Strada the Fair: A Mythic Nexus

I’m doing some ancestor work right now, kicking my work with the women of my line up a notch. I decided to use Ancestry.com to see if that gave me any insight or inspiration. Their 2 week free trial has me entranced as I touch a thread of my ancestry and follow it back in time. It’s a magical journey, although fraught with pitfalls.

You see, Ancestry.com is like Wikipedia: lots of good info with a liberal sprinkling of BS. So when I followed a thread of ancestry back through Tudor England I found an impossible connection. Where the line should have had a dead end it made a rather improbable connection to a doomed love affair between famous members of Henry VIII’s court. In all honesty I should have deleted the connection but I had become hooked on seeing how far into history I could go. Even though the ancestry I was to explore did not belong to me I felt compelled to follow it as far as it would go.

It went quite a ways. Rambling through England and France, through the famous and obscure, this thread took me deeper and deeper, from the realm of reputable history to the realm of noble myth. As I wandered through a line of Bishops (pre-mandatory celibacy) I wondered if I could trace the line far enough to find a name that was genuinely Pagan? With this thought in mind I found Strada the Fair.

Strada belongs firmly in the realm of pseudo-history, of myth and of the unprovable. Yet what a myth she is entwined in! Legend has it that Strada was married to Coel (that merry old soul and great-grandchild of the famous Caradoc) and gave him several children. Two of these children caught my eye and sparked my imagination: Althildis and Helen of Constantinople.

Helen’s origins are obscure. No one knows for sure where she came from, although her beginnings were believed to be humble. What we do know for sure is that she was the consort of Constantius and mother of Constantine the Great (or the Not-So-Hot depending on your view). We all know that Constantine converted the Empire to Christianity in one fell swoop. Whatever his motivations, however he felt Christianity was similar to the cult of Sol Invictus, it was a shocking move. Imagine waking up to find Obama has declared America is a Muslim nation? Yeah, it was pretty out there. Though his descendant Julian tried to reverse the tide, he died too young to be effective. Strada’s grandchild, Constantine, has had a very palpable effect on our lives 1,700 years later.

Marion Zimmer Bradley and Diana Paxson Romanized Coel, ignored Strada and painted Helen as a priestess of Avalon, named after Nehalennia, in their book Priestess of Avalon. Delightful book, but it’s awfully hard to Paganize Saint Helen of the Cross. Lovely woman though the real Helen may have been, it’s hard for me to embrace her. It is my opinion that her child brought great darkness to the world, and she is no Cornelia – Mother of the Grachii in my eyes.

Althildis is another daughter of Strada the Fair, and while her descendants may not have the same super-star power of Constantine, they collectively shook the world and were earthy, bold and memorable. Marrying a Frankish nobleman those credited to be descended from her are Sunno, Pharamond, Saint Genebald, Geoffrey Plantagenet, Henry II, Richard the Lionhearted, John Lackland, Henry III, Henry V, Edward Longshanks, Edward II, Edward III, and so forth the whole Plantagenet and Tudor dynasties spring forth from her.

The men of her line were often religious revolutionaries. Henry II famously martyred Thomas Becket by accident when his friend chose the Church as a higher authority than the King. Henry VIII essentially banished Rome from England, creating his own Church and changing the course of religious history forever. They were also bold men. Sunno invaded Rome, Henry II married the divorced wife of the King of France and terrorized the French, Richard the Lionhearted was a Crusader, and Henry V won the legendary Battle of Agincourt.

The men of her line also favored strong women. Matilda of England, Eleanor of Aquitaine (arguably the first feminist), Catherine of Aragon, and Anne Boleyn (also directly descended from Althildis) are just a few of the women who married into Althildis’ line. Her female descendants are no joke either, with Elizabeth I as the shining star.

I guess it’s pretty obvious which line I hold in greater esteem. I have always thought that for good or ill, the Plantagenets and Tudors had a rather “pagan” sensibility. I find it fascinating is that the descendants of Strada the Fair were religious “outlaws” to some degree or other. While it is true that her descendants enabled the rise of Christianity, they also created enough religious tension in England over the centuries to give room for both tyranny and innovation.  This climate gave birth to several branches of the Pagan movement: from Wicca to Druidry to Thelema.

Strada the Fair, her husband and daughters live in the realm of myth. We don’t have much to go on. It’s as likely Strada never existed as it is that she is the matriarch of dynasties. Though I know so very little about her, she compels me. She is the source from which the religious history of Europe sprung. As wife of the famously gregarious Coel, and being native to England (Welsh or Brythonic?), I feel there’s a good possibility she was Pagan. I’ll never have proof of that, just as I’ll never have proof she existed, but as a myth she rings true. She speaks to me in a visceral way. She enchants me.

Galina Krasskova recently wrote about holding the generations that abandoned their native ways accountable. I don’t know how I feel about that. It troubles me, in the way an unsolved puzzle troubles me. Finding Strada the Fair troubles me even more. This mythic nexus at the root of our spiritual heritage fascinates me. As I try to grapple with new ways of interacting with my ancestors after years of simple offerings, Strada the Fair has become a pebble in my shoe. She is pushing me towards something that I can’t quite grasp, like an important dream that slips from memory upon waking.

So I woke from a fitful sleep and feverishly wrote this down to share with you. What do you think about Strada the Fair and her descendants?