Rhiainfellt
Peerage person ID=173778
Rhiainfellt, name variants including Rieinmelt and Rieinmelth, was a British princess of the royal house of the kingdom of Rheged, a part of the Hen Ogledd. Her name means "Lightning Maiden" or "Lightning Queen" in Old Welsh. She was a wife of Oswiu, King of Northumbria.
A life sparsely recorded
Rhiainfellt is identified in the Historia Brittonum as the wife of Oswiu and the granddaughter of Rhun son of Urien Rheged. Her status as Oswiu's wife is confirmed by her appearance in the Durham Liber Vitae, where, under the anglicised name 'Raegnmaeld', she appears in first place in a list of Northumbrian queens and abbesses. It is considered, on grounds of chronology, that Rhiainfellt was the mother of Alhfrith King of Deira. More circumstantial evidence suggests that she was also the mother of Oswiu's daughter, Alhflaed.
According to British sources a friendly connection between the rulers of Rheged and Northumbria predated Rhiainfellt's marriage, as her grandfather Rhun is credited with having baptised King Edwin of Northumbria. Bede, however, states that Bishop Paulinus baptised Edwin. The apparent conflict could be reconciled if Rhun in reality had stood sponsor at the baptism, thus becoming Edwin's godfather.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rhiainfellt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.