EMMA ERASED KING ÆTHELRED | Symphonic Metal

"I sent to Flanders for a man who could write, and I paid him before he began." Leave the First One Out — Emma of Normandy, Vol. XVIII, Track 09 Dynasty Fallen · She could not change what happened, so she paid for the version that would last. — 1041. Emma of Normandy commissions a monk of Saint-Bertin in Flanders to write her life. The book he makes, the Encomium Emmae Reginae, is one of the very few contemporary works written for a medieval queen, and it is a work of careful omission. She had been married to King Æthelred of England for fourteen years and had borne him two sons. The Encomium never mentions that marriage. Her story opens with the Danish conquest and her marriage to Cnut, and her sons appear behind her as if she had only ever had one husband. The frontispiece shows her enthroned, receiving the book from the kneeling author while two of her sons look on. It was finished in the brief window when both sons were with her: Harthacnut, the king, and Edward, newly brought back from Normandy. Within the year Harthacnut was dead, struck down at a wedding feast at Lambeth, and Edward was king. The chorus shifts each time it comes round. First she leaves out one, then two, then both: the husband is the first to go, and in the end the book is the only version left. The bridge looks forward to the archive: a room with no fire, clean hands, readers who take her chosen starting year for the truth. In the film the monk writes while Emma watches. In the present day, Rei and John travel from the Old Minster lawn at Winchester, where Emma was buried in 1052, by train, across Waterloo Bridge and along Euston Road to the British Library, where the manuscript is kept today, busking along the way with a guitar and whatever John can drum on. The thesis is the title: a queen could not change the past, but she could edit it. — ALBUM: Emma of Normandy — The Version That Survived · Vol. XVIII ► Read the full album page: https://dynastyfallen.com/emma/ ► Truth, Saga & Legend (annotated history): https://dynastyfallen.com/emma/truth-... STREAM THE CATALOGUE ► Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3IgyH... ► Apple Music:   / dynasty-fallen   ► YouTube Music:    / Канал   — SOURCES The Encomium Emmae Reginae (c.1041–42), written for Emma by an anonymous monk of Saint-Bertin, for the shape of the book: its silence on her marriage to Æthelred, the frontispiece of the queen enthroned with the author kneeling and her sons looking on, and its claim that the letter that lured her son Alfred to England in 1036 was forged in her name. British Library Add MS 33241 is the surviving early copy. A second, revised version, made after Edward became king, survives in a later copy found in Copenhagen in 2008. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for Harthacnut's death at Lambeth in June 1042 and for Edward's accession. Deliberate liberties, flagged: "ten sixteen" is the song's shorthand for where the book's story starts; the scriptorium is staged at Winchester; the reading aloud before both sons is ours. No forged letter has ever been found. — DYNASTY FALLEN Concept albums about the women who shaped — and shattered — empires. One woman from history per album. Cinematic visuals. Symphonic, melodic, weighted. #EmmaOfNormandy #EncomiumEmmae #DynastyFallen #SymphonicMetal #AngloSaxon #ConceptAlbum #HistoricalMetal