Athelston

Athelston:

This poem is short when compared to its neighboring texts in the TEAMS volume, nearly half even King Horn, and there isn't much in the way of romance fluff. We don't get long descriptions of a king's virtues, and there isn't much in the way of digressions through the just over 800 line text. Instead, the text opens with a description of the pact made between three messengers, and then launches immediately into how one of those brothers works to betray that pact. Primarily, there are three things that struck me about this text: the role of messengers, Athelston's temper, and pregnancy.

The Role of Messengers:

Throughout the text, the role of the messenger is predominant. The four brothers-by-pact met while carrying out their own labor as messengers, and the messenger that carries letters to all of the major players in the text both is the primary plot device of the text and discusses many of the details of his craft. The role of the messenger in Athelston seems to me to emphasize the role of truth. The messenger who carries false letters (knowingly or otherwise) is a relatively common trope in Middle English literature, cropping up in several Breton Lays for example, but the interesting element here is that the king, earls, and archbishop have all previously acted as messengers themselves, suggesting that the messenger somewhat mirrors these major players themselves. As the TEAMS text introduction suggests, this can be seen in how the messenger works to present his messages accurately and dependably while the king acts on false information, leading to Athelston acting unjustly. Overall, however, I think the importance here is on the importance of truth. Certainly, the messenger's letters can be true or false, and lead to righteous or unjust acts as a result, but this seems to also play into the use of the ordeal to find the truth. The Archbishop, upholding his previous role as messenger to bring the truth, finds a way to certify the testimony of his brother and prove the falsehood of the other. The king refuses to allow the matter to be heard in parliament, yet this also seems to be offered as an alternative to find the truth. However, more than facilitating betrayal, false information pushes Athelston to extreme actions. 

The Wrath of Athelston:

An interesting element was the level of anger with which Athelston responds to the claims of betrayal. This is not to say that the king is wrong in reacting strongly to claims of his brother breaking the sworn pact, but the anger itself overshadows any sense of region. Both Athelston's wife and the Archbishop attempt to reason with the king, suggesting that he suspend the order of execution until the betrayal can be verified, but Athelston insists that his brother and brother's family, including his own pregnant sister, be executed posthaste. I tend to sympathize a great deal with issues of anger, having gone through a series of anger management issues when I was younger. What's always struck me about the process of building anger is the point you reach when the rage requires an outlet no matter the cost, when you can see that what you're doing is destructive not only to yourself but to others around you, and you stop caring. Oddly, one of the best film depictions of that kind of rage for me is from A Christmas Story: 

The building of rage in Ralphie is certainly something I went through quite often when I was in grade school, and his sorrow after realizing what he's done was especially familiar. The rage that Athelston experiences leads to something that I saw as simply horrific: the striking of his pregnant wife. 

Pregnancy:

There are two pregnant women in this text: Athelston's wife the queen and Athelston's sister who is married to Egelond. Athelston clearly has strong relation to each and likewise good reason to see neither come to harm, yet due to his rage Athelston does just that. Athelston's letter has his sister, who is in a rather late term of her pregnancy, travel with her family despite the risks this bears to her health; she insists that if her sons are to be raised to knights, she should be there (not knowing that this is the ruse Athelston has arranged). Athelston pronounces that all of Egelond's family, including his sons and pregnant wife, are to be both hanged and drawn into quarters by horse. This gruesome pronouncement pushes into the extreme, but the moment that paused my reading is when Athelston's own pregnant wife tries to employ reason. After she has fallen to her knees begging her husband to have mercy, Athelston responds violently: "'A, Dame,' he sayde, 'verrayment / Hast thou broke my comaundement / Abyyd ful dere thou schall." / With his foot -- he wold nought wonde -- / He slowgh the chuld ryght in here wombe; / She swownyd amonges hem all" (279-284).  I had to take a moment to stop reading here. Athelston's rage grows to such a level that not only does he strike his wife but kicks her directly in the stomach, a destructive act seemingly intentionally aimed at his own unborn child. This moment is seemingly mirrored later as Athelston's sister gives birth in the middle of a fiery ordeal, helping to prove her husband's innocence and birthing a saint in the process, but the good here doesn't balance Athelston's destructive act. Furthermore, Athelstone shows regret when he realizes what his conviction has done to his pact-brother, but only briefly mentions his sadness at having killed his own son and only then in part of his pronouncement of anger towards Wymound once the falsehood is revealed. This text seems to suggest that, when bereft of truth, anger is a singularly destructive element.