Ælfgifu (Wessex) of Wessex (abt. 915)

Ancestors

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Ælfgifu (Wessex) of Wessex is a member of the House of Wessex.

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Biography

Ælfgifu was a daughter of King Edward the Elder and Ælflaeda.^[1][2] Her birth date is not known. One source latinises her name as "Adiva".^[1]

According to the Liber Monasterii de Hyda, she was sent to Henry, the Holy Roman Emperor, and subsequently married "a certain ruler ('duci') near the Alps."^[1][3]

Research Notes

Husband

The name of Ælfgifu's husband is not known. It has been suggested that he was Boleslav of Bohemia (possibly born in the late 920s, died in 999) but his dates make that unlikely.^[4] But if she was Boleslav's wife, they had at least four children:

• Wenceslas, who died young^[4]
• Boleslav who succeeded his father^[4]
• Jaromir^[4]
• Oldrich^[4]

Sarah Foot, in her book on Ælfgifu's half-brother Æthelstan, speculates that the husband may have been Louis, brother of Rudolph II of Burgundy.^[5]

The Wikipedia entry for Ebalus (Ebles), Duke of Aquitaine, mentions that there have been suggestions that he was Ælfgifu's husband, but that there is no evidence for this.^[6] This suggestion appears to be derived from a statement in William of Malmesbury that Ælfgifu married a Louis of Aquitain, for whose existence there is no evidence, with it being speculated that William of Malmesbury should have been referring to Ebalus. Chronology makes it unlikely: Ælfgifu would almost certainly have been at most in her teens when Ebalus died, age about 65, in 935.^[7]

Other people suggested as her husband include Conrad III of Burgundy, Alberic son of Majolus Count of Narbonne, and Charles Constantine king of Arles.^[8]

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} Charles Cawley. Ælfgifu, entry in "Medieval Lands" database, accessed 20 January 2021
2. ↑ Donald Henson. A Guide to Late Anglo-Saxon England, Anglo-Saxon Books, 2002, p. 69
3. ↑ Edward Edwards (ed.). Liber Monasterii de Hyda, Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1866, p. 112, Internet Archive
4. ↑ ^{4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4} Charles Cawley, 'Medlands', entry for Boleslav d.999, accessed 20 January 2021
5. ↑ Sarah Foot. Æthelstan: the First King of England, Yale University Press, 2011, cited in Wikipedia: Edward the Elder, accessed 20 January 2020
6. ↑ Wikipedia: Ebalus, Duke of Aquitaine
7. ↑ The Henry Project, entry for Eadweard (Edward) "the Elder" (near the end of the entry)
8. ↑ Alison Weir. Britain's Royal Families, new Pimlico edition, Vintage Books, 2008, p. 14