History's Strangest Nicknames Explained

One of the most ignominiously titled English monarchs is Æthelred the Unready. According to Britannica, Æthelred II (also spelled Ethelred), became king of England in 978. When he took power there was a shadow upon the new king since his half-brother, King Edward, had been murdered. Many suspected that Æthelred had something to do with it. There was a fair amount of disunity in England too, which meant that when the Danes invaded in 980 there was little that Æthelred could do except to try to pay them to go away.

The attempt at appeasement backfired. The Danes kept taking over. Æthelred then tried to murder the settlers in 1002, but this just instigated the Danes to send more warriors. Æthelred had so mismanaged the realm that in 1013 he was deposed in favor of the Danish king Sweyn I. To the English, the Danes seemed preferable to Æthelred.

However, Sweyn died the next year, so Æthelred was invited back on the condition that he addressed the country's grievances. The king died in 1016 with England in tatters. Sweyn's son Canute took over the kingdom on his path to establish a superkingdom.

According to the Royal Household, Æthelred was called "Un-raed," which means "no-council." It was a play on the king's name, which according to the "Dictionary of British and Irish History" means "noble counsel." So Æthelred Unraed literally means, "noble counsel, no-council." This transmuted later into "unready" to demonstrate the haplessness of his reign.

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