Rowena in the
Matter of Britain was the daughter of the purported
Anglo-Saxon
The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...
chief
Hengist and wife of
Vortigern, "
King of the Britons
The title King of the Britons ( cy, Brenin y Brythoniaid, la, Rex Britannorum) was used (often retrospectively) to refer to the most powerful ruler among the Celtic Britons, both before and after the period of Roman Britain up until the Norma ...
". Presented as a beautiful ''
femme fatale
A ''femme fatale'' ( or ; ), sometimes called a maneater or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype of ...
'', she won her people the
Kingdom of Kent through her treacherous
seduction of Vortigern. Contemporary sources are nearly non-existent, so it is impossible to know if she actually existed.
Name
The name "Rowena" does not appear in
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
sources such as
Bede
Bede ( ; ang, Bǣda , ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable ( la, Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom o ...
's ''
Ecclesiastical History of the English People'' and the ''
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the ''Chronicle'' was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alf ...
''. It was first recorded by
Geoffrey of Monmouth in his 12th-century ''
Historia Regum Britanniae'' (in various
spellings
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
, including Ronwen, Renwein, and Romwenna), and may represent a
Medieval Latin corruption
Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense which is undertaken by a person or an organization which is entrusted in a position of authority, in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain. Corruption m ...
of some lost Old English or other
Germanic name.
Another possibility is that it comes from the
Brittonic languages, where the name becomes
Welsh ''Rhonwen''; this could be connected to the word "horsehair" ( cy, rhawn), which might be significant given her father and uncle's association with horses,
but this is simply conjecture based on similarity of pronunciation.
Attestations
''Historia Brittonum''
She is first mentioned in the
9th century ''
Historia Brittonum'' (traditionally attributed to
Nennius
Nennius – or Nemnius or Nemnivus – was a Welsh monk of the 9th century. He has traditionally been attributed with the authorship of the ''Historia Brittonum'', based on the prologue affixed to that work. This attribution is widely considered ...
) as the lovely unnamed daughter of the mythological figure, the Saxon Hengist. Following his brother, Horsa, and his arrival at ''Ynys Ruym'' (modern
Isle of Thanet), Hengist negotiates with the King of the Britons, Vortigern, for more land. At her father's orders, Rowena gets Vortigern drunk at a feast, and he is so enchanted by her, he agrees to give her father whatever he wants in exchange for permission to marry her (the fate of Vortigern's first wife, Sevira, daughter of
Magnus Maximus, is not specified). The text makes clear that the British king's lust for a
pagan woman is a prompting by the
Devil. Hengist demands the
Kingdom of Kent, which Vortigern foolishly grants him. This agreement proves disastrous for the Britons and allows the Saxons to strengthen
their foothold in Britain considerably. According to the ''Historia Brittonum'', Vortigern "and his wives" (Rowena/Rhonwen is not named directly) were burned alive by heavenly fire in the fortress of ''Craig Gwrtheyrn'' ("Vortigern's Rock") in
North Wales.
Geoffrey of Monmouth
Geoffrey of Monmouth's work ''
Historia Regum Britanniae'' (''History of the Kings of Britain'', ''circa'' 1138) was the first to give Hengist's daughter a name, Rowena, though the spelling varies widely by manuscript. According to Geoffrey, Vortigern usurps the
throne of Britain from the rightful king
Constans. Geoffrey claims the drunken seduction of Vortigern created the tradition of
toasting in Britain. Vortigern's friendly dealings with the Saxons, especially his allowing even more settlers to join them, causes his sons by his first wife to rebel. His eldest son
Vortimer takes the British throne and drives out the Saxons, but he is poisoned by Rowena, who assumes a
wicked stepmother role. Later, the Saxons kill all the British leaders at the
Treachery of the Long Knives, sparing Vortigern because of Rowena.
With her use of seduction and potions, Geoffrey's Rowena (a character whom the scholar
Edward Augustus Freeman described as "a later absurdity") perhaps served as a basis for later villainesses of the Matter of Britain such as
Morgan le Fay, and can be contrasted with his positive portrayal of British queens like
Cordelia of Britain and
Marcia. Another similar character is
Estrildis, the rival of
Queen Gwendolen, also a beautiful
Germanic princess.
The marriage of Rowena in the ''Gesta Regum Anglorum'' by
William of Malmesbury, a work contemporaneous with Monmouth's ''Historia'', serves as an ''
exemplum'' of the unification of ruling families after conquest, in this case Briton and German, thus legitimating the authority of the couple's descendants. Malmesbury had in mind
Henry I and
Matilda, whose marriage in 1100 had united for the first time the lineages, respectively, of the Normans and Anglo-Saxons.
Welsh tradition
In the ''
Welsh Triads'' and medieval Welsh poetry, Rhonwen is "The Mother of the English Nation" who personifies Saxon treachery and
Anglo-Saxon paganism.
[Vermaat, Robert]
"Rowena, wife of Vortigern"
From Vortigernstudies.org.uk. Retrieved September 29, 2007.
Frisian tradition
In the ''Spiegel historiael'' (Mirror of History) by the Flemish writer
Jacob van Maerlant
Jacob van Maerlant (c. 1230–40 – c. 1288–1300) was a Flemish poet of the 13th century and one of the most important Middle Dutch authors during the Middle Ages.
Biography
Jacob van Maerlant was born near Bruges. He becam ...
(1284–89) Rowena's father ''Engistus'' is considered to be Frisian; 15th century chronicles identify him as the founder of the city of
Leiden. His daughter ''Ronixe'' is introduced by Cornelius Aurelius in the famous ''Divisiekroniek'' (1517). From then on, Rowena is considered to be a Frisian princess (the current form ''Ronixa'' is derived from French sources). In Frisia, as in Britain, it was the custom that women welcomed visitors with a kiss. Therefore, Frisians began to believe that Rowena had introduced the custom of kissing in England. According to the Frisian historian Pieter Winsemius (1622) it was Rowena's Frisian kiss that seduced Vortigern to marry her.
Later adaptations
She was a titular character in
William Henry Ireland's play ''
Vortigern and Rowena'' (1796). Her name was later borrowed by
Walter Scott for the beautiful Saxon heroine in his historical novel ''
Ivanhoe
''Ivanhoe: A Romance'' () by Walter Scott is a historical novel published in three volumes, in 1819, as one of the Waverley novels. Set in England in the Middle Ages, this novel marked a shift away from Scott’s prior practice of setting st ...
'' (1819), after which it came into use as an English
given name
A given name (also known as a forename or first name) is the part of a personal name quoted in that identifies a person, potentially with a middle name as well, and differentiates that person from the other members of a group (typically a fa ...
.
(Presumably due to the original legendary Rowena's character flaws, her name was not commonly used until after the appearance of ''Ivanhoe''.)
References
{{reflist
5th-century English people
5th-century English women
Anglo-Saxon women
Arthurian characters
British traditional history
Jutish people
Mythological queens
Welsh mythology