Aethelswith of Mercia (838-888) was the Queen of Mercia from 853 to 874 with King Burghred of Mercia.
Biography[]
Aethelswith was born in 838 to King Aethelwulf of Wessex, and was an Anglo-Saxon Christian of the House of Wessex. In 853 she married Burghred of Mercia, and she became the Queen of Mercia through their marriage. At a time when both Wessex and Mercia were suffering from raids by Vikings, the marriage subordinated her husband to her father, and in the same year as her marriage to her husband, she was sent to subjugate Powys for her husband. In 868, Burghred called on her brother Aethelred of Wessex to assist him in fighting an entrenched Danish army at Nottingham, the last time that the West Saxons would come to the aid of the Mercians. In 874 AD, she was captured by the Norwegian Viking warrior Eivor at Templeborough, where her husband had placed her under armed guard to protect her following the fall of Tamworth to the Great Heathen Army. Aethelswith was interrogated at Tamworth, with Eivor fruitlessly questioning her before Ivar the Boneless appeared in the barn with several severed heads, which he then threw to the pigs. Disgusted, terrified, and hoping for peace in Mercia, Aethelswith ultimately cracked under Eivor's pressure, revealing that her husband had been hiding at the old crypt at Offchurch. Following her husband's capture and abdication in favor of Ceolwulf II of Mercia, the couple was exiled to Rome, where Burghred died that same year. Aethelswith died in 888, and was buried in Pavia, Italy.
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