[1] Raids in the 980s were followed by large-scale Danish invasions from the 990s, and English resistance under King Æthelred the Unready was ineffectual, resulting in the conquest of England by Sweyn Forkbeard in December 1013.

[2] In 1015 Æthelred's favourite, Eadric Streona, the ealdorman of Mercia, murdered two leading thegns of the northern Danelaw,[b] Morcar and his brother Sigeferth.

Morcar and Sigeferth had been important allies of Æthelred's son and heir, Edmund Ironside, and he responded by seizing their lands, marrying Ealdgyth in defiance of his father, and receiving the submission of the people of the Five Boroughs of the Danelaw.

[10] They were æthelings, an Old English word meaning "king's son" or "prince",[11] but their father's death and Cnut's seizure of the throne deprived them of a realistic prospect of succeeding to the kingship.

[17] The historian and genealogist Szabolcs de Vajay argues that later writers such as John of Worcester, who say that the brothers were sent directly to Hungary from Sweden, are wrong.

In that year, King Olaf of Norway fled to Sweden and then Kiev after being defeated by Cnut and losing his kingdom, and de Vajay thinks that Edmund and Edward accompanied him.

A claimant to the Hungarian kingship, Andrew, fled to Russia after being expelled from his home country, and in 1046 he returned and seized the throne.

They were sent to a powerful man called Walgar in Denmark, and when they reached twelve years old the English wanted them as rulers, and so Emma urged Cnut to have them maimed.

[23][e] Keynes concludes "by the admittedly dangerous process of conflation", that Edmund and Edward probably went first to Sweden, then Russia and finally to the Hungarian court.

Keynes comments that Aelred is a credible source as he spent several years at the court of King David I of Scotland, who was a grandson of Edward the Exile.