King Edgar's eldest son, product of his marriage to his first wife Ethelfleda, Edward was only about 13 when his father died in 975.
His accession to the throne was opposed by his stepmother Queen Elfrida, Edgar's third wife, who was determined that the crown should go to her own son Ethelred, then aged seven. However, Edward's claim was supported by the clergy, including St Dunstan, the archbishop of Canterbury, and by most of the nobility, and so the boy was crowned by St Dunstan on 8 July. Little is known about his reign, although the sparse evidence suggests almost a state of civil war in England.
Edward was king for less than four years. On 18 March 979, he was hunting in Dorset and called at Corfe Castle where his stepmother Elfrida lived. There, while drinking a glass of mead on horseback, offered to him at the castle gate, the 17-year-old monarch was murdered, stabbed in the back by two servants. He was buried at Shaftesbury abbey, where miracles were recorded at his tomb. He was eventually canonised.
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 Edward the Martyr, king of England
http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=ge
t&type=person&id=EdwardtheMartyr
Concise but detailed biography of the short-lived king, with an interesting discussion of how both Edward and Ethelred were pawns in a political game.
 Corfe Castle
On the A351 between Wareham and Swanage in Dorset, in an area popularly known as the Isle of Purbeck
The site of Edward's murder, the ruins that can be seen today are mainly from the reign of King John, whose favourite residence this was. The castle is now owned by the National Trust.
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