| Notes |
- TITL:
Princess of France
TITL:
Countess of Flanders
TITL: bet 0856 and 0858
Queen of Wessex (title banned by the W. Saxons)
_FA1:
2nd for her; soon renounced by him
_FA1: abt 0858
Judith was Æthelwulf's widow and Æthelbald's stepmother
marriage with Aethelbald was annulled
When Judith was about 12 years old, her father gave her in marriage to Ethelwulf, King of Wessex on October 1, 856 at Verberie sur Oise, France. Ethelwulf had been on pilgrimage to Rome, and had stopped at the Court of Judith's father, Charles the Bald on his journey back to Wessex. Soon after the two returned to England, Ethelwulf's eldest surviving son, Ethelbald, had devised a conspiracy with the Ealdorman of Somerset and the Bishop of Sherborne to oppose Æthelwulf's resumption of the kingship. In response to this crisis, Æthelwulf yielded western Wessex to his son while he himself retained central and eastern Wessex. Æthelwulf's restoration included a special concession on behalf of Saxon queens: the West Saxons previously did not allow the queen to sit next to the king. In fact they were not referred to as a queen, but merely the "wife of the king." This restriction was lifted for Queen Judith, probably because she was a high ranking European princess.
When Ethelwulf died on the 13th of January 858, he was succeeded by his son, Ethelbald. In the same year Ethelbald earned the censure of the Church by marrying Judith, his widowed teenage stepmother. The relationship was deemed incestuous and in direct contravention of church law. The marriage was eventually annulled in 860 on the grounds of consanguinity, the same year that Ethelbald died.
Through her marriages to two Kings of Wessex, Judith was twice Queen of Wessex and was both the stepmother and later sister-in-law of Alfred the Great. Interestingly, Judith's son by her third marriage, Baldwin II of Flanders would go on to marry Alfred's daughter, Ælfthryth (also known as Elfrida). By her third marriage, Judith was also the ancestress of another Queen of England, Matilda of Flanders, the consort of England's first Norman King, William the Conqueror. Thus Judith is not only an ancestress of the Counts of Flanders, but through Matilda, she is also direct ancestress of the Monarchs of England, including Queen Elizabeth II.
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846 - Aft 870 (> 25 years)