Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie, and this is episode 487. Stealing a wife from God.

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Edith, the daughter of King Malcolm Canmore of Scotland, has appeared from time to time

in our story. And by this point, she was about 20 years old. And many of those years had been weird ones.

And I'm going to do a lightning fast refresher on some of the events that we've covered over the last year.

But stick with me here.

These details will matter for what's coming next.

So, King Malcolm Canmore had sent Edith to England to be educated when she was a child.

And under normal circumstances, that would have probably been a pretty good idea.

But England under the House of Normandy, especially England under Rufus, were not normal

circumstances. And so in 1093, Malcolm decided to head down to Wilton Abbey to pick up his daughter. Because not only was he

displeased with Rufus, which I think is totally understandable, but he also likely wanted to take

advantage of the chaos that Rufus was causing, especially since Northern England had been

slowly aligning itself towards Scotland for years.

And so his play here might have been to marry Edithoff to Earl Allen the Red, one of the most

powerful English lords of the time. Or maybe to one of the other powerful men who wanted to

seek your ties to the throne of Scotland

and also the surviving line of the House of Wessex by taking Edith's hand in marriage.

And I'm guessing it didn't hurt that Edith wasn't just a dynastic powerhouse.

She was also known for being beautiful.

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