Edgar the atheling biography channel

​EDGARAtheling, or EADGARthe Atheling (fl. 1066), king-elect, son of Eadward the Exile and Agatha, a kinswoman of Gisla, queen of Hungary and of the Emperor Henry II, was probably born in Hungary before 1057.

In that year his father, the surviving son of Edmund Ironside [q.

Edgar the atheling biography channel

v.], came over to England in accordance with an invitation sent by Edward or Eadward the Confessor, who designed to make him his heir, but he died shortly after his arrival without having seen the king. The story that the Confessor recommended the ætheling to the nobles as his successor, and that there was a party who upheld his right at the Confessor's death, is plainly erroneous (Gesta Regum, iii.

238). It has been asserted that on this occasion Eadgar had ‘no constitutional claim upon the votes of the witan beyond any other male person in the realm’ (Norman Conquest, iii. 7), though the assertion appears open to question, for constit