Gunhild of Wessex

Gunhild of Wessex was a daughter of Harold Godwinson and Edith the Fair. After the Norman Conquest she was associated with Wilton, one of the major royal and aristocratic religious houses of England, while the surviving members of her family adjusted to the destruction of their former political position.

Medieval sources connect Gunhild with Alan Rufus, the wealthy Breton lord who had supported William the Conqueror and gained extensive estates in England. Their relationship placed a daughter of the defeated English king in close association with one of the beneficiaries of Norman rule, making her life emblematic of the complicated personal ties that crossed the political divide after 1066.

Gunhild is the protagonist of Carol McGrath’s The Swan-Daughter, which reimagines her relationship with Alan Rufus and her attempts to determine her own future in post-Conquest England. After years associated with Wilton Abbey, she faces a choice between the security expected of a defeated royal house and a life with Alan Rufus, the powerful Breton lord whose fortunes were made under William the Conqueror. Their relationship brings together two families on opposite sides of 1066.