Throughout much of the early Middle Ages, chroniclers and other writers used narratives of sexual impropriety to highlight an individual's moral failings and undermine their authority. This chapter seeks to explore one such episode, namely, the narrative claiming that, during the course of his own coronation feast, King Eadwig departed the assembled company of leading magnates to have a sexual escapade with two women – Ælgifu, his wife, and Æthelgifu, her mother. First recorded some fifty years after the event, whether or not this actually happened is less important than what the story tells us about Eadwig's reign and its legacy. That the story was written, and what it represents in terms of the political climate of the tenth-century English court, is key to understanding why sex was used to discredit Eadwig and Ælgifu. Their marriage was too politically disadvantageous for his rivals, whose heirs were on the throne by the

time the incident was first recorded, and so it had to be discredited. Using the five main texts which describe the coronation scene alongside contemporary charters, this chapter will demonstrate the crucial roles that appropriate and inappropriate sexuality played in the record to denigrate Eadwig's reign, Ælfgifu's role as consort and, to a lesser degree, Æthelgifu's position as the king's wife's mother. It will also explore how the same story benefitted (then) Abbot Dunstan and the court factions surrounding Eadwig's brother Edgar, including Eadwig's and Edgar's grandmother Eadgifu. Following an overview of the political situation of the mid-tenth century and a discussion of contemporary ideas of appropriate sex and sexuality, the following pages will consider the implications of the story of Eadwig's threesome for the king, his wife, her mother, and Abbot (and later archbishop) Dunstan. Eadwig's threesome is more than an amusing aside filling space in the historical record, regardless of the story's veracity, either in whole or in its more salacious parts. That this episode was written is crucial in understanding why it was written, and how dangerous sexuality was critical to breaking the king's authority and reputation.