The Royal Women Who Made England: The Tenth Century in Saxon England
M.J. Porter has written over 50 fiction titles on Saxon England, and she says that she wrote this, her first non-fiction book, out of frustration at the difficulty in researching the lives of Saxon queens and princesses. She therefore decided to draw together everything that was known about the royal women of the House of Wessex in the 10th century, when England was being formed from a patchwork of Anglo-Saxon regional states, and to describe and analyse the sources.
It is evident from the relatively short length of the book how little is known and that often only in snippets, such a list of witnesses to a charter. Much of the material is unreliable, especially the post-Conquest chronicles. Porter does her best to sift fact from myth and propaganda.
This is not a book for the general reader, but for those researching late Saxon England it is invaluable.
