Oct 7, 2026 · 21 min · 8 segments
Louis the Pious continues to try and hold together his father's empire and is forced into an almost unfathomable act of penance. Meanwhile his youngest son Charles will grow up in a precarious…
So how did it come to this? Well, Louis the Pious had four sons, as we know, three from his first marriage to the now dead Ermengarde, and one from his next wife, Judith, who was an influential and, for the three elder sons, a malign influence on the court of the emperor.
I see Judith as a fairly impressive person, however, clearly fighting the corner of her son Charles, while running a lot of the day-to-day operations of the court of her husband.
Born in 795 AD, he was in his late 20s and had already been invested with control of Italy after his cousin Bernard's blinding and death.
In 817 AD, he had been declared heir and joint emperor of the Frankish realms with his father's Ordinatio Imperii, and in 823 AD, he was crowned as King of Italy with the Iron Crown.
The Iron Crown of Lombardy, now housed in Monza Cathedral in Italy, is an ancient symbol of power on the peninsula, and legend has it that Saint Helena, Constantine's mother, had it wrought around a nail from the True Cross, but its current parts are from different periods, some of which might date to the time of Constantine.
It had been used to crown Charlemagne as King of Lombardy back in 774 and is one of the great treasures of the medieval world passed down to us.
So Lothair was a powerful figure in the court and looked every inch the heir apparent to the entire empire after his father died or possibly retired to a monastery, which is not something out of the realms of possibility considering the amount of time Louis was spending in prayer.
It seems immediately following his birth, Judith began to petition the case of her son, wanting him to attain a position of equality with his elder half-brothers, which, considering how much a woman's position and livelihood and even life was bounded to her male relatives at this point, we can hardly blame her for.
And it seems that she had a convincing way about her, as she managed to convince the older brothers to at least support in principle the idea of their baby brother having some share in power after their father's death.
Lothair agreed a few years after Charles' birth that when the young Charles came of age, he would be granted the region of Alamannia, which would roughly correspond to today's Alsace, the area around Lake Constance and the Black Forest.
And when Charles was six years old in 829 AD, he was invested as either the duke or the king of the region.
Our sources are a bit confused by which title he actually held.
So this seems to be all very amicable, but it does seem as soon as Charles was made the ruler of Alamannia at such a young age, his eldest brother began to have a change of heart and over the next couple of months became more and more angry at what he now began to see as the diminishment of his own chunk of the Carolingian world.
So how did it come to this? Well, Louis the Pious had four sons, as we know, three from his first marriage to the now dead Ermengarde, and one from his next wife, Judith, who was an influential and, for the three elder sons, a malign influence on the court of the emperor.
I see Judith as a fairly impressive person, however, clearly fighting the corner of her son Charles, while running a lot of the day-to-day operations of the court of her husband.
Born in 795 AD, he was in his late 20s and had already been invested with control of Italy after his cousin Bernard's blinding and death.
In 817 AD, he had been declared heir and joint emperor of the Frankish realms with his father's Ordinatio Imperii, and in 823 AD, he was crowned as King of Italy with the Iron Crown.
The Iron Crown of Lombardy, now housed in Monza Cathedral in Italy, is an ancient symbol of power on the peninsula, and legend has it that Saint Helena, Constantine's mother, had it wrought around a nail from the True Cross, but its current parts are from different periods, some of which might date to the time of Constantine.
It had been used to crown Charlemagne as King of Lombardy back in 774 and is one of the great treasures of the medieval world passed down to us.
So Lothair was a powerful figure in the court and looked every inch the heir apparent to the entire empire after his father died or possibly retired to a monastery, which is not something out of the realms of possibility considering the amount of time Louis was spending in prayer.
It seems immediately following his birth, Judith began to petition the case of her son, wanting him to attain a position of equality with his elder half-brothers, which, considering how much a woman's position and livelihood and even life was bounded to her male relatives at this point, we can hardly blame her for.
And it seems that she had a convincing way about her, as she managed to convince the older brothers to at least support in principle the idea of their baby brother having some share in power after their father's death.
Lothair agreed a few years after Charles' birth that when the young Charles came of age, he would be granted the region of Alamannia, which would roughly correspond to today's Alsace, the area around Lake Constance and the Black Forest.
And when Charles was six years old in 829 AD, he was invested as either the duke or the king of the region.
Our sources are a bit confused by which title he actually held.
So this seems to be all very amicable, but it does seem as soon as Charles was made the ruler of Alamannia at such a young age, his eldest brother began to have a change of heart and over the next couple of months became more and more angry at what he now began to see as the diminishment of his own chunk of the Carolingian world.
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