The Heirs of Charlemagne
(Last updated July 7, 2018. Check back for updates!)
Contents
The Bosonid Claim (updated June 22)
The West Francian Claim (updated June 7)
The Unruoching Claim (updated June 16)
The Herbetian Claim (updated July 7)
Introduction
I’m fascinated by royal genealogy. I always have been. Maybe it’s because I’m an American, and we’re naturally fascinated by royalty. And maybe it’s because I’m an Ashkenazi Jew who can’t trace back my lineage more than 4 generations in most directions. Whatever the reason, since I was a child, I’ve always found it entertaining to draw royal family trees.
So, recently, I thought about looking back at the progenitor of all these royal family trees: Karel de Grote. Carolus Magnus. Charlemagne. I thought: “Who, today, is the most direct heir of Charlemagne?”
At first, I thought this might be an easy question. Then, I realized it’s an incredibly complicated question. Then, I realized it’s an incredibly stupid question.
For starters, pretty much every person of western European descent is descended from Charlemagne, so at some level the question is perpetuating the myth that some people’s blood is bluer than others’. Next, how one defines an “heir” is an unanswerable question. Do you follow primogeniture? The sexist male-preference primogeniture? The even more sexist Salic law (more prevalent in western Europe, in which women didn’t count at all in the line of succession)? Do you follow lands and titles? Papal investiture? Right of conquest? Bigger-army diplomacy? What about adopted heirs? How do you deal with illegitimacy? What about illegitimate children who nonetheless inherited lands and titles from their fathers? What about situations when king and pope disagree about legitimacy?
The sexism problem is the hardest one to grapple with, and it is inherent in tracing royal genealogies. Since women were rarely allowed to inherit lands or titles (or even be the conduit for inheritance of lands or titles in some cases!), my impression is that we know far less about lines of descent through daughters than through sons. And even in cases where we do know a line of descent through a daughter, it becomes very hard to follow an “always follow the eldest child’s line” rule.
But if you’re trying to follow somebody’s “heir,” and not just their oldest child, this approach runs into problems as well. In many cases, a nobleman’s “heir” was a nephew, despite him having a daughter with her own children. (I tend to follow the daughter in that case.) Or what about cases where a nephew inherits because a son is too young, and the son grows up to have a “lesser” title than his cousin/liege? (I tend to follow the son.) At some level, all of this has to be ad hoc.
And these are just the interpretation questions. Then you get into questions of scholarly disputes. Charlemagne’s great-great-great-grandson, Emperor Louis the Blind, had a son named Charles-Constantine, who may or may not have been a legitimate child, depending on which scholar you ask. Charles-Constantine may have had anywhere between one and four children. One of them (Constance of Viennois) may actually have been a younger sister. Some missing links in royal genealogies are just scholarly guesses, and some are outright falsehoods made up long ago to legitimize somebody’s rule.
So, asking who the “heir of Charlemagne” is simply a nonsensical, unanswerable, sexist question.
That said, let’s look at this family tree in a little more detail, and learn a little about some of the descendants of Charlemagne. It’s not going to tell us who Charlemagne’s “heir” is, but it can provide some illumination as to this man’s effect on history.
Let’s start with Wikipedia’s summary of the royal family:
Charlemagne had eighteen children with eight of his ten known wives or concubines. Nonetheless, he had only four legitimate grandsons, the four sons of his fourth son, Louis. In addition, he had a grandson (Bernard of Italy, the only son of his third son, Pippin of Italy), who was illegitimate but included in the line of inheritance.
So, right of the bat, we’re in some murky territory.
Louis the Pious, Charlemagne’s fourth son — and heir to his imperial title — had 10 children by two wives and a concubine. The Franks practiced divisible inheritance — i.e., dividing lands among one’s heirs — but this didn’t stop heirs from fighting to get the biggest portion. Louis’s death in 840 CE was followed by three years of civil war, resulting in the Treaty of Verdun, in which the Frankish empire was divided among his sons Lothair (low countries, Burgundy, and Italy), Louis (East Francia, or Germany), and Charles the Bald (West Francia, or France). Louis and Charles nominally owed allegiance to Lothair as emperor.
This division only paused the civil war, because through a combination of violence and the normal perils of early medieval life, the (legitimate) male lines of Lothair and Louis would be extinguished within a few generations. Lothair’s son, Emperor Louis II (855–875), was followed as the Frankish Emperor by his uncle Charles the Bald (875–877), who was followed by his nephew (and Louis II’s first-cousin) Charles the Fat (881–888), then his second-cousin-once-removed Guy (891–894) and his son Lambert (892–898), who warred with Charles the Fat’s (illegitimate) nephew Arnulf (896–899), then back to Louis II’s grandson Louis the Blind (901–905).
So, there is no clear line of “imperial” descendant from Charlemagne. Pretty much every branch of the family tree ruled some area of central or western Europe, and pretty much every branch at some point claimed to be the legitimate ruler of all of Europe. Let’s look at a few of those branches.
The Bosonid Claim
Earlier, I wrote that the male line of Lothair I died fairly quickly. While that mattered a great deal to the Carolingians, it doesn’t matter as much to me. So if you start with Charlemagne, you go to his son Louis the Pious, then his son Lothair, then his son Louis II. Louis II had one child — a daughter named Ermengard. Ermengard married the Frankish nobleman Boso of Provence (of the “Bosonid” dynasty). Ermengard had three children, including the future emperor Louis III, who ended up deposed, blinded, and diminished. Historians and genealogists to this day try to identify Louis III’s descendents, but, per one source, “all that can be said with assurance is that the descendants of emperor Louis the Blind disappear into both documentary and political obscurity.”
Ermengard’s oldest child was a daughter, also named Ermengard. She married Manasses, Count of Chalon, and had a son, Gilbert (or Giselbert). Gilbert married a woman also named Ermengard (the Wikipedia entries get very confusing!), and had two or three daughters, including Adelais. Adelais married Robert of Vermandois, Count of Meaux (himself a Carolingian!). Their daughter Adele of Meaux married Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, and had Fulk III, Count of Anjou, whose daughter was Ermengarde-Blanche, whose son was Fulk IV, whose son was Fulk V. His oldest child was Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou. Geoffrey married the dowager Holy Roman Empress Matilda — who would also become a disputed claimant to the throne of England during the civil war known as the Anarchy. Their eldest son was King Henry II of England.
So, now we’ve funneled into the ruling monarchs of England! But, as most students learn in high school history or English, the line of English monarchs from 1399 to 1714 is…complicated. But, without getting into it too much, here’s a plausible descent from Henry II:
John, Henry III, Edward I, Edward II, Edward III, Lionel of Antwerp, Philippa of Clarence, Roger Mortimer, Anne Mortimer, Richard of York, Edward IV, Elizabeth of York, Margaret Tudor, James V of Scotland, Mary Queen of Scots, James I (& VI), and Charles I.
Again, things here get complicated. Sixty-five years after Charles’s beheading, his granddaughter Queen Anne died without heirs. At this point, Parliament decided to make the Sophia of Hanover — Charles’s niece — the starting point for all claims to the throne. However, Charles I still had legitimate descendants! Catholic descendants — which was a problem for Parliament, but not for this project.
So we continue with the Jacobite line of pretenders to the English crown: Henrietta, Princess Anne Marie d’Orleans, Charles Emmanuel III of Sardinia, Victor Amadeus III, Victor Emmanuel I, Princess Maria Beatrice, Archduke Ferdinand Karl Viktor of Austria-Este, Archduchess Maria Theresa, Rupprecht Crown Prince of Bavaria, Albrecht of Bavaria, and finally Franz of Bavaria, the current Jacobite pretender — and one of the people with the most direct descent from Charlemagne.
The West Francian Claim
Instead of following the line of Ermengarde, let’s look at what the Carolingians themselves would think is the proper line of descent from Charlemagne. Charlemagne was followed by Louis (I) the Pious. After the death of Louis’s grandson Louis II, the male line of the Carolingians would have been represented by Louis II’s brothers (neither of whom had legitimate children), or Louis I’s other sons—Pepin, Louis the German, and Charles the Bald. Of these three, only the line of Charles the Bald lasted more than three more generations.
So let’s look at Charles the Bald, King of France. After Louis II died in 875, Charles the Bald claimed the imperial title and was crowned emperor by the Pope. Charles only lived two years after being crowned (most of which was spent at war with his relatives), and the imperial “throne” was vacant for four years before being claimed by his nephew, Charles the Fat.
But Charles was followed as King of France by his son Louis (II) the Stammerer, his son Charles the Simple, and his son Louis IV. After Louis IV’s grandson Louis V died without heirs, the nobles of France — instead of figuring out who the “heir” of Louis the V was — elected Hugh Capet as their king. (Note that Hugh Capet is also likely Charles the Bald’s great-great-great-grandnephew.)
But Louis IV had other descendants, through the line of his son Charles, Duke of Lower Lorraine. Charles had two daughters, the eldest of whom was Ermengarde, who married Albert, Count of Namur (in modern-day southern Belgium). Ermengarde’s descendants were the Counts of Namur, including Albert II (r. 1016–1067), Albert III, Godfrey I, and Henry IV, who inherited the County of Luxembourg through his mother’s side. Henry’s daughter Ermesinde followed him (after some brief civil war) as Countess of Luxembourg, followed by Henry V, Henry VI, and Henry VII.
Henry VII, through some skillful politics, got himself elected Holy Roman Emperor in 1312 (so we’re back to emperors now!). Henry’s son John was Count of Luxembourg, but also King of Bohemia (through his marriage to Queen Elisabeth of Bohemia), but his son Charles IV also became Holy Roman Emperor, as did his son Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia, and King of Hungary.
Sigismund’s only living child was Elizabeth, who who had two daughters who lived to have children, the elder being Anne, Duchess of Luxembourg. Anne married William, Margrave of Thuringia. They had two daughters, the elder being Margaret of Thuringia. Margaret married John II, Elector of Brandenburg, and her heir was Joachim I, Elector of Brandenburg (b. 1484).
Here, things get a little boring (and if you’re a history nerd, you already see where this is going!), because the Electors of Brandenburg have a surprisingly stable descent, through Joachim II, John George, Joachim Frederick, and John Sigismund, who married Anna, Duchess of Prussia and adopted the title “Duke of Prussia.” Their heirs were the Prussian dukes George William and Frederick William, and his son Frederick I, who now went by the title “King of Prussia.” Frederick was followed by Frederick William I, whose son Frederick the Great reigned for 46 years but died childless, with the throne going to the son of his brother Augustus William, Frederick William II. He was followed by Frederick William III, who was followed by William I, who now decided he was German Emperor (and we’re back to emperors again!). Then Frederick III and William II, whose title was demoted to “Prince of Prussia” following his defeat in World War I. The current head of the Hohenzollern family is Kaiser Wilhelm’s great-great-grandson, Georg Friedrich (b. 1976).
So, one of the most direct lines of descent from old Charles the Great is right down to Kaiser Wilhelm himself.
The Unruoching Claim
Let’s back up again to Louis the Pious (emperor from 813 to 840). Louis (I) the Pious’s eldest child was Lothair, whose only legitimate grandchild was Ermengard, who we discussed earlier. Louis I’s next children, Pepin and Louis the German, both have lines that go extinct within 3 generations. Louis I’s next child was Gisela, who was the older sister of Charles the Bald.
Gisela’s son was Berengar, who was the last emperor (915–924) of the Carolingian Roman Empire (or what was left of it). The next “Roman Emperor”, Otto I, would be crowned 38 years later (and would be — possibly — the great-grandnephew of Berengar, although the genealogy is not clear). Because Berengar was the last emperor to claim his right to rule from Charlemagne (though his family was the Unruoching dynasty, not the “Carolingian” dynasty), let’s trace his descent.
Berengar’s daughter was Gisela, whose son was Berengar II, who ruled as King of Italy. Berengar II was followed by his son Adalbert. Italy would be conquered by Otto I during Adalbert’s reign, but Adalbert’s son Otto-William would be Count of Burgundy, followed by Renaud I, William I, Stephen I, and Reginald III.
Reginald’s only child, Beatrice, married Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1156. Their oldest surviving son was Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor (and we’re back to emperors again!). His son Frederick II had bad genetic luck, with many of his children and grandchildren dying young; the death of his son Conrad IV would lead to two decades of interregnum and disputed rule before the next undisputed Holy Roman Emperor emerged.
However, Frederick II had a surviving daughter, Margaret, who became Landgravine of Thuringia and Countess Palatine of Saxony through her marriage. Her son was Frederick I, Margrave of Meissen (r. 1291–1323), who was followed by Frederick II, then Frederick III (as Landgrave of Thuringia), then Frederick I, Elector of Saxony. So, now we descend through the Electors of Saxony, Frederick II (r. 1428–1464), Ernest, John, John Frederick, John William (as Duke of Saxe-Weimar), and Frederick William. The Duchy of Saxe-Weimar passed to Frederick William’s brother due to the minority of Frederick William’s children, but Frederick William’s son John Philip became Duke of Saxe-Altenburg (r. 1603–1639) and had a daughter Elizabeth Sophie, who married Ernest, Duke of Saxe-Gotha. (And now, history nerds might see where this is going.)
Their oldest surviving son was Frederick I, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (r. 1675–1691), who was followed by Frederick II, Frederick III, Ernest II, Emil Leopold August (“Augustus”), and Augustus’s daughter Louise, who married Ernest, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and had two sons. The first, Ernest II, died at age 75 with no children, and his heirs were the children of his brother, Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
Albert, of course, married Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, and his heirs were Edward VII of the United Kingdom, followed by George V, George VI, and finally Elizabeth II.
So, here we get to yet another royal family, and this time it is the reigning monarchs of the UK, not the pretenders. Just as the Hohenzollern family was the most direct line of descent from Charles the Bald, the Windsor family is the most direct line of descent from Berengar.
Note: I’ll periodically update this story with additional descendants from Charlemagne, so please check back another time!
