Harthacnut. Even after her husbands' deaths Emma remained in the public eye, and continued to participate actively in politics. She is the central figure within the Encomium Emmae Reginae, a critical source for the history of early 11th-century English politics.
Life
Upon the Danish invasion of England in 1013, Emma's sons by Ethelred - Edward the Confessor and Alfred Atheling - went to Normandy as exiles, where they were to remain. Canute, the King of England, after the deaths of Ethelred and his son, and Emma's step-son, Edmund II Ironside, married her himself. He was to pledge that Harthacanute, Emma's son by him, should be the heir to his Danish sovereignty, which meant, through this wedding, the Normans were kept at arms length, contentedly quiet and quietly content.
Ethelred's marriage to Emma was an English strategy to avert the aggression of the dangerous Normandy, and the Danish strategy was much the same. With a Normandy in feudal subordination to the kings of France, who kept it as their dukedom, England was the dukes' main target, after baronic feuds and rampaging pillages through Brittany had run their course. English kings could not afford to underestimate the Norman threat. Harthacanute, his name after the first head of Canute's royal house, was certainly intended to rule by the Danish ruler of England, along with most of Scandinavia,, which may have made for a very different history. It is, thought though, due not least to the extolling of her encomium, that Canute was fond of Emma. In this, any fact of such an affectionate wedlock's capacity to keep the threat from over the channel at bay was seen as a happy coincidence, and the Normans probably happier with it as such. Unfortunately, events did not go as well as they might.
With Canute's death, Edward and Alfred, were to return to England out of exile, in 1036, under their half-brother Harthacanute's protection, in an expedition to see their mother. It was taken, though, as a move against Harold Harefoot, Canute's son by Aelfgifu of Northampton, who now put himself forward as Harold I, with the support of many of the English noblity. In contempt of Harthacanute, at war with his enemies in Scandinavia, the younger Alfred was captured, blinded, and shortly after he was dead from his wounds, and the older Edward escaped to Normandy. Emma herself was soon to leave for Bruges, and the court of the Count of Flanders. It was at this court that the Encomium Emmae was written.
The death of Harold I, in 1040, and the accession of the more conciliatory Harthacanute, who had lost his Norwegian and Swedish lands, although he had made his Danish realm secure, meant Edward was officially made welcome in England the next year. Harthacanute told the Norman court that Edward should be made King if he himself had no sons. Edward was subsequently King of England on the death of Harthacanute, who, like Harold I, met his end in the throes of a fit. Emma was also to return to England, yet was cast aside, as she was in support of Magnus the Noble, not Edward, her son - she is not thought to have had any love for her children from her first marriage.
Emma of Normandy might well have seen herself as one coming second to the first wife, in two marriages. In England, with respect to Ethelred's first wife, Aelfgifu, who possibly died in childbirth, or with a complication after labour, she, was known as Aelfgifu, a mere replacement. With her marriage to Canute, set in the shade of his 'handfast' wife, Aelfgifu of Northampton, she,at the time was known as Aelfgifu of Normandy. Each of her marriages, then, in some way leaves her as a second Aelfgifu, which she was clearly inclined to abandon, preferring her other name, Emma. Her marriages, as a noblewoman, no matter if they were as a second wife, created the England and Normandy connection, which was to find its culmination under her great-nephew William the Conqueror, and 1066.
