Rage and Lust in the Afterlives of King Edgar the Peaceful

Edgar the Peaceful († 975) is a largely unemotive figure in tenth-century histories, a pious and good king to whom no vice is attached. This contrasts with his legacy as portrayed by certain twelfth-century Anglo-Norman chroniclers. William of Malmesbury describes, admittedly with some reservations, the rumours of his own time of Edgar’s lust, cruelty, and capriciousness. Edgar kills a man who had married a woman Edgar himself lusted after. Edgar kidnaps a nun and forces her into concubinage. Edgar orders a nobleman’s daughter be brought to him to satisfy his lust and, when tricked into sleeping with a maid instead in the dark, with a “terrifying laugh” raises the maid to overlordship of her former masters. According to William, Edgar had a reputation as a man who “surrendered himself to his vices and was a complete slave to his lusts”. Enough of William’s contemporaries and predecessors recount similar tales as to suggest these rumours were indeed in currency in the twelfth century. This essay sets out to examine the development of Edgar’s emotional afterlives, examining how emotive display could render reputations and legacies vulnerable and how depictions of untempered and uncontrolled emotion could serve pejorative purpose.