Queen Aelflaed

Queen Aelflaed was the first daughter of Aelthryth, the first and founding Queen of the Kingdom of Weidany. She was born in 998, and took the thrown when she was 41 in 1039. Aelflaed was a bastard child of Aelthryth, and the Earldorman of Lanuch refuses to accept her rule, and started rising an army even before her mother was dead.

The sudden death of her mother (it is said, by Aelflaed's own sword) allows Aelflaed to march on Lanuch with her own army, surprising and defeating him before news had even reached him of the change in Queens. Her bloody massacre of over two score nobles leaves no doubt in anybody's minds that Aelflaed was capable of enforcing her rule.

Her rule is almost cut short though with the barbarian invasion from Merkia, and she is forced to move her residence from Holbury to Stowell. 16 years of warfare follow, until eventually she gains victory over the Merkians.

She dies two years later in 1059, all her children having been killed in the war, leaving the throne to her sister.