The Gaini were an early Anglo-Saxon tribe. Their location cannot now be identified, but they are thought to have been one of the tribes which made up the kingdom of Mercia

Mercia

Mercia was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. It was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries in the region now known as the English Midlands...

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In 868, before he became king, Alfred the Great

Alfred the Great

Alfred the Great was King of Wessex from 871 to 899.Alfred is noted for his defence of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of southern England against the Vikings, becoming the only English monarch still to be accorded the epithet "the Great". Alfred was the first King of the West Saxons to style himself...

 married Ealhswith

Ealhswith

Ealhswith or Ealswitha was the daughter of a Mercian nobleman, Æthelred Mucil, Ealdorman of the Gaini. She was married in 868 to Alfred the Great, before he became king of Wessex. In accordance with ninth century West Saxon custom, she was not given the title of queen. -Life:Ealswith was the...

, daughter of a Mercian nobleman, Æthelred, known as Mucel, ealdorman of the Gaini. Æthelred witnessed several charters between 867 and 895, and he is probably identical with the ealdorman Mucel who witnessed Mercian charters between 836 and 866. He may have been the son of another ealdorman Mucel who witnessed Mercian charters from 814 to the 840s, and this Mucel in turn was probably the son of ealdorman Esne who witnessed Mercian charters in the late eighth and early ninth centuries.

Ealhswith's brother, Æthelwulf, who died in 901, was also described as an ealdorman.

The approximate succession of Ealdormen of the Gaini may therefore be:

• Esne (c.765-c.814)
• Mucel (c.814-c.848)
• Aethelred Mucel (c.848-c.895)
• Æthelwulf (c. 895-c 901)