Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie and this is Episode 205.

Saint Edmund, the martyr. This show is ad-free due to member support and as a way of thanking

members for keeping the show independent, I offer members only content including extra

episodes and rough transcripts. Right now the members are listening to a shop talk episode

where co-producer Zianai are discussing Rodnar's death song and how cultural

imaginaries impact how we view and study history. You can get instant access to that episode

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And thank you very much to Carl, Sarah and Tom for signing up already.

Last episode we ended with the engagement of Prince Alfred to Ailswift,

daughter of Elder Man, Atharied Musel of Mercia, and also a descendant of King Cunwolf of Mercia.

And I briefly mentioned the political implications of such a match, but there was also a personal

aspect of this as well. Not the marriage itself though, that was certainly personal,

so personal in fact that we have no real knowledge of how Alfred felt about his wife.

We know how he felt about his piles, we know how he felt about hunting. We know quite a bit

about his feelings on a variety of things, but not about his wife. Now it's entirely possible

that he was desperately in love with his wife and the silence in the record was just part of the

culture at the time and one didn't speak about such things. But the fact remains, we don't know

much about how he or Ailswift felt about the marriage. But that being said, their feelings

weren't the personal aspect I was speaking about. Rather, it was Alfred's social status.

While Alfred appears to have been involved in court since a young age, even learning at his father's

side, the construction of Anglo-Sex and life meant that, on a social level, even after he reached

the age of maturity, he wasn't fully an adult until he was married and yet a household of his own.

...