Aethelred – coming ready or not

Aethelred the Unready’s reign got off to a shaky start. Well, winning your throne after your half-brother has been murdered by persons unknown is always going to cause a few raised eyebrows. However, Aethelred wasn’t suspected of the murder himself, though his mother may well have been involved. Mothers were tough in those days, particularly when the throne of England might be at stake.

But the murder of Edward the Martyr (who wasn’t as holy as he sounds – he was actually a volatile king with a nasty temper) put a bit of a damper on Aethelred’s reign on the home front. Meanwhile, the continued influx of marauding Danes was playing havoc with his foreign policy. So Aethelred took the rather primitive course of ordering the lot of ‘em be put to death – all those Danes on English soil, that is. This was not a popular move with the Danes, particular as their king’s sister happened to be on English soil at the time.

A battle ensued between Aethelred and the king of Denmark. And Sweyne actually won. So for a short time, England was ruled by King Sweyne and Queen Sigrid.

Whether Aethelred was actually considered to be "unready" at the time is unlikely. "Unready" is more likely to have been a poor translation of "ill-advised".