Edward the Martyr

Edward became King of the English at roughly thirteen in July 975 after his father Edgar's death triggered a succession fight between rival noble factions: Archbishop Dunstan and Ealdorman Æthelwine backed Edward, while his stepmother Queen Ælfthryth and Bishop Æthelwold supported his younger half-brother Æthelred. Edward won quickly, Æthelred got compensatory lands, and the boy-king inherited a mess - nobles clawing back estates Edgar had forced them to sell cheap to monasteries, two rival magnates carving up land, no one quite willing to push it to war. On 18 March 978, Edward was killed at Corfe in Dorset on Ælfthryth's own estate and buried hastily at Wareham; a year later his body was moved with ceremony to Shaftesbury Abbey. Contemporary sources named no one, but nearly every account after the Norman Conquest pointed at Ælfthryth, though some historians now think Æthelred's men acted alone. The murder of an anointed king horrified a society that considered kingship sacred, and Edward was venerated as a martyr despite being remembered in his own time for physically and verbally abusing those around him.