Gytha Godwinson: a Tale of Terror, Trial and Triumph

Women in the High Middle Ages often seem to be a faceless, nameless mass. Life was not precious and survival precarious: they were the silent and hard labouring ‘other half’ in a world that was distinctly male and made of gore and glory. The few women who carved out a public role for themselves, were all part of important families. Their roles were limited to what the author Harriet O’Brien in her brilliant book ‘Queen Emma and The Normans’ defines as ‘cupbearer, peace-weaver and memory-keeper.’  These are fascinating titles in themselves!

In the beginning of my new novel ‘The Last Princess’, my heroine Gytha Godwinson is no exception to this rule. Her story starts in Sussex, set in the splendour of Bosham Manor in late 1065, during Modranecht. This was an ancient Anglo-Sacon name for Christmas Eve: the mother’s night. Gytha is the daughter of the Earl of Wessex, King Edward the Confessor’s right-hand-man, and later-on King Harold II Godwinson. Bosham Manor has long since disappeared – the Anglo-Saxons treaded lightly on the surface of this earth, building in mud, wattle, and daub, and living in harmony with nature and its seasons, as Eleanor Parker describes it so beautifully in her book ‘Winters in the World’. Call it medieval mindfulness. Gytha’s home survives even though, as its unusual two-storey architecture is depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry. The same tapestry, which portrays more than six-hundred humans, but only three women; and which was embroidered by what the author Henriette Leyser calls ‘mourners’ – women left behind by the slaughter-stained year of 1066. Gytha, too, might have been like them – using embroidery as an outlet for her emotions, and being well aware of her limited choices. As Halley’s Comet appears in the prologue, its hellfire rakes the night sky and scares the Godwinson women witless: great change is to come about the kingdom. When marvelling at it in fascinated horror, Gytha admits: ‘I do not know what it is. I wish I had paid more attention to Grandmother’s lessons; lessons aimed at preparing me for either marriage or the monastery, whichever serves my family, and thus England, better.’ 

For Gytha, things move on swiftly from there, as a third choice presents itself to her following 1066, and the defeat that she witnesses at Hastings. Exile – the sound of the word says it all. A short, sharp cut, which severs a person from all that they are worth in their world: their home and their family. In Gytha’s case, it is a family, whose story is like a Greek tragedy of Anglo-Saxon making. Yet the confidence with which she questions the patriarchy and the church, which allows her to witness the Battle of Hastings and which makes her choose flight and fight, must not surprise.  The Godwinsons were a feral pack and utter upstarts, who owed everything to their women: Gytha’s grandfather Godwin lay the foundation for the family’s ascent when he married a relative of Canute the Great, the sole ruler of the North Sea Empire of England, Norway, and Denmark. Harold II. Godwinson was their eldest surviving son and the heir to Godwin’s House of Dragons – their heraldic beast is a two-legged, winged Wyvern, which also adorns the cover of ‘The Last Princess’ in form of a cross-stitch embroidery. But if Harold inherited his father’s lust for power, he lacked the funds – until his ‘Danelaw’ wedding, a simple hand-fastening by tying a couple’s wrists together, to Edith Swanneck. Edith brought Harold England’s largest-ever dowry: two-hundred-and-fifty ‘hides’, estates and their manors and belltowers. Her fortune offered Harold the fyrd, the simple soldiers whose fortunes rose and fell with him, and the geld, the rental income he required. But when Harold’s sister – King Edward the Confessor’s Queen – bears England no son and heir,  he is on the lookout for somebody, who supplies him with the other half of England, too. Ideally a woman – and this is where ‘The Last Princess’ begins.

Gytha forges her fate in a fire that feeds on other people’s ambition and betrayal. In the Godwinson family, betrayal runs generations deep– what is an unbreakable vow to others, is a mere string of words to them. Everything is up for the taking during this swansong of the Anglo-Saxon era, which culminates in the Battle of Hastings. Historians such as Marc Morris label this mother of all uphill struggles, where both the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons fought for England, as ‘The defining catastrophe of the British Isles.’ The truth about this? Not William the Conqueror brought the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom to an end: he was a symptom of the cause. Gytha’s family unravels as a searing sibling rivalry severs all bonds. This tears her world apart and Anglo-Saxon England into an abyss. To survive, Gytha must free herself from their expectations. She refuses to submit and to be mere bloodstock, fit for royal breeding. Might there be refuge with family that lives further afield? Interestingly enough, Vikings, Normans and Anglo-Saxons were like three sides of a pyramid, related by centuries of intermarriage. Gytha chooses flight and fight, but as a lethal conflict between the old belief and the new faith entraps her, there are more decision to make and her new home is no less treacherous. The Viking women, who fight in battle and are as ferocious as their men, are as much as an inspiration as the whole society at the royal court of Soderup is a deterrent: the Vikings were consummate slavers, and the English word ‘enthralled’ comes from the Nordic word for an enslaved human being – thrall. The novel’s themes of loss, displacement and betrayal are as ‘Zeitgeist’ as her yearning for love, friendship and belonging.  Her next steps are astounding: from the ashes of a cursed kingdom, Gytha forms a new empire – but which one? Let me surprise you, which is the wonder of writing historical fiction! Even if an author must embrace historical determinism – the end of the story tends to be known – the art is in the storytelling and in creating its turning points. Given this set-up, there rarely seems to be a story which so merits a ‘female retelling’ – already because the perplexing plot of Gytha’s life, and her later glory, is so unknown. Of all the Godwinsons, it is Gytha’s bloodline that survives to this day. She is the missing link between ‘King and Conqueror’, and the events which set the clock to hour ‘0’ for a modern Britain. Gytha, however, leaves her trace all over the Europe we know today – a continent of nation states.  Of all women we know about in the High Middle Ages, Gytha eschews all pre-conceived roles and dares the unprecedented: she writes world history.

Ellen Alpsten was born and raised in the Kenyan highlands and holds a MSc from the IEP de Paris. She worked as a News-Anchor for Bloomberg TV before writing fulltime. Her debut novel ‘Tsarina‘ and its sequel ‘The Tsarina’s Daughter’ (both Bloomsbury Publishing) are translated in twenty languages and were shortlisted for numerous awards. The Last Princess is her latest novel.