Agafia Iaroslavna For years scholars have debated the identity of Agatha, wife of Prince Edward the Exile of England, who was son of Edmund II Ironside, king of England. This mystery, to my mind, has reached a conclusion in recent years with the argu- ments of René Jetté and Norman Ingham.1 These two scholars make the con- vincing argument, following the primary sources, that Agatha was another daughter of Iaroslav Mudryi and that she was married to Edward during his ex- ile in Rus’. This was clearly a dynastic marriage of the sort made by Iaroslav with other exiled princes in the middle third of the eleventh century, and thus deserves to be discussed in this chapter. In late 1016 Edmund Ironside was poisoned and Knud, who came to control nearly the entire Baltic and North Sea region, became king of England.2 Adam of Bremen records that Edmund’s young sons, Edmund and Edward, were sent into exile in Rus’.3 Their path there was actually more circuitous than Adam describes; they first went to Olof Skötkonnung in Sweden, only moving on to Rus’ after Knud deposed Olof in 1028.4 An exiled prince in Rus’ was not an un- common occurrence, coming through Rus’ in this time period were exiles from Sweden, including Olof Skötkonnung; from Norway, St. Olaf, and his son Mag- nus, and Olaf’s brother Harald Hardrada; and from Hungary, Andrew and his brother Levente. Iaroslav took advantage of the majority of these opportunities to build relations with these princes and expand the reach of Rus’. He unders- tood that exile was not always permanent and that these princes might some- day again rule the lands of their birth. To that end, he married his daughter Agafia (as she would have been known in Rus’) to Edward the Exile. This was a gamble on his part, as the marriage did not immediately gain anything for Rus’, but instead banked on Edward’s succession to the English throne, when Iaros- 1 René Jetté, "Is the Mystery of the Origin of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile, Finally Solved?" The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 150, no. 600 (1996); and Nor- man W. Ingham, "Has a Missing Daughter of Iaroslav Mudry Been Found?" Russian History 25, no. 3 (1998). Nazarenko also addresses this issue, coming to the conclusion that Edward was initially in Rus’, but married someone else. Nazarenko, Drevniaia Rus’ na mezhdunarodnykh putiakh, 499–501. 2 Adam of Bremen, liii, 51, 92. 3 Ibid. 4 Jetté, "Is the Mystery of the Origin of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile, Finally Solved?" 418. Agafia Iaroslavna 2 lav would be the king of England’s father-in-law and his daughter would be the queen. Edward and Agafia went to Hungary with or in the wake of Agafia’s sister Anas- tasia, who married Andrew (another marital gamble that paid off when he re- turned to Hungary to reclaim his throne, possibly with Rusian support, in 1046; see the next entry for more information).5 Edward and Agafia had three children, Edgar, Christine, and Margaret, the significance of whose names is discussed in chapter 4. Some twelfth-century chronicles record Edward and Agafia living in Hungary6 because this is where they were found by Edward the Confessor in 1054 when he asked Edward the Exile to return to England and become his heir.7 The couple and their children then returned to England, ar- riving in 1057 only to have Edward the Exile die mysteriously before he could be confirmed as heir by Edward the Confessor.8 Agafia then took charge of the family and moved them to Scotland, where her daughter Margaret was married to Malcolm III, king of Scotland. There has been much interest in Margaret in recent scholarship because she was such an active queen and clearly an in- fluential woman in the Middle Ages.9 Agafia lived with her daughter until her death, and most likely continued to exert influence upon her. Agafia’s heritage is recorded in the Leges Edwarde Confessoris, which states that she was the daughter of the Rusian king Iaroslav.10 The purpose of the work is even more interesting than its plain statement of Agatha’s origin. The document was created to codify Margaret’s royal heritage so that she might rule for her daugh- ter Mathilda,11 which was also required for Mathilda’s marriage to Henry I, king of England, in 1100.12 Agafia’s marriage to Edward the Exile was a gamble on her Iaroslav’s part, but it was a calculated one. It was also one that nearly paid off perfectly as Edward was recalled to England to be heir to Edward the Confessor. What did happen 5 Ingham, "Has a Missing Daughter of Iaroslav Mudry Been Found?" 234–35. 6 Ibid., 234–25. 7 Jetté, "Is the Mystery of the Origin of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile, Finally Solved?" 418. 8 Ibid., 419. 9 Pauline Stafford, "The Portrayal of Royal Women in England, Mid-Tenth to Mid-Twelfth Centuries," in Medieval Queenship, ed. John Carmi Parsons (Gloucestershire: Sutton Publish- ing, 1994), 153–54, for example. 10 Ingham, "Has a Missing Daughter of Iaroslav Mudry Been Found?" 252–54. 11 Ibid. 12 Jetté, "Is the Mystery of the Origin of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile, Finally Solved?" 419. Agafia Iaroslavna 3 was beneficial for Rus’ as well, though not immediately for Iaroslav. The pres- tige of Margaret a half-Rusian princess ruling in Scotland increased the renown of Rus’ in western Europe and Rusian blood was considered good European royal blood for the purposes of Agafia’s granddaughter’s marriage to the king of England. In an interesting postscript to this particular dynastic marriage, there is evi- dence that Rusian cousins in western Europe were involved with one another. Edgar, son of Agafia and Edward the Exile, and Philip, king of France, corres- ponded in the fourth quarter of the eleventh century. The Anglo-Saxon chroni- cle records that in 1074 Philip sent Edgar a letter in Scotland where he was staying with his sister Margaret, the queen, and “ordered him to come to him, and he would give him the castle at Montreuil so that afterwards he could daily do ill-turns to those not his friends.”13 The relationship between the two has always puzzled historians. 14 Edgar was the last or one of the last of the Saxon royal blood in Norman-occupied England, and perhaps that alone would have made him an ally of the French king should he wage war against the Normans. But as they are first cousins their relationship was more than just a bond of, perhaps, mutual interest, but a familial relationship. Thus, the dynastic mar- riage of Agafia Iaroslavna sheds light on multiple historical mysteries in Eng- lish medieval history. 13 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. M. J. Swanton (London: J. M. Dent Publishers, 1996), 209. 14 Ingham, "Has a Missing Daughter of Iaroslav Mudry Been Found?" 269n99. .