Chapter 4 - Mothers and Messengers

Summary

Genealogical narratives often include a strand of violence and physical effort for women, particularly through childbirth but also through exile, migration for marriage, and establishing an independent life, as the previous chapters show. This chapter explores genealogical transmission and its relationship to violence and women’s action in the context of administrative communication networks in the Middle English Athelston, in which the king kicks his wife, killing his heir, and sentences his pregnant sister to a trial by fire. Drawing on network theory, which emphasizes the “doers” and “doing” of a network, the chapter explores the alignment of the two royal heir-bearers with messengers, which positions the women as key transmitters, not unlike the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation, rather than as wives who simply carry their husbands’ children. In this model of transmission, the women influence succession not only through childbearing but also through royal petitioning, letter writing, and prayer.