Love, War and Politics (S2: E6)

“Overly addicted to debauchery, he had like Solomon, three queens and a multitude of concubines. His Queens were Nantilde, Vulfégonde and Berchilde. I would be bored to insert in this chronicle the names of his concubines, such as they were in great numbers. His heart became corrupted, and his thoughts strayed from God.”

This week we’re going to take a look at what Dagobert did when he was the ultimate power in Francia. One particularly interesting thing about Dagobert, and a fact that I think sheds some light on his reign as a whole, is that he only spent one year of his life as the de facto King of All the Franks. He’s listed, rightly, as one of the few early Merovingians to accomplish the task of unifying the Kingdom under a single throne, but court intrigue and an inability to properly tend to a large land mass made it all but impossible for him to properly extend his authority. As such, he would end up being the sole King come 632 and the death of his brother Charibert II, and would split the Kingdom in 633 when he placed his son, Sigibert III, on the throne in Austrasia. Now mind you, Sigibert was all of three years old when this happened and was clearly nothing more than a symbol for the Austrasian court to rally behind, but the fact remains: Dagobert unified the throne and sauntered about as the King of All the Franks for an exceedingly short period of time.

At any rate, for the rest of today we’re going to explore Dagobert’s reign through three factors, which make up the title of this episode: love, war and politics. His love life is significant because a) Dagobert’s mindset of being easily swayed is on full display with how he flowed through his wives, and b) his heirs would take the throne at a very young age, either for the aforementioned reason of giving the Austrasians a “king” to rally behind, or because, spoiler alert, Dagobert won’t end up living to a particularly old age. His succession, in particular, marks the beginning of “les roi fainéant” period of the Merovingian Dynasty, or the “do-nothing Kings.

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