Emma of Normandy

I wasn’t sure which of my medieval favorites I wanted to spotlight next for Women’s History Month – I have so many! – but today I feel like talking about a woman who fucking won. So let’s chat about Emma of Normandy, a queen I love so much she made it on my graduation cap.

-Emma of Normandy was born in, SURPRISE, Normandy, toward the end of the 10th century. She was shipped off to England at about 18 to marry the king, not knowing any English, but probably fluent in Norman French, Danish, and possibly Old Norse. This multi-lingual fluency would be important later, when the Vikings took over the country.

-She was crowned and anointed queen of England twice, which had never happened before and never happened again. She was in her early 30s when she married the second time. Her second husband, the Viking Cnut, was probably about 19. Get it.

-Her first marriage was yaaaaawn, but she did have some babies, including 2 sons (as I have said before, this is Peak Achievement for the English in the medieval period, so well done Emma). When things went to shit and the Vikings booted the king off the throne, Emma packed up her kids and got the fuck out of there, heading back to Normandy and leaving her worthless husband behind. Sources differ as to how the boys got to Normandy and who was with them when they fled, but later, after her death, her daughter-in-law would commission a book about Emma’s oldest son’s life, and in it Emma would be portrayed as hauling ass across the countryside on horseback, both boys in the saddle with her, getting them to safety on her own. If that’s the story her son told his wife, that’s the one we’re going with. He would know.

-During her second tenure as queen, she managed to become the most powerful queen in English history to that point. Before Emma, a queen’s power was inextricably linked to the power of her husband or her son; during Emma’s time, she wielded that shit in her own right, exerting considerable influence and control over the government AND the church. Earls were ‘her’ men. Bishops were ‘her’ men. That was a level of loyalty that continued, with some exceptions, even after her second husband died and she was no longer consort. Given how very much the early English did. not. like. queens., this is pretty impressive. She must have been brilliant. She was also the richest woman in the country, which we assume to be the case for the queen consort but was definitely *not* a given during this period.

-When her second husband died, he left behind multiple sons, both with Emma and with his first wife Aelfgifu. (We’ll talk about her another time because I will honestly fight a man for her, she’s great.) One son was already the king of Denmark, one was the king of Norway, and so naturally the third son, Aelfgifu’s son, thought he would be king of England. Emma….did not agree. She got a cohort of earls and the witan on her side, and they decided it was her son who should be king of England. Cool, all set.

Except not.

-Emma’s son, who was handling some shit in Denmark, wasn’t able to make it over to England and take his crown. She did her best, guarding the treasury and trying to keep his half-brother under control, but things were slipping. So she sent word to those other sons she’d left in Normandy, letting them know that she needed help. And even though they hadn’t seen her in 20 years, they came, with armies. Unfortunately the younger one got caught – one of Emma’s men betrayed her – and he was blinded, because if there was one thing the English lords loved more than sons, it was putting out some dude’s eyes with, like, sticks. He died. Her older son turned tail and went back to Normandy, and Emma, sadly, was hustled out of the country. Bye, Emma.

-She tried really hard to get her oldest to try an invasion again, but he was kind of a dick and said no. BUT THEN. The son who had been chilling out in Denmark got word of the shit that had gone down, the murder of his half-brother, and came to her aid with some armed ships and men. Luckily for everybody, the jerk who had stolen his throne died before any fighting happened, so Emma and her son Harthacnut were able to sail on in and re-take the throne peacefully. The bitch was back. (And god do I just love to picture that moment when she sailed into port, stepped off that ship, and watched the nobility bow to her and her son. How do you NOT gloat in that situation?)

-Harthacnut wasn’t king for long, he died within 2 years, but while he was Emma was right back in her old position of power. She convinced him to invite over her remaining son, Edward, and the three of them ruled as a sort of triumvirate until Harthacnut died and Edward was declared king.

-At some point in this, she commissioned a book to tell her story, the first one we have from/about an English queen. The book was a hardcore PR campaign and, in my opinion, a giant ‘fuck you’ to the English nobility who had tried to screw her over. In it, she just completely omitted the whole marriage to her first husband. Gone. Like the dude never existed. She literally erased the motherfucker from history, and it is delightful.

-Once Edward was king he’d kind of had enough, so he went to take the treasury back from his mother – because she had, once again, managed to get total control over it. This took, and I cannot stress this enough: the king of England, three earls, and an armed force. To take back the treasury from a woman who was not even queen anymore. And then, somehow, she managed to come back from shit AGAIN and continue influencing things until she died. At 68 years old.

-Also, as a fun addendum, her decision to leave her sons to be raised in Normandy brought them into the sphere of her brother and his family. Who else came from Normandy, roughly 14 years after Emma died? That’s right, William the Conqueror – her great-nephew. Did her shade laugh at the English when he took the whole damn place over and killed Harold Godwinson, the son of the man who had betrayed her own son and handed him over to be blinded and killed? I bet she fucking did.