Æthelred of Wessex of Asser's "Life of King Alfred the Great" refer to a "mysterious 'Wulfthryth regina'", but Keynes stated in 1994 that she was "presumably the wife of King Æthelred". Æthelred had two known sons, Æthelhelm and Æthelwold. Æthelwold disputed the throne with Edward the Elder after Alfred's death in 899. Æthelred's descendants include the tenth-century historian, Æthelweard, and Æthelnoth, an eleventh-century Archbishop of Canterbury. Æthelred of Wessex Æthelred I (Old English: "Æþelræd", sometimes rendered as Ethelred, "noble counsel"; – 871) was King of Wessex from 865 to 871. He was the fourth son of King Æthelwulf of Wessex. He succeeded his
The King of England and his Three Sons The King of England and his Three Sons The King of England and his Three Sons is a Gypsy fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in "More English Fairy Tales". He listed as his source Francis Hindes Groome's "In Gypsy Tents", where the informant was John Roberts, a Welsh gypsy. A version of this tale appears in by Ruth Manning-Sanders, under the title "An Old King and His Three Sons of England". An old king could be cured only by golden apples from a far country. His three sons set out to find them, and parted ways at a crossroads.