page_title: Edmund Ætheling
section_title: Life in exile
hierarchical_section_title: Edmund Ætheling / Life in exile
caption_attribution_description: Szent Gellért a Magyar Anjou Legendáriumban kép forrása: http://www.oszk.hu/siteeszkoz/kepek/kiallit/virtualis/3kodex/mal/k48.jpg A lázadó pogányok megölik a papokat Szent Gellértet letaszítják a pesti hegyről A kocsi magától Csanádra indul a Szent testével A Szent temetése
context_page_description: Edmund Ætheling was a member of the royal House of Wessex as the son of Edmund Ironside, who briefly ruled as King of England between April and November 1016. He fought the Danish Vikings under Cnut the Great, but following the Danish victory at the Battle of Assandun in October, it was agreed that Ironside would rule Wessex, while Cnut took Mercia and probably Northumbria. In November 1016, Ironside died and Cnut became King of all England.
  Intent on keeping his succession secure, Cnut sent Ironside's two infant sons, Edward and Edmund Ætheling, to his brother in Sweden, where they were to be murdered. Instead, the princes were spared and sent to safety to the Kingdom of Hungary, where they remained in the care of King Stephen I. After fleeing assassins hired by Cnut, the Æthelings arrived at the royal court of Kievan Rus' in 1028. The princes remained under the tutelage of Prince Yaroslav the Wise until adulthood. In 1046, the Æthelings both traveled to Hungary and helped the exiled Andrew of Hungary in his quest for the throne. Edmund died shortly after marrying a Hungarian princess, before 1054.
context_section_description: With Edmund Ironside dead and Cnut marrying Emma of Normandy, both Edmund and Edward were deprived of their rights to succeed to the English throne. Nonetheless, both were titled "Ætheling", an Old English word which designated royal princes who were eligible for kingship. As Edmund and Edward were the rightful heirs of England, Cnut decided to have them murdered. Considering it "a disgrace" for the Ætheling to be killed on English soil, Cnut sent them to his half-brother, Olof Skötkonung, the reigning King of Sweden, where they were to be put to death. An old ally of the princes' grandfather, Æthelred the Unready, Olof instead sent the Ætheling to the Hungarian royal court of King Stephen I, fearing they were unsafe in the north, where Cnut's power was great. Although exiled, Edmund and Edward still instilled hope in the leaderless Anglo-Saxons of Danish England.
  After his baptism in 985, Stephen I had become the first Christian ruler of Hungary. By the time of Edmund and Edward's arrival at his court, Stephen was married to Gisela of Bavaria and had led a peaceful reign. The Hungarian court was "a happy home" for the exiled English princes. However, in 1028, Edmund and Edward were forced to flee Hungary after Cnut sent powerful assassins to carry out the task of murdering the two Æthelings. The princes found refuge at the court of Yaroslav the Wise, Grand Prince of Kiev.
  Edmund and Edward were recorded as being "somewhat grown, and had passed twelve years" when they arrived in Yaroslav's capital, Gardorika, another name for Kiev. A mid thirteenth-century letopis (chronicle) records nothing of Edmund and Edward's stay at the Kievan court, although later Russian chronicles do mention their refuge. The Anglo-Saxons were Roman Catholics and Edmund and Edward were reserved towards the Eastern Orthodox character of Kievan Christianity; Yaroslav is likely to not have allowed the Æthelings to voice their dissatisfaction. The Æthelings' presence at the Kievan court presented itself as "a very useful negotiating counter" for Yaroslav's  Western-orientated foreign policy.
  After King Harthacnut's death, the English considered bringing Edmund and Edward back to England, but nothing came of it, as the princes were still in Kiev in late 1042. By 1043, Edmund, now in his late twenties, was being left out of Yaroslav's continental schemes, while Edward was elevated "to a position of sole responsibility where England's crown or dynastic alliances were concerned." This was possibly due to Edmund having an affair with a noble lady, which had caused quite a scandal. Andrew of Hungary, a Hungarian prince who had also been exiled, had established himself at Yaroslav's court in the 1030s. In 1046, during the Vata pagan uprising in Hungary, Andrew returned to his homeland with the intention of gaining the throne; Edmund and Edward are likely to have fought for Andrew's army and it is possible that they were present at his coronation.
caption: The Vata pagan uprising, from a contemporary chronicle.
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