32: Æthelflæd

A book by Tom Holland

I studied the Nazis a lot at school. Like, a lot. From around about the age of 13, all the way through to A-Level, if I was in a History lesson and the subject wasn't at least Hitler adjacent, I was probably in a different class. Maybe Biology or something, where a lack of Hitler wouldn't be all that surprising. So we did Bismarck and the Second Reich a bit; sometimes we did the First World War; and every now and then we might dabble in a bit of FDR and the New Deal. But these all merely served as amuse-bouches to the starter, main, and pudding of Hitler, the Nazis, and the Second World War.

This is not a complaint. I was, and remain, fascinated by that particular period of history, and I was good enough at banging on about the Nazis in essays that I managed to pick up a few decent History grades along the way. But the upshot of this laser-focussed approach was a near-complete ignorance of the narrative history of anywhere, really, but most notably, given it's where I'm from and where I live, Britain. Until about a year ago, if you'd asked me to list the post-1066 kings and queens of England in order I'd have been struggling after William the Conqueror. Any mention of The Anarchy I would have assumed related to the Sex Pistols rather than a civil war involving some bloke named Stephen. (Since when was there a king of England called Stephen!?!) And despite being half Scottish and attending Edinburgh University, I'd have likely guessed the date of the Battle of Bannockburn at around 1500ish.

This not insignificant shortcoming has been slowly corrected over the last year by my discovery of the Rex Factor podcast. To quote from their website: "Rex Factor is a podcast where two history enthusiasts (Graham Duke and Ali Hood) review all the kings and queens of England from Alfred the Great to Elizabeth II." In each episode the pair assess a different king or queen via a number of different factors (Battleyness, Scandal, Subjectivity (i.e. would you want to be a subject?), Longevity, and Dynasty) before deciding if the monarch in question has "that certain something, that special quality...the Rex Factor". And it's brilliant. It's a history podcast done exactly right. It's enlightening, engaging, funny, and genuinely well researched (by Graham; Ali very much plays the role of the listener by going into each episode apparently woefully ill-informed). And it is almost entirely because of Rex Factor that I would now not be totally embarrassed in a British history-off against a 12-year-old schoolchild.

As well as filling me in on the characters from history I really should already have known about—your Henry the Seconds, your Edward the Firsts, your George the Thirds, etc.—Rex Factor's decision to start their odyssey at Alfred the Great (rather than that Conqueror fella) alerted me to a warrior queen apparently not known to many people at all. She's called Æthelflæd, and she rules (literally, badum tish). Indeed, she rules so completely that there's a Ladybird Expert Book about her written by Tom Holland (the celebrated historian, rather than the Spider-Man actor).

The Ladybird Expert series are produced in the same format as the classic children's books (small, short, hardback, and featuring original illustrations), but they are for an adult readership, serving as "clear, accessible and authoritative introductions to subjects drawn from science, history and culture". Early in Holland's book on Æthelflæd, a pretty gruesome illustration of Oswald, a seventh century king of Northumbria who was "killed and hacked to pieces by a pagan king of Mercia", serves as an indicator of the more adult tone. It also demonstrates the brutal environment into which Æthelflæd was born in 870. Daughter of Alfred the Great, she had no prospect of succeeding her father as king of Wessex because "war was seen as a man's game". She would go on to make a mockery of that attitude.

What comes across in Holland's brief but engaging biography of Æthelflæd is that she was a badass, and deserves to be recognised as one of the founding figures of the English nation. It was her brother, Edward the Elder, who actually succeeded Alfred as king of Wessex, but Æthelflæd did just as much to reinforce the foundations laid by their father. She effectively ruled Mercia for her ageing and infirm husband Æthelred up to his death in 911, after which she was "formally acknowledged by her subjects as the 'Lady of the Mercians'". She led Mercia to some of the greatest military victories of the early 10th century, including, in 913, retaking Tamworth from the Vikings.

A chronicler, Holland tells us, described her rule as "just and lawful". Despite being a woman in a world of men, she was respected as a fearless warrior, a fair judge, and a powerful stateswoman. And as if all that wasn't enough, she also had a major influence over her nephew Æthelstan, who grew up in Mercia rather than Wessex. Æthelred taught the young boy "the most invaluable lessons of all: the practical arts required of a ruler". He went on to become the first king of all England.