Æthelflæd Lady of the Mercians
870 – 918 · Generation II · Ruler of Mercia · House of Wessex
Æthelflæd Lady of the Mercians (870–918). Ruler of Mercia. Married Æthelred Lord of the Mercians in 886. Alfred’s daughter, a war-leader in her own right who retook the Danelaw towns beside her brother. Half-Mercian through her mother Ealhswith, she was the eldest of Alfred’s children, and her marriage bound Wessex and English Mercia together. The couple walled Worcester, gave generously to Mercian churches and raised a new minster at Gloucester, renamed St Oswald’s when the saint’s relics arrived in 909. As her husband’s health failed she probably took over the government, and she is thought to have restored Chester’s Roman defences. Widowed in 911, she ruled as Lady of the Mercians — in Ian Walker’s view the only woman to rule a kingdom in Anglo-Saxon history — and ringed Mercia with burhs from Bridgnorth and Tamworth to Warwick and Runcorn. Her army took Derby in 917, Leicester yielded in 918, and York’s leaders offered her their loyalty, but she died at Tamworth that June and was buried at Gloucester. Her daughter Ælfwynn succeeded her, only to be deposed by Edward within months.
One of 22 people of House of Wessex (until 1093) in this archive. Alfred’s line: kings of Wessex who became the first kings of all England.
Parents
- King Alfred the Great (849 – 899)
- Ealhswith of Mercia (852 – 902)
Siblings
- King Edward The Elder (874 – 924)
Partners
- Married Æthelred Lord of the Mercians (865 – 911) in 886
Life
- 870 — Born
- 886 — Married Æthelred Lord of the Mercians
- 918 — Died