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How England misplaced its first king
- milesrout 1y ago[dead]
- h33t-l4x0r 1y agoIsn't that the monk who got kidnapped by vikings in Vikings?
- hardlianotion 1y agoNot the same person. That one was much less kingly.
- hnjobsearch 1y agoÆthelstan was a fairly common name among the anglo-saxons at the time. The "Æthel-" prefix, really - meaning "noble" - was common among both boys and girls. I am unaware of the culture around non-binary people at the time and can't comment as to the popularity of their preferred naming conventions.
- lloydatkinson 1y agoLet’s be real and put fantasy aside for a second, there was no “culture” for this.
- foldr 1y agoI’m not sure how people make such confident pronouncements about the 10th century (a great many things will have happened that long ago without any surviving historical record), but there is some evidence of negative attitudes towards gender-nonconforming people at the time that are depressingly similar to those you’ll find on certain internet fora today: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A6ddel_and_b%C3%A6dling https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A6ddel_and_b%C3%A6dling
- DonHopkins 1y agoOh my, you're easily triggered into parading your ignorance and intolerance. You should see a therapist about all that.
- lloydatkinson 1y agoThat’s a lot of extreme words for my simple comment. Lots of projection in your reply, such senseless and “triggered” commentary is actually the sort of thing a therapist could help you with.
- IAmBroom 1y agoWhat does your second paragraph have to do with this discussion?
- vidarh 1y agoTo the prefix, it survives widely in Germanic languages to this day in newer forms. In Norwegian for example, "edel" and "adel" means noble - the former used for objects (a gemstone is an "edelstein" - noble stone; a noble gas is an "edelgass") while the latter refers to the nobility. You'll find one or both or variations in every (I think; certainly most) Germanic language. We still have names derived from Æthel as well, e.g Ethel, Albert, Adele, Adolf, and others.
- hardlianotion 1y agoHe hasn't been misplaced! He got first place in - er - The Rest is History English Kings Rankings!
- scopendo 1y agoTheir series earlier this year, covering Alfred the Great through to William the Conqueror, was one of their best, I think (and I'm a fan).
- zwieback 1y agoGenerally Aethelstan gets pretty good coverage on TRIH and the episodes on that era are some of my favorites. Also, the VIP membership tier is called "Athelstan" if I remember correctly.
- ZeroConcerns 1y agoFor a lighter take on this whole business, I can recommend Unruly - The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens by David Mitchell. It's a rather self-indulgent monologue at times (like, dude, it's a book, not a panel show), but also a pretty comprehensive-yet-short-and-funny look at how all that Kingdom stuff got started.
- gilleain 1y agoAgreed on both points - I did enjoy it, but boy if you are not used to David Mitchell's humour, or are not a native English speaker, or for various other reasons ... this book could be hard going. It got better, but the first few chapters were like being trapped in a pub with David and him bending your ear on history for several hours.
- tonyedgecombe 1y agoI didn’t mind the humour but got lost in all the Edward’s and Henry’s. It did reinforce my skeptical opinion on the monarchy.
- kristianc 1y agoTo be fair the book ends (by choice) at the precise point where the monarchy starts to evolve into something more like what we have today.
- clucas 1y ago> being trapped in a pub with David and him bending your ear on history for several hours Don't threaten me with a good time! Ordered.
- NoboruWataya 1y agoThis is honestly why I got it (I listened to it as an audiobook which was narrated by Mitchell himself). I'm not really that "into" the history of the British monarchy, but if it's told to me by Mark from Peep Show I could get on board with it.
- alsaleftitjtjf 1y ago[flagged]
- 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 1y agoBasically the whole article can be distilled into the single paragraph: > He was officially crowned in September 925AD. The following year, in 926AD, he married off his sister to the Viking king of Northumbria, which lay to the north of his kingdom's border. A year later, the Viking ruler died, and Æthelstan took over Northumbria. In consolidating the previously separate kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria, Æthelstan became the first king of all England.
- kspacewalk2 1y agoAnd the whole rationale for writing this article is here: >If nothing else, Æthelstan's story overturns the centuries-long notion that England was originally a homogeneous culture, says Woodman. It's a misconception that still resurfaces today, but the truth was very different. Which the article doesn't make very persuasively in my opinion, but whatevs. Also, apparently some historians are ceding the term "Anglo-Saxon" to the far right, along with the English flag? The whole approach is like a self-referential parody of itself.
- biofox 1y agoFor those wondering, here's the excerpt: "There's been a big debate about the very use of the word Anglo-Saxon, so much so that people in our field of scholarship are not using the word [...] because of the connotations that Anglo-Saxon now has with the far right" Soon we won't be able to use the word "right" to indicate direction. It'll be left and not-left.
- foldr 1y agoThe point made is a perfectly sensible one if you include a bit more context: > Amid all the battles and conquest, however, Æthelstan brought a cosmopolitan flair to his new kingdom. Today there is a tendency – particularly among the far right – to depict early England as being cut off from the rest of Europe, and homogeneous in its cultural makeup. In truth, the newly formed kingdom of England was an outward-looking society. > "There's been a big debate about the very use of the word Anglo-Saxon, so much so that people in our field of scholarship are not using the word anymore, and are going towards Early Medieval instead because of the connotations that Anglo-Saxon now has with the far right," says Woodman. "When [the term Anglo-Saxon] is invoked by the far right, they're thinking of it as very one-dimensional – people from one background in England in the 10th Century." > In fact, that's a big misconception of what the period was like. "It was actually a very diverse place in early 10th Century. I always think about Æthelstan's Royal Assemblies, and there were people there from lots of different kingdoms within England, Britain more widely, from Europe. They were speaking a multiplicity of languages, Old Welsh, Old Norse, Old English, Latin. I just feel [the term Anglo-Saxon] is used without thinking, and without factual detail about the early 10th Century." > Downham agrees. "There was a lot of cultural variety in the area we call England today. There wasn't this English monolith that started in 500AD."
- geye1234 1y agoWorth remembering that the Venerable Bede was writing The Ecclesiastical History of the English People two centuries before Athelstan, so clearly there was some notion of unity as early as that.
- chuckadams 1y agoCheck between the couch cushions?
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoWas his dad Edward Longshanks (the villain in Braveheart)?
- lucozade 1y agoNo, King Edward I was 300 years later.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoAh. I thought the timing was off, but the article didn't say Edward I, just "Edward." I get confused by this stuff. I guess Edward wasn't a big king, then, but it sounds like he was a butt-kicker, nonetheless.
- acheron 1y agoThe Saxon and Norse kings didn’t use numbers, and the numbers that the post-Norman invasion kings used only started with them (so Edward “Longshanks” was Edward I, despite several Saxon kings Edward). But if the next king of the UK decides to use the name “Aethelstan”, he wouldn’t be a II. (However, they are supposed to count Scottish kings now, so he could be “Macbeth II”.)
- UncleSlacky 1y agoMacbeth II of Scotland, but also Macbeth I of England...
- rm445 1y agoThe strength of feeling some English lovers of history have for the Anglo-Saxon kings slightly mystifies me. Athelstan created a unified English kingdom. Briefly, till he died and it un-unified. England was fully conquered by a Danish king later (Cnut). A couple of the kings, Aethelred the Unready and Edward the Confessor, were such colossal wet blankets that you get the impression of a people just crying out to be conquered. I can see why so much of the popular conception of English history basically starts with the Norman Conquest.