Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies - Wessex

Wessex

While excluded from the original pedigree sources, two later copies of the Anglian collection from the 10th century (called CCCC and Tiberius, or simply C and T) but include an addition: a pedigree for King Ine of Wessex that traces his ancestry from Cerdic, the semi-legendary founder of the Wessex state, and hence from Woden. This addition probably reflects the growing influence of Wessex under Ecgbert, whose family claimed descent from a brother of Ine. Pedigrees are also preserved in several regnal lists dating from the reign of Æthelwulf and later but seemingly based on a late-8th or early 9th century source or sources. Finally, later interpolations (which were added by 892) to both Asser's Vita Ælfredi regis Angul Saxonum and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle preserve Wessex pedigrees extended beyond Cerdic and Woden to Adam. Scholars have long noted discrepancies in the Wessex pedigree tradition. The pedigree as it appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is at odds with the earlier Anglian collection in that it contains four additional generations and consists of doublets which when expressed with patronymics would have resulted in the uniform triple alliteration that is common in Anglo-Saxon poetry but that would have been difficult for a family to maintain over a number of generations and is unlike known Anglo-Saxon naming practices.

Further, when comparing the Chronicles' pedigrees of Cerdic and of Ida of Bernicia several anomalies are evident. The two share their earliest generations but the two peoples had no tradition of common origin. One might expect Cerdic to be given descent from a different son of Woden, if not from a different god entirely such as the Saxon patron, Seaxnēat, who heads the pedigree of the Essex kings. Furthermore, while the chronicle places Ida's reign after Cerdic's death, the pedigrees do not reflect this difference in age.

The name Cerdic, moreover, may actually be an Anglicized form of the Brythonic name Ceredic and several of his successors also have names of possible Brythonic origin, indicating that the Wessex founders may not have been Germanic at all, again suggesting that the pedigree may not be authentic.