The Saxon Secret to Avoiding a Bad Ruler

Medieval WomenForgotten Women of HistoryRoyaltyNicola de la Haye

20 Feb

(And Why We Abandoned It)

What if the worst rulers in English history didn't have to happen?

Bad kings - the weak, the cruel, the catastrophically incompetent - weren't inevitable. They were the consequence of a system that handed the most powerful job in the kingdom to whoever happened to emerge from the right womb in the right order!

Primogeniture, succession by (male) birth order, gave England Edward II, whose personal failings and political incompetence ended in his deposition and probable murder. It gave England Richard II, whose erratic tyranny triggered a constitutional crisis and cost him his throne. It gave England Henry VI, whose mental collapse plunged the country into thirty years of civil war. These weren't accidents of fate. They were what happens when a system prioritises birth order over every other human quality.

But before the Normans locked this system in place, the Anglo-Saxons did something far more interesting.

William the Conqueror, a Norman nobleman, invaded England and wiped out Saxon rule and customs, and not necessarily for the better

The Aetheling System: Choose the Best, Not the First

In Saxon England, royal succession wasn't automatic. Eligibility for kingship required royal blood - you had to be an Aetheling, a prince of the royal house - but blood alone didn't crown you. That decision fell to the witan, an assembly of nobles and advisors who selected the most capable candidate from the eligible royal kin.

Leadership, reputation, military skill, and political judgement mattered.

It wasn't a perfect system. Politics is never clean! But it enshrined something radical: the idea that the best-suited royal should lead, not merely the eldest. Compared to the rigid hierarchy the Normans imposed after 1066, it looks almost enlightened.

The Woman the Saxon System Still Ignored

Here's the frustrating part. Even this more flexible, merit-conscious model had a catastrophic blind spot: it excluded women entirely.

And yet the medieval period gave us women who demonstrated, repeatedly, that female leadership was not only possible but often superior to what the men around them were managing. Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, governed and defended a kingdom after her husband's death with a strategic brilliance that male chroniclers struggled to explain away. Nicola de la Haye held Lincoln Castle against sieges that would have broken lesser commanders, and more than once, and served as Sheriff of Lincolnshire at a time when such roles were almost exclusively male.

These women didn't fail because of their gender. They succeeded despite every institutional barrier placed in their way.

Imagine a Witan that could have chosen them.

An Aetheling system that included daughters of the royal house and also selected leaders based on capability rather than birth order and sex could have expanded the pool of rulers to those with genuine diplomatic, administrative, and strategic gifts. It could have pressured royal households to cultivate excellence in all their children. It could have given England rulers selected for their fitness to rule, rather than the accident of their birth.

It wasn’t until a few centuries later that the world would see the greatness that was Elizabeth I. But even she was only queen because there was, at the time, no obvious man.

Why This Still Matters

The stories of women like Nicola de la Haye and Æthelflæd resonate today precisely because we recognise something in them: competence that was systematically overlooked. Courage that the official record almost buried. Leadership that happened anyway, despite the rules, not because of them.

The medieval world built systems that produced kings by formula and then acted surprised when the formula failed. The women who broke through did so not because the system supported them, but because they were extraordinary enough to overcome it.

That's the story worth telling. And it's the one that keeps pulling me back to the medieval past.

Lady of Lincoln tells the story of Nicola de la Haye, the woman who held a castle, defied a king, and ultimately saved England.

Buy your copy of the multi-award winning novel here: https://books2read.com/u/4980nW

Lady of Lincoln is a multi-award winning novel about Nicola de la Haye, the woman who saved England

royaltyAnglo SaxonsSaxonsNormansNorman ConquestNorman InvasionForgotten Women of HistoryMedieval WomenNicola de la HayeNicholaa de la HayeNicola de la Haye novelElizabeth IÆthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians. ÆthelflædAethelflaed

Rachel Elwiss Joyce

Rachel Elwiss Joyce, Author of Historical Fiction.

Exploring power, loyalty, and love in turbulent medieval England.

Rachel came to novel writing later in life, but she has always been passionate about history, storytelling, and the forgotten voices of women. She writes meticulously researched, immersive historical fiction that brings overlooked heroines into the light.

She started inventing tales about medieval women living in castles when she was just six years old—and never stopped. But when she discovered the extraordinary story of Nicola de la Haye, the first female sheriff, who defended Lincoln Castle from a French invasion and became known as ‘the woman who saved England’, Rachel knew she had found a heroine worth telling the world about.

Lady of Lincoln is her debut novel, the first book in her Nicola de la Haye Series, with sequels to follow.

https://rachelelwissjoyce.com