THIS story from William of Malmesbury neatly encapsulates some of the features and problems of studying King Edgar's relationships with women. There are many things that we do not know about the reign of Edgar, but we are relatively well-informed about some of the women who were significant to him. With a shortage of other narrative material, his relations with women were a means through which historians of the Middle Ages sought to elucidate aspects of his reign and find something of his elusive personality. The concentration in more recent years has been on the women themselves. The study of Edgar's kinswomen and wives has had a major role to play in Pauline Stafford's pioneering studies of the political and family roles of Anglo-Saxon royal women that are a major influence behind this paper. However, its main aim is to return to the issue of what we can learn about Edgar himself, and his shifting reputation, through the women associated with him.