Question: Why Edward/Edmund But Not Edgar?

A quick browse over the names bestowed on the British royal males since the Conquest, shows a boatload of guys named EDWARD, a handful with the name EDMUND (most notably Edmund Crouchback and the brother of Edward IV/Richard III), but only one EDGAR - a son of James II who died in infancy.

I mean, to give you an idea, even when royals started having multiple names, it never made it into the lists. Edward's there. Check for Edmund. But Edgar is absent.

Now, both England and Scotland have had kings named Edgar, yet the name drops from the roll of acceptable names for princes almost as soon as it's included. Why was this? Sheer dumb luck? The fact that there's a St. Edward and a St. Edmund (I think, but the town must be named after him right? Plus there's that church in London that Wren built?) but no St. Edgar? Or were Edgar of England and Edgar of Scotland so bad that they cast a pall over it? Sorta like Richard?

Yeah, I suppose we can ascribe it to sheer dumb luck, I mean, few of the royal names from before the Conquest have been passed on besides Edward - Edmund, Alfred... - we've never seen another Athelstane or Athelred or the like, but it just seems odd.
 
A quick browse over the names bestowed on the British royal males since the Conquest, shows a boatload of guys named EDWARD, a handful with the name EDMUND (most notably Edmund Crouchback and the brother of Edward IV/Richard III), but only one EDGAR - a son of James II who died in infancy.

I mean, to give you an idea, even when royals started having multiple names, it never made it into the lists. Edward's there. Check for Edmund. But Edgar is absent.

Now, both England and Scotland have had kings named Edgar, yet the name drops from the roll of acceptable names for princes almost as soon as it's included. Why was this? Sheer dumb luck? The fact that there's a St. Edward and a St. Edmund (I think, but the town must be named after him right? Plus there's that church in London that Wren built?) but no St. Edgar? Or were Edgar of England and Edgar of Scotland so bad that they cast a pall over it? Sorta like Richard?

Yeah, I suppose we can ascribe it to sheer dumb luck, I mean, few of the royal names from before the Conquest have been passed on besides Edward - Edmund, Alfred... - we've never seen another Athelstane or Athelred or the like, but it just seems odd.

None of the pre conquest names survived the normanisation of the british noblity.

When Edward I was born, edward was an archaic name not sued in the same way athelstane was. But Henry III was devoted to Saint Edward the confessor, adpoted him as his patron saint and named his son after him. And Because Edward I was a powerful king, the name Edward became used again.

A less pious Henry III and there wouldn't be any post conquest Edwards either.

Trying to work out why edgar didn't survive as a royal name is the wrong approach, Edgar isn't the outlier, Edward is.
 
Saints basically.
Edward and Edmund were used by the Angevins because they were names of prominent English saints rather than English names.
 
Any chance of somebody deciding "Hey, let's canonize Edgar of..." and we get St. Edgar? I mean, the pope scared up a St. Napoleon in the 19th century, so in the 11th-14th I'd imagine it'd be easier, wouldn't it. There you could become a saint by breathing IMO
 
Any chance of somebody deciding "Hey, let's canonize Edgar of..." and we get St. Edgar? I mean, the pope scared up a St. Napoleon in the 19th century, so in the 11th-14th I'd imagine it'd be easier, wouldn't it. There you could become a saint by breathing IMO
I've not had much luck finding one to canonise!
 
Any chance of somebody deciding "Hey, let's canonize Edgar of..." and we get St. Edgar? I mean, the pope scared up a St. Napoleon in the 19th century, so in the 11th-14th I'd imagine it'd be easier, wouldn't it. There you could become a saint by breathing IMO

I've not had much luck finding one to canonise!

Edgar the Peaceful was canonized - or rather, was venerated as a saint outside the Church "stamp" - as were his mother and, huh, his lover. With a comprehensive pope, it could be easily arranged to have his "saint's papers" done. Edward the Confessor was no more (or no less) saint-material than his grandfather, after all.
 
Edgar the Peaceful was canonized - or rather, was venerated as a saint outside the Church "stamp" - as were his mother and, huh, his lover. With a comprehensive pope, it could be easily arranged to have his "saint's papers" done. Edward the Confessor was no more (or no less) saint-material than his grandfather, after all.
Was he? He was the one I thought might have beeb but I couldn't find anything.
 
Edgar the Peaceful was canonized - or rather, was venerated as a saint outside the Church "stamp" - as were his mother and, huh, his lover. With a comprehensive pope, it could be easily arranged to have his "saint's papers" done. Edward the Confessor was no more (or no less) saint-material than his grandfather, after all.

So, we just get a pope to sign off on him? AIUI Henry VI was inches away from being canonized by the early Tudors, but then Lady Margaret Beaufort died, and Henry VIII said no thanks. Why didn't it go through OTL? Do you know? I know Madame Royal tried to have Louis XVI/Marie-Antoinette canonized, but the church found that there was criteria lacking for their canonization, and thus they weren't even beatified (much to her chagrin), much less canonized/ As said above, in the Middle Ages, the canonization process wasn't so complicated. So could a king/pope decide "we should canonize Edgar," or "let's adopt Edgar the Peaceful as our symbol" (much like Longshanks later took St. George).
 
So, we just get a pope to sign off on him? AIUI Henry VI was inches away from being canonized by the early Tudors, but then Lady Margaret Beaufort died, and Henry VIII said no thanks. Why didn't it go through OTL? Do you know? I know Madame Royal tried to have Louis XVI/Marie-Antoinette canonized, but the church found that there was criteria lacking for their canonization, and thus they weren't even beatified (much to her chagrin), much less canonized/ As said above, in the Middle Ages, the canonization process wasn't so complicated. So could a king/pope decide "we should canonize Edgar," or "let's adopt Edgar the Peaceful as our symbol" (much like Longshanks later took St. George).

Canonization, as with every other papal prerogative, really took off with the so-called Gregorian Reform, which is a long process ending in the 12th c.. Church doctrine alway acknowledged "local saints", i.e. saints venerated in a "particular church" (diocese) without any canonization process/evident martyrdom, but the Church gradually worked these saints out of the principal calendar of feasts. You still can find these saints in local liturgy texts but no priest except the more historian-savy ones would even know of their existence. For a 10th c. layman, even a King, things were more complicated : the Church would not object to a local veneration in a diocese or two, but an England-wide cult with royal support and new foundations is not possible after the 12th c. without a pontifical bull. The ideal of sanctity for laypersons promoted by the Gregorian Church was the one of "holy retirement" : the aging warrior giving away his lands and retired to/founded a monastery and living the rest of his days in penance, a la Guillaume d'Orange/de Gellone. A noble who had not taking this religious path would not be canonized until the new models of sanctity created in the 13th c., like Louis IX or Francis of Assisi
 
So, the POD needs to be after Louis IX then? If France gets a warrior-king canonized, I can see the English wanting their own royal saint - I mean, the Arpads and Premyslids seem to have canonized whole sections of their family - Sts. Agnes, Kunigunde, Elisabeth of Hungary, to name a few.
 
So, the POD needs to be after Louis IX then? If France gets a warrior-king canonized, I can see the English wanting their own royal saint - I mean, the Arpads and Premyslids seem to have canonized whole sections of their family - Sts. Agnes, Kunigunde, Elisabeth of Hungary, to name a few.

They definitively would, but they probably target a member of their own dynasty rather than a Saxon.
 
They definitively would, but they probably target a member of their own dynasty rather than a Saxon.

Except saints don't get themselves excommunicated (which rules out John and Henry III), Richard might be a good contender (if we can put a pious spin on him going crusading), but most of the devil's brood of Henry II seems unlikely, as does Henry himself (his treatment of his wife and sons, as well as his very public affair with Rosamond Clifford). I kinda like the idea of the papacy simply legitimizing the canonization of an English royal saint - Edward the Confessor, Edgar the Peaceable - as a way of putting a veneer of propriety on these countryfolk all honoring him. Maybe give Edgar's grave a couple miracles (Henry VI's was supposedly connected with the healing of headaches IIRC).
 
Except saints don't get themselves excommunicated (which rules out John and Henry III), Richard might be a good contender (if we can put a pious spin on him going crusading), but most of the devil's brood of Henry II seems unlikely, as does Henry himself (his treatment of his wife and sons, as well as his very public affair with Rosamond Clifford). I kinda like the idea of the papacy simply legitimizing the canonization of an English royal saint - Edward the Confessor, Edgar the Peaceable - as a way of putting a veneer of propriety on these countryfolk all honoring him. Maybe give Edgar's grave a couple miracles (Henry VI's was supposedly connected with the healing of headaches IIRC).

Henry II’s problem would be another saint named Thomas Beckett... Edward the Confessor was canonized in 1161, so before a 13th c. PoD. A Norman, perhaps, but who ?
 
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