Activity: Talk or presentation types › Oral presentation
Description
Æthelflæd is an interesting character in the story of England’s pre-Norman history. Not just because of her status as female ruler, or for her seven years of sole-rule in Mercia, or for her establishing of a network of defensive fortifications in Mercia, or even for her military successes in Wales and the Danelaw. But for the mythos that has grown around her, for the ways in which her legacy was and continues to be received, adapted and transmitted. This paper examines some of the earliest of Æthelflæd’s admirers: England’s early twelfth-century Anglo-Norman historians, and analyses how they represented Æthelflæd’s legacy and why.