In 1035 when her second husband Cnut died and was succeeded by their son Harthacnut, who was in Denmark at the time, Emma was designated to act as his regent until his return,[4] which she did in rivalry with Harold Harefoot.

[6] Similarly Richard II, Duke of Normandy, hoped to improve relations with the English in the wake of recent conflict and a failed kidnapping attempt against him by Æthelred.

When King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark invaded and conquered England in 1013, Emma and her children were sent to Normandy, where Æthelred soon joined them.

[13] Harthacnut, Emma and Cnut's son, assembled a fleet to invade England in 1039, and when Harold died in March 1040 he was invited to become king.

He was criticised by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for his heavy taxation to pay for the fleet and for having Harold's body disinterred and thrown into a ditch.

During the same year, Edward rode to Winchester along with Earls Leofric, Godwin, and Siward, accused Emma of treason, and deprived her of her lands and titles.

[15] After her death in 1052, Emma was interred alongside Cnut and Harthacnut in the Old Minster, Winchester, before being transferred to the new cathedral built after the Norman Conquest.

Until 1043, writes Stafford, Emma "was the richest woman in England ... and held extensive lands in the East Midlands and Wessex.

"[18] Emma's authority was not simply tied to landholdings[18]—which fluctuated greatly from 1036 to 1043—she also wielded significant sway over the ecclesiastical offices of England.

The third addresses the events after Cnut's death; Emma's involvement in the seizing of the royal treasury, and the treachery of Earl Godwin.

It begins by addressing Emma, "May our Lord Jesus Christ preserve you, O Queen, who excel all those of your sex in the amiability of your way of life.

"[20] This flattery, writes Elizabeth M. Tyler, is "part of a deliberate attempt to intervene, on Emma's behalf, in the politics of the Anglo-Danish court,"[21] a connotation which an 11th-century audience would have understood.

This proves to be a direct contrast to earlier evaluations of the text, such as the introduction to the 1998 reprint of Alistair Campbell's 1949 edition in which Simon Keynes remarks: ...

The manuscript was put up for auction in December 2008, and purchased for £600,000 (5.2 million Danish kroner) on behalf of the Royal Library, Denmark.

Emma and her sons Edward and Alfred are characters in the anonymous Elizabethan play Edmund Ironside, sometimes considered an early work by William Shakespeare.

In order to prove her innocence, she was obliged to undergo the ordeal of walking over nine red-hot ploughshares placed on the pavement of the nave of Winchester Cathedral.

She walked over the red-hot ploughshares, but, having sought the protection of St Swithun, whose shrine is at Winchester, felt neither the naked iron nor the fire.