A Worcester chronicler records she was ‘merciorum domina, insignis prudentiae, et iustitiae virtutique eximiae femina’ (a woman of prudence, justice and extraordinary strength of character). This reputation carried down the centuries immediately following, with this twelfth-century poem a testament to how she was perceived a quarter of a millennium after her death: Heroic Æthelflæd! Great in martial fame, A man in valour, though a woman in your name: Your warlike hosts by nature you obeyed, Conquered over both, though born by sex a maid.
