He was son of King Edgar and Queen Ælfthryth.

Æthelred was not personally suspected of participation, but as the murder was committed at Corfe Castle by the attendants of Ælfthryth, it made it more difficult for the new king to rally the nation against the military raids by Danes, especially as the legend of St Edward the Martyr grew.

Like Queen Ælfthryth, she acted as patroness of the clergy and abbot Ælfsige of Peterborough was one of her closest advisors.

A number of lives of Edward were written in the centuries following his death in which he was portrayed as a martyr, generally seen as a victim of the Queen Dowager Ælfthryth, mother of Æthelred.

Edward was known to be King Edgar's son, but was not the son of Queen Ælfthryth, the third wife of Edgar.

Ælfthryth was the widow of Æthelwald, Ealdorman of East Anglia and perhaps Edgar's third wife.

Dunstan was said to have questioned Edgar's marriage to Queen Dowager Ælfthryth and the legitimacy of their son Æthelred.

The version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which contains the most detailed account, records that Edward was murdered, probably at or near the mound on which the ruins of Corfe Castle now stand, in the evening of 18 March 978, while visiting Ælfthryth and Æthelred.

A recent study translates his words as follows :" And a very great betrayal of a lord it is also in the world, that a man betray his lord to death, or drive him living from the land, and both have come to pass in this land: Edward was betrayed, and then killed, and after that burned ..." Later sources, further removed from events, such as the late 11th century Passio S. Eadwardi and John of Worcester, claim that Ælfthryth organised the killing of Edward, while Henry of Huntingdon wrote that she killed Edward herself.

In the second version, Ælfthryth was implicated, either beforehand by plotting the killing, or afterwards in allowing the killers to go free and unpunished.

Edgar was crowned at Bath and anointed with his wife Ælfthryth, setting a precedent for a coronation of a queen in England itself.

He left two sons, the elder named Edward, who was probably his illegitimate son by Æthelflæd ( not to be confused with the Lady of the Mercians ), and Æthelred, the younger, the child of his wife Ælfthryth.

In 979 AD a Benedictine abbey, the Abbey of St Mary and St Melor, was founded on what may have been the site of a previous monastery by Dowager Queen Ælfthryth.

Arnulf was the son of count Baldwin II of Flanders and Ælfthryth of Wessex, daughter of Alfred the Great.

Ælfthryth (-1000 or 1001, also Alfrida, Elfrida or Elfthryth ) was the second or third wife of King Edgar of England.

Ælfthryth was the first king's wife known to have been crowned and anointed as Queen of the Kingdom of England.

Ælfthryth was the daughter of Ealdorman Ordgar.

According to William, the beauty of Ordgar's daughter Ælfthryth was reported to King Edgar.

Sound political reasons encouraged the match between Edgar, whose power base was centred in Mercia, and Ælfthryth, whose family were powerful in Wessex.

In 966 Ælfthryth gave birth to a son who was named Edmund.

Edmund died young, circa 970, but in 968 Ælfthryth had given birth to a second son who was called Æthelred.

Here Ælfthryth was also crowned and anointed, granting her a status higher than any recent queen.

Ælfthryth was a direct ancestor of Matilda of Flanders, who married William the Conqueror, first monarch from the House of Normandy, granting a descendant of the House of Wessex to be king of England, even after the Norman conquest of England.

They had five or six children together, including Edward the Elder, who succeeded his father as king, Æthelflæd, who would become Queen of Mercia in her own right, and Ælfthryth who married Baldwin II the Count of Flanders.

A charter of 966 describes Ælfthryth, whom Edgar had married in 964, as the king's " lawful wife ", and their eldest son Edmund as the legitimate son of the king.

In 884 Baldwin married Ælfthryth ( Ælfthryth, Elftrude, Elfrida ), a daughter of King Alfred the Great of England.

He married Ælfthryth, a daughter of Alfred the Great, King of England.

Edgar had two children before he married Ælfthryth, both of uncertain legitimacy.

Edgar married Ælfthryth in either 964 or 965.

One of her sons by Baldwin married Ælfthryth, a daughter of Æthelbald's brother, Alfred the Great.

Ælfthryth married Baldwin II ( died 918 ), Count of Flanders.

No children of Æthelwald and Ælfthryth are known.

On a charter to the New Minster at Winchester, the names of Ælfthryth and her son Æthelred appear ahead of Edward's name.

Due to Æthelred's youth, Ælfthryth served as regent for her son until his coming of age in 984.

A royal nunnery, Cholsey Abbey, was founded in the village in 986 by Queen Dowager Ælfthryth on land given by her son, King Ethelred the Unready.

When the succession became an issue late in Edgar's reign, Æthelwold supported the claim of Æthelred, the son of his major patron, Ælfthryth, whereas Dunstan and Oswald appear to have supported Edgar's son by an earlier wife, Edward the Martyr, who succeeded to the throne.

In addition to this, and her link with the family of Æthelstan Half-King, Ælfthryth also appears to have been connected to the family of Ælfhere, Ealdorman of Mercia.

Ælfthryth is more reliably established as Coenwulf's wife, again from charter evidence ; she is recorded on charters dated between 804 and 817.

In the 19th-century depiction by James William Edmund Doyle, Edward the Martyr is offered a cup of mead by Ælfthryth, widow of the late Edgar, unaware that her attendant is about to murder him.

Æthelflæd is mentioned by King Alfred's biographer Asser, who calls her the first-born child of Alfred and Ealhswith and a sister to Edward, Æthelgifu, Ælfthryth and Æthelweard.

On 18 March 978, while visiting Ælfthryth at Corfe Castle, King Edward was killed by servants of the Queen, leaving the way clear for Æthelred to be installed as king.

Although her reputation was damaged by the murder of her stepson, Ælfthryth was a religious woman, taking an especial interest in monastic reform when Queen.

Ælfthryth was the subject of the award-winning young adult novel Journey For a Princess by Margaret Leighton ( 1960: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, New York, NY ).