A little-known Saxon royal, Eadgifu’s reputation suffers for living before the Norman conquest, and for having an unpronounceable name! She was the third wife of King Edward the Elder of Wessex. At the time, England was divided between Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and Danish kingdoms, all vying for power. Wessex was the southernmost Anglo-Saxon kingdom and the only one that had completely held out against Danish invasion. But now the Anglo-Saxons were fighting back and Eadgifu was there to see it. Edward the Elder captured the eastern Midlands and East Anglia from the Danes in 917, and gained control of Mercia upon the death of his sister, its queen. By the end of his reign, Edward could be called “King of the Anglo-Saxons” because he had united them – although not the Danes.
Little is known about her during her husband’s reign, but when her sons Edmund and Eadred ruled, Eadgifu seems to have been the power behind the throne. During the reign of King Eadred, the kingdom of Northumbria was conquered. It was the last Danish kingdom to fall. England was now a single, centralized monarchy, although the union was new and weak.
Eadgifu actually lived to see two grandsons, King Eadwig and King Edgar, sit on the throne after King Eadred. She was less influential by this point, as she had sided with Edgar against Eadwig during the succession dispute. King Edgar, when he eventually took the throne, ruled a united England which was truly a union. It had been together for long enough that it was no longer a piecemeal collection of Anglo-Saxon and Danish kingdoms. When she died, in or after 966, Eadgifu had lived long enough to see the small southern kingdom of Wessex become the nation of England we would recognize today.
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