St Blaise’s Day

St Blaise’s Day, 3 February, is the day on which Edward Plantagenet sees three suns rise over a frozen battlefield and understands the vision as a sign of his future kingship. The date makes an uncertain military moment feel charged with divine purpose; in the story of Edward’s ascent, it becomes both a promise of victory and the beginning of a vision he will never recover with the same clarity.

The Omen at Mortimer’s Cross

The vision comes after Edward has received devastating news: his father and youngest brother have been captured, mocked, and killed by Lancastrian forces. On Candlemas he prays with his generals for the souls of the dead. The following morning, as his battle-weary troops face the bleak fields of the Welsh borderlands, three blurred discs of silver appear in the sky, their light spreading through the frost.

The soldiers kneel on the frozen ground, and the knights genuflect. Edward alone sees the omen as a disclosure of what is to come. At the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross he defeats his enemies, takes Owen Tudor prisoner, and has him beheaded in Hereford marketplace. An unknown woman washes the severed head and combs its bloody hair. The stark human aftermath sits beside the brilliant celestial sign: victory is accompanied by ritualized violence, not deliverance from it.

From Sign to Kingship

The day becomes a lasting emblem in Edward’s conduct. From then on, whenever he touches his sword, he does so to win. Three months after the omen, he is in London and king. The narrative links the private certainty of the vision to the public fact of accession, making St Blaise’s Day the hinge between a precarious claim and royal power.

Yet the omen does not give Edward enduring mastery of events. He never sees the future so clearly again. Dazzled by the memory of revelation, he stumbles through his kingship as if through mist and becomes dependent on astrologers, holy men, and fantasists. The day’s promise thus carries its own reversal: the moment that makes his destiny seem legible is followed by a reign in which the future remains obscure.

Calendrical Memory and Political Meaning

St Blaise’s Day is more than a date in the account of Edward’s rise. Set beside Candlemas, it gives the turning point a sacred calendar: mourning for the slaughtered family is followed by a sign interpreted as assurance. The repeated return to the day and the three suns makes Edward’s authority appear blessed by a power beyond ordinary political calculation, even as the later uncertainty of his reign complicates that impression.

The story also places the omen within a wider account of dynastic myth and marriage. Edward’s later choices are entangled with broken promises and women associated with legendary ancestry, including a woman said to descend from the serpent figure Melusine. Against these claims of supernatural lineage, St Blaise’s Day stands as a concrete remembered sign—an event that Edward believes he can read, but whose certainty cannot be made permanent. It marks the instant when a king thinks he can see ahead, and the beginning of the long distance between that vision and what follows.