![]() The real AEthelflaed emerges as a remarkable political and military leader, admired in her own time, and a model of female leadership for writers of later generations. Yet she was also a patron of learning, who used poetic tradition and written history to shape her reputation as a Christian maiden engaged in an epic struggle against the heathen foe. A skilled diplomat who forged alliances with neighbouring territories, she was a shrewd and even ruthless leader willing to resort to deception and force to maintain her power. Aethelflaed, the Lady of the Mercians, was the daughter. ![]() The sources from her own time, and later, reveal a more complex, nuanced and fascinating image of the `Lady of the Mercians'. Joanna Arman is currently a PhD Student at the University of Winchester, researching Women and Feudalism in the Late Middle-Ages. The Warrior Queen: The Life and Legend of Aethelflaed, Daughter of Alfred the Great by Joanna Arman. In fiction, however, she has also been cast as the mistreated wife who seeks a Viking lover, and struggles to be accepted as a female ruler in a patriarchal society. ![]() To the popular imagination, she is the archetypal warrior queen, a Medieval Boudicca, renowned for her heroic struggle against the Danes and her independent rule of the Saxon Kingdom of Mercia. Joanna Armans briskly-paced The Warrior Queen (2017), is the first full-length. ![]() AEthelflaed, eldest daughter of Alfred the Great, has gone down in history as an enigmatic and almost legendary figure. Founder, Fighter, Saxon Queen: Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians. ![]()
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