Agatha - Agatha, again

Yaroslav of Kiev is my bet but we cant attach her to him without solid proof

My source: 2001 Ancestors of Dover, Ltd, Revised 2002, "Kings and Queens of England" lists Agatha, daughter of Emperor Henry (Heinrich) II as the wife of Eadward the Outlaw or Exile (1016-1057).

There is also an Agatha (Unknown) married to Edmund II, "Ironside", (23 April - 30 November 1016) who preceded Eadward in 1016. This could be the same Agatha.

I don't think we'll ever get solid proof - if nobody has found any in a thousand years, there probably isn't any.

It all comes down to opinion and interpretation - my reason for favoring Yaroslav is not only that he had extra daughters, but that he gambled with the happiness of two of his other daughters, marrying (or permitting the marriage of) Anastasia to Andras, then just a rival claimant to the crown of Hungary, and Elizaveta to Harald Sigurdsson, then "just" a wealthy and ambitious Varangian warlord with an arguable claim on the throne of Norway.

Both of these sons-in-law made good on their claims, albeit with difficulty: Andras I won the crown of Hungary, and Harald that of Norway (then he tried for Denmark and England as well) - we know the latter best as "Harald Hardraada".

If Agatha was another daughter and he gambled on Edward the Exile, Yaroslav rolled snake-eyes on that one. But Agatha's daughter Margaret did wind up Queen of Scotland....

As for the other daughter (Anne) whose name and husband are known, she is said to have been the youngest and her father's favorite, and *her* marriage was as the second wife to the widowed king of France, Henri I Capet.

JPM: We can rule out "Agatha" as a wife of Edmund Ironside: his wife was named Ealdgyth (and she was the mother of Edmund and Edward, the exiled princes).

"Agatha, daughter of Heinrich II" was an early interpretation of statements in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (first source to give her name), and by John (alias "Florence") of Worcester and (in one place) Ailred of Rievaulx (in another place he says she was Hungarian). Chronologically it's extremely improbable.

The real story isn't in accounts, it's in account books...but alas, we have no account books for the courts of any of the Usual Suspects.

One point to consider is whether the medieval sources were quite as well acquainted with geography east of Germany as we are. Adam of Bremen (the earliest source for *anything* relating to Edward the Exile) quite firmly states the boys were exiled to Russia. This indicates that he knew there was a place called "Russia", whether or not he knew how far east it was. Some of the others, one may well wonder, considering that they didn't have a firm grip on the chronology of points east either. John/Florence (and several followers) and Orderic Vitalis (possibly but not certainly independently, name a "Salomon" king of "Hungary" who was a generation or so after Edward the Exile's time (he was in fact the son of Andras I and Anastasia of Kiev).

All the same, the persistence of the name "Salomon" and his association with eastern Europe *may* point back to Kiev again: the biblical Solomon was known for his wisdom, as was Yaroslav "the Wise" of Kiev.