John of Worcester, also writing in the early 12th century, states that Æthelred's first wife was Ælfgifu, daughter of the nobleman Æthelberht (comes Agelberhtus) and the mother of Edmund, Æthelstan, Eadwig and Eadgyth.
One way out of it would be to assume the existence of two different wives before the arrival of Queen Emma, Æthelred's Norman wife, although this interpretation presents difficulties of its own, especially as the sources envisage a single woman.
[9] Such a politically weighty union would help explain the close connections maintained by Ælfgifu's eldest sons Edmund and Æthelstan with noble families based in the northern Danelaw.
Æthelred gave three of his daughters in marriage to ealdormen, presumably in order to secure the loyalties of his nobles and so to consolidate a defence system against Viking attacks.
In a will issued between 975 and 987, the thegn Beorhtric and his wife bequeathed to their hlæfdige (lady) an armlet worth 30 gold mancuses and a stallion, to guarantee the will be carried out.
[21] In any event, she appears to have died by 1002, possibly in childbirth, when Æthelred took to wife Emma of Normandy, daughter of Count Richard of Rouen, who received or adopted her predecessor's Anglo-Saxon name, Ælfgifu.