When authors decide to write historical fiction about a strong woman of the pre-modern period, they tend to go for the old favorites. How many novels have you seen about Anne Boleyn, for example? Or for the medieval period, Eleanor of Aquitaine?
But there were lots of interesting, strong medieval women who are worth studying for what they reveal about medieval society who would also make the great basis for historical fiction but who have been undeservedly ignored. One of them was Judith of Flanders.
Judith was a Carolingian, oldest child of the king Charles the Bald of France and great-granddaughter of Charlemagne. Like all people of the upper nobility, marriage for her was not based on things we take for granted, like love and shared values and compatibility. Instead, as I have discussed earlier, politics played a major role in such marriages, which could strengthen alliances or resolve disputes.
Judith was first betrothed in 855, when she was probably twelve or thirteen, to the Anglo-Saxon king Æthelwulf of Wessex, who was about fifty at the time and was a widower. Æthelwulf, as a good Christian king, was on his way to Rome on pilgrimage and stopped at the royal Frankish court. There the marriage was arranged. By this time the consent of both the future husband and wife was required for a valid marriage, but a young princess, who had been brought up knowing she was going to be married to someone rich and powerful who her parents wanted to make an alliance with, was not about to raise objections.
In this case, both King Charles and King Æthelwulf wanted to work against the Vikings, who were harassing both England and the French coast. A marriage of the princess with the widowed Anglo-Saxon king was intended to ensure that alliance would last.
It is important to note that Judith's parents were not simply disposing of her. When Æthenwulf returned from Rome a year later and they were formally married, Judith underwent a very elaborate, formal ritual marking her as queen of Wessex. Anglo-Saxon queens had never had any particular crowning rituals, but King Charles wanted the best for his girl. Lacking any Anglo-Saxon precedents, the Frankish bishops created a brand new ritual just for her. (It may have been inspired in part by Anglo-Saxon rituals for the crowning of kings.)
When Judith got to England, her new husband gave her a wealthy dower. This was money and property that would be hers even after he was gone. In her status as queen, she sat next to her husband in council and witnessed his documents, something the wives of Anglo-Saxon kings had not done before. Many at court thought this a little disturbing, but there was nothing they could do about it. There was also nothing they could do about it when Æthelwulf died only about a year and half after his marriage (858), and Judith promptly married her step-son, Æthelbald, born to Æthelwulf's first wife.
However, this marriage lasted no longer than her first one, and in 860 Judith was widowed for the second time. The English were probably starting to suspect a pattern. (Æthelbald was succeeded by his brother Alfred, one of the most successful Anglo-Saxon monarchs, who united all of England against the Vikings, but that's a story for another day.) Judith quickly sold all her dower property and headed back to France as a wealthy woman. She was still only in her teens and had had no children.
Her father Charles was probably concerned that a rich Carolingian princess would become the prey of fortune hunters. While he tried to decide on who to marry her to next, or whether it might be better for her to become a nun (and while he tried to deal with issues like rebellious nobles), he sent her to the royal palace of Senlis, where she was carefully guarded. Her younger brother Louis, the future King Louis II of France, was also living at Senlis at the time.
The guarding was inadequate. Judith by this time had a mind of her own. She decided to remarry, this time choosing her own husband, and she chose Baldwin, young count of Flanders. Flanders (now part of Belgium, the Dutch-speaking half, then part of the French kingdom) was at the time a fairly small and unimportant county, but Baldwin had ambitions. He came to Senlis in 862 to negotiate with Judith's brother Louis over some territorial issues, and there he met the young dowager queen.
Did he abduct Judith? Or did she willingly elope with him? Did Louis help the couple? The Flemish in later centuries had all sorts of stories about their elopement. At any rate, there is no indication that she objected. Judith now is usually taken as a good example of a noble woman with the ability and determination to shape her own life, though in earlier accounts she was often portrayed as a disobedient daughter or, alternately, as a helpless maiden carried off by a rapacious count. There was even a strain in English history of Judith as a sex-mad slut who lured her step-son into an incestuous coupling.
King Charles at any rate was furious with his daughter, with Baldwin, and with his son Louis. (It didn't help that Louis and his brothers decided on a brief rebellion against their father at this point.) Charles had the archbishop of Reims excommunicate Judith and Baldwin, saying that he was a rapist and she was no better than she ought to be. The pair fled to the court of her cousin Lothar II, king of the "middle kingdom" between France and Germany, who helped them persuade the pope to lift the excommunication. (Lothar was officially king of Italy, part of the middle kingdom.) Charles grudgingly agreed to a formal wedding ceremony in 863.
With this marriage, the next generations of counts of Flanders gained Carolingian ancestry, of which they were intensely proud. (Judith did have children with Baldwin, in spite of having no Anglo-Saxon offspring.) Flanders became a wealthy county, especially with the growth of trade in the twelfth century, as the area imported raw wool from England and spun it into cloth for the Champagne trade fairs. When Charles the Good of Flanders was murdered in 1124, as I previously discussed, there was a great deal of competition for this rich county.
There. Wouldn't Judith make a better subject for historical fiction than another book starring Anne Boleyn?
For more on Judith and how she has been portrayed over the centuries, see the new book edited by Steven Vanderputten, Judith of West Francia (Brepols, 2024).
© C. Dale Brittain 2025
For more on medieval kings and queens, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages. Also available in paperback.
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