With ingenuity and skill, they battled to stay alive in the game of statecraft, and in the process laid the foundations of what would one day be Charlemagne’s empire. They fought a decades-long civil war-against each other. They formed coalitions and broke them, mothered children and lost them. The two queens commanded armies and negotiated with kings and popes. And yet-in sixth-century Merovingian France, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport-these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms, changing the face of Europe. Her sister-in-law Fredegund started out as a lowly palace slave. The remarkable, little-known story of two trailblazing women in the Early Middle Ages who wielded immense power, only to be vilified for daring to rule.īrunhild was a foreign princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |