The only exception among them is the eldest, Athelstan, to whom Emma feels an immediate attraction and emotional connection-feelings that she knows are dangerous.Īmong her worst enemies is Elgiva, the beautiful but conniving daughter of Ælfhelm, ealdorman of Northumbria and one of the king’s closest advisers. His sons are no better, for they are threatened by the power she wields and by her potential to bear a child who will usurp them in the line of succession. Haunted by past sins and terrified by the prospect of being overthrown, Æthelred makes rash decisions and as his difficulties increase he becomes ever more hostile toward Emma. In fact, he seems to resent that he has had to take a new wife at all, and the more she attempts to fulfill her role as queen and counselor, the more hostile he becomes. Her husband keeps her at a distance and treats her with suspicion. When Emma arrives at the royal court, her reception is chilly at best. The bargaining chip is that Æthelred make Emma not just his wife but queen of England. Emma, the sixteen–year–old sister of Richard, duke of Normandy, is promised in marriage to the king, on the condition that Richard will help protect England’s shores from his ally Swein Forkbeard, the plundering Dane. The year is 1001, and the wife of Æthelred II, Anglo–Saxon king of England, has just died.
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