Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies

Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies refer collectively to the genealogies of the pre-Viking Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Britain. These trace the royal families through legendary kings and heroes and usually an eponymous ancestor of their clan, and in most cases converge on the god-hero of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, Woden. In their fully elaborated forms, they continue the pedigrees back to Judeo-Christian patriarchs Noah and Adam. While historically these were accepted as a representation of authentic lineage, they are now dismissed by scholars as having been the product of reworking and outright invention to represent alliances and affinities at the time they were first recorded.

Documentary tradition

The Anglo-Saxons, uniquely among the early Germanic peoples, preserved royal genealogies. The earliest source for these genealogies is Bede, who in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (completed in or before 731) said of the founders of the Kingdom of Kent:

He similarly provides ancestry for the kings of the East Angles. An Anglian collection of royal genealogies also survives, the earliest version (sometimes called Vespasian or simply V) containing a list of bishops that ends in the year 812. This collection provides pedigrees for the kings of Deira, Bernicia, Mercia, Lindsey, Kent and East Anglia, tracing each of these dynasties from Woden, who is made the son of an otherwise unknown Frealaf.