Abstract
Queen Emma was married to two kings of England: first Æthelred from 1002 to 1016 and then Cnut from 1017 to 1035. After the death of her second husband Cnut, she commissioned the Encomium Emma reginae between 1040 and 1042 to cement her position as joint ruler alongside her two sons, Edward (son of Æthelred) and Harthacnut (son of Cnut). The text focuses on recent history from the point of view of the Danish dynasty, her second husband Cnut’s family, with the first book focusing on his father Svein, the second book on Cnut and his marriage to Emma, and the final book centering Emma and her sons. Æthelred is not mentioned, and the parentage of Emma’s two sons by her first marriage is deliberately obscured. As well as the text, the earliest manuscript (British Library Additional 33,241) also contains an image of a monk presenting the manuscript to Emma, who is depicted enthroned in state with her two sons at her side.
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Maude, K. (2023). Encomium Emmae reginae. In: Sauer, M.M., Watt, D., McAvoy, L.H. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Medieval Women's Writing in the Global Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76219-3_87-1
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