"in wulf and eadwacer a woman finds herself in a situation typical of old english poetry, torn between conflicting loyalties. many commentators see this particular situation as a sexual triangle, with wulf the woman’s lover and eadwacer her husband. if so, then wulf and eadwacer is not typical, because most old english loyalty crises occur within the family group…it is…true that romantic or sexual love was not the literary commonplace before the twelfth century it has been since; other loves took precedence…the situation in wulf and eadwacer is far more typically anglo-saxon than as usually interpreted, if the speaker is understood to be the mother of the person she addresses as wulf, as well as of the ‘whelp’ of line 16."