Who married Emma de Normandie?

Emma de Normandie ou Ælfgifu (début des années 980ou vers 990 – 6 ou 7 mars 1052, Winchester) est une princesse normande devenue reine en tant qu'épouse successive de deux souverains anglais. Elle est d'abord l'épouse d'Æthelred le Malavisé (1002-1016), puis celle de Knut le Grand (1017-1035) et aussi roi de Danemark à partir de 1018. Elle est la mère des rois Knud le Hardi (1035-1042) et Édouard le Confesseur (1042-1066).

Æthelred II (Old English: Æþelræd, pronounced [ˈæðelræːd]; Old Norse: Aðalráðr; c. 966 – 23 April 1016), later known as Æthelred the Unready, was King of the English from 978 to 1013 and again from 1014 until his death in 1016. His epithet, Old English unræd 'poorly advised', is a play on Æthelred 'well advised'.

Æthelred was the son of King Edgar and Queen Ælfthryth. He came to the throne at about the age of 12, following the assassination of his elder half-brother, King Edward the Martyr.

The chief characteristic of Æthelred's reign was conflict with the Danes. After several decades of relative peace, Danish raids on English territory began again in earnest in the 980s, becoming markedly more serious in the early 990s. Following the Battle of Maldon in 991, Æthelred paid tribute, or Danegeld, to the Danish king. In 1002, Æthelred ordered what became known as the St Brice's Day massacre of Danish settlers. In 1013, King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark invaded England, as a result of which Æthelred fled to Normandy in 1013 and was replaced by Sweyn. After Sweyn died in 1014, Æthelred returned to the throne, but he died just two years later. Æthelred's 37-year combined reign was the longest of any Anglo-Saxon English king and was only surpassed in the 13th century, by Henry III. Æthelred was briefly succeeded by his son Edmund Ironside, but Edmund died after a few months and was replaced by Sweyn's son Cnut. Another of Æthelred's sons, Edward the Confessor, would become king of England in 1042.

Cnut ( kə-NYOOT; Old Norse: Knútr; c. 990 – 12 November 1035), also known as Canute and with the epithet the Great, was King of England from 1016, King of Denmark from 1018, and King of Norway from 1028 until his death in 1035. The three kingdoms united under Cnut's rule are referred to together as the North Sea Empire by historians.

As a Danish prince, Cnut won the throne of England in 1016 in the wake of centuries of Viking activity in northwestern Europe. His later accession to the Danish throne in 1018 brought the crowns of England and Denmark together. Cnut sought to keep this power base by uniting Danes and English under cultural bonds of wealth and custom. After a decade of conflict with opponents in Scandinavia, Cnut claimed the crown of Norway in Trondheim in 1028. In 1031, Malcolm II of Scotland also submitted to him, though Anglo-Norse influence over Scotland was weak and ultimately did not last by the time of Cnut's death.

Dominion of England lent the Danes an important link to the maritime zone between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, where Cnut, like his father before him, had a strong interest and wielded much influence among the Norse–Gaels. Cnut's possession of England's dioceses and the continental Diocese of Denmark – with a claim laid upon it by the Holy Roman Empire's Archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen – was a source of great prestige and leverage among the magnates of Christendom (gaining notable concessions such as one on the price of the pallium of his bishops, though they still had to travel to obtain the pallium, as well as on the tolls his people had to pay on the way to Rome). After his 1026 victory against Norway and Sweden, and on his way back from Rome where he attended the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor, Cnut deemed himself "King of all England and Denmark and the Norwegians and of some of the Swedes" in a letter written for the benefit of his subjects. Medieval historian Norman Cantor called him "the most effective king in Anglo-Saxon history".

He is popularly invoked in the context of the legend of King Canute and the tide.