Amidst these crazy times of coronavirus, some people are keeping busy by knitting, others by binge-watching Netflix shows. Currently, I’m knee-deep in early medieval Russian genealogy. I began by reading The Constant Queen by Joanna Courtney, a rollicking historical fiction read that tells the story of Elizaveta of Kiev, wife of Harald Hardrada. That last-named Norwegian warrior-king best known as the “third party,” along with William of Normandy and Harold Godwinsson, in the 1066 fight for England.
Yaroslav I and his daughters, fresco from the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev. Credit: Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons
Russian royals outside of the Romanovs rarely get their just due, and as I met Elizaveta’s parents—Yaroslav, Grand Prince of Kiev, and Ingrid of Sweden—I became fascinated by this unusual pairing. Son of the first Russian Christian prince of Kiev, Yaroslav earned the sobriquet of “the Wise” for his sage military maneuverings, codifications of legal precedent, and foundations of libraries and churches. Perhaps one could term his Kiev the locus of a “Golden Age,” as historians have suggested.
He helped build diplomatic bridges with Western Europe, but even as Yaroslav was prolific in his cultural output, he was just as prolific in the bedroom. And he helped construct those bridges with marrying off his many sprogs to powerful rulers across Europe. In many ways, he presaged Christian IX, King of Denmark, as the so-called “Father-in-Law of Europe,” whose many sons and daughters wed into the great houses of Europe, by 800 years.
First up, there’s the aforementioned Elizabeth (Elizaveta), who solidified marital ties between Kiev and Norway. Unfortunately, her two daughters by Harald did not have any children themselves, but had Harald’s efforts to take England succeeded, Yaroslav would have been father-in-law to the rulers of England and France. That’s because another of his daughters, Anna, married Henry I Capet, king of the fledgling state of France. Likely literate—in his article “The Education of the Early Capetians,” Joel Rosenthal noted that “we have indisputable proof of his wife's signature; it has come down to us in Cyrillic lettering”—Anna perhaps introduced the Greek name Philip to the French royal family, as medieval historian Jean Dubabin does an excellent job of explaining in her essay “What’s in a Name? Philip, King of France.” Anna did prove to be the first French consort to hire a tutor for her kids. That last worked well, as Philip was reportedly a brilliant young man. Philip founded a dynasty whose descendants still survive—and claim the defunct French throne, plus extant ones in Spain and Luxembourg—today. Oh, and Vladimir Putin name-dropped her in a conversation with the president of France.
Another of Yaroslav’s daughters with Ingrid, Anastasia, wed Andrew I of Hungary, who regained his throne from an usurper. Admittedly, Andrew’s reign didn’t last all that long, and her sons, the biblically-monikered duo of Solomon and David, spent most of their adulthood battling it out against their paternal cousins. But yet again, here comes a daughter to save the day: Anastasia’s sole female child, Adelaide, became the maternal grandmother of the pivotal Polish prince Boleslaw III (nicknamed “Wrymouth”). Boleslaw Christianized large portions of Pomerania and proved a ruthless force that reshaped Eastern Europe.
And for fans of the British monarchy, it’s one of Yaroslav’s possible daughters, Agatha, who is arguably most intriguing of all. We know Yaroslav had four daughters, based on contemporary portraits, but the identity of the fourth is unverified. Around the same time as Yaroslav’s daughter number four would have been married off, a noblewoman named Agatha pops up as wife of Edward the Exile, banished prince of England. Her parentage is never listed, but we know Edward was traipsing around Eastern Europe at this time, and Yaroslav had a habit of wedding his daughters to exiled princes who might return home to claim their kingdoms (see: Anastasia and Andrew).
As Russian historian Norman W. Ingham noted in a 1998 essay, many scholars believe Agatha to be the lost daughter of Yaroslav and Ingrid, and Agatha became “very important genealogically.” Her husband never became king, but her daughter, Margaret, married Malcolm III Canmore of Scotland, became the mother of three kings—including the revolutionary David I, whose unique name is intriguingly similar to his Hungarian cousin’s—and earned sainthood. Another of Margaret’s children was Edith, who married the Norman king Henry I and thus founded a dynasty of British rulers that extends to the present day.
Here’s the seal of Matilda/Maud/Edith, princess of Scotland and queen of England. Credit: Walter de Gray Birch/Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons
What about Yaroslav’s six sons? Eldest son Vladimir—named for Yaroslav’s sainted father—reigned over Novgorod and didn’t live long enough to break out on his own, but had a son named Rostislav. Rostislav had to fight his cousins, sons of Vladimir’s brothers, for his legacy, but managed to seize the rich town of Tmutarakhan for himself not once, but twice. Sadly, he didn’t rule for long, as an assassin allegedly used a special ring. The killer wore a ring complete with a small button he had secretly pressed with his finger, dispensing poison into the victim’s cup. Thus did Rostislav die in 1067.
Yaroslav’s son Iziaslav wed Gertrude, a sister of the King of Poland. She helped him consolidate power and rule in Kiev after Yaroslav’s death—and after he was booted out of his realm twice; their son became an Eastern Orthodox saint. Another Yaroslavich, Sviatoslav, wed twice, his second spouse being the niece of Pope Leo IX and cousin of the Emperor of Germany, adding a nice Western European connection there. His sons battled with their other cousins for supremacy over the now-fractured domains of their grandfather.
Yet another son of Yaroslav was Grand Prince Vselevod, who firmed up connections to the south of Kiev by wedding a Byzantine princess, a daughter of Constantine Monomakh. This type of alliance wasn’t new—Yaroslav’s own father wed Anna Porphyrogenita, another Byzantine princess—but proved useful when Vselevod got fed up with his nephew Oleg, son of the aforementioned Sviatoslav by that prince’s first marriage. Troublemaking Oleg was sent into exile after being captured…was Uncle Vselevod involved? It doesn’t hurt that he went to Constantinople, where Vselevod’s in-laws could keep an eye on him. With his Byzantine wife, Vselevod had the famous and prolific prince Vladimir Monomakh, who kept the Rurikid dynasty going for quite some time.
As his second wife, Vselevod seemingly wed a princess of the Cumans, a nomadic people that had been plaguing his settlements for years. Named Anna, she gave birth to Eupraxia of Kiev, who adopted the name Adelaide when she married the Holy Roman Emperor. Eupraxia-Adelaide rebelled against her husband, however, who was the Emperor Henry IV, and complained he’d treated her like a prisoner and forced her to witness—or even participate in—heinous acts of unspeakable “fornication.” Letters survive from Eupraxia-Adelaide, begging her family to let he come back to Russia. Needless to say, these two were not soulmates, though historian Christian Raffensperger dubs her a “rockstar” as an intermediary between East and West.
Another son of Yaroslav, Igor, wed a German countess named Kunigunde. They had two sons, but their kids didn’t make as big a mark as their cousins; same goes for Yaroslav’s last son, Boris.
Bibliography
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Dimnik, Martin. The Dynasty of Chernigov 1054–1146. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1994.
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Dvornik, Francis. “The Kiev State and Its Relations with Eastern Europe.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, XXIX (1947). 27-46.
Ingham, Norman W., 'Has a Missing Daughter of Iaroslav Mudyri Been Found?' Russian History '/Histoire Russe, 25 (1998), 231-70.
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Raffensperger, Christian. “Agent of Change: Evpraksia Vsevolodovna between Emperor and Papacy.” Portraits of Medieval Eastern Europe, 900-1400, edited by Donald Ostrowski and Christian Raffensperger. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018, 178-214.
--. "Iziaslav Iaroslavich's Excellent Adventure: Constructing Kinship to Gain and Regain Power in Eleventh-Century Europe," Medieval Prosopography (2015): Vol. 30 : Iss. 1 , Article 2.
--. The Kingdom of Rus’. Kalamazoo. MI: Arc Humanities Press, 2017.
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Rosik, Stanisław. “The Shaping of Post-barbarian Identity: The Example of Pomerania in the 11th-12th Century.” Imagined Communities: Constructing Collective Identities in Medieval Europe, edited by Andrzej Pleszczynski, Joanna Aleksandra Sobiesiak, Michał Tomaszek and Przemysław Tyszka, Brill, 2018, 293-303.
“Yaroslav the Wise.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yaroslav-the-Wise. Accessed
30 March 2020.
