Ansgarde of Burgundy (d. 880/882) was a French queen of Aquitaine, but never of West Francia, and the daughter of Hardouin of Burgundy. [1] She secretly married Louis the Stammerer before he was king, in 862, against the will of his father, Charles the Bald. [1] [2] They had two sons, who later became Louis III of France and Carloman II.
Because Charles the Bald wished to marry his son Louis to Adelaide of Paris, he allegedly forced Louis to seek a papal annulment of the marriage to Ansgarde. Thus, Louis repudiated Ansgarde, and Adelaide married Louis in February 875. [3] However, this strange situation muddied the waters around the legitimacy of Louis' marriages, and his potential heirs. If the marriage to Ansgarde was invalid (in some cases a marriage without a parent's approval could be considered invalid), then their sons were not legitimate. If, however, the marriage to Ansgarde was valid, then the marriage to Adelaide would be invalid, because Louis first wife was still alive, and any heirs born to Adelaide would be illegitimate. [3] In 878, the reigning pope, John VIII, was unwilling to crown Adelaide, possibly indicating that he viewed Louis' second marriage as invalid. [3] [4]
Ansgarde was thus repudiated, but at the death of Louis in 879 she worked to ensure that her sons could mount the throne of France themselves. To that end, she sought to revisit the subject of her divorce with the archbishop of Reims. Adelaide, however, was pregnant, and gave birth to a son on September 17 of that year, which thus called into doubt the inheritance of Ansgarde's own sons. [5]
Ansgarde and her sons attacked Adelaide's marriage, accusing her of adultery; consequently, Louis and Carloman mounted the throne together. However, both died without issue, and after a long and difficult process Adelaide finally saw her son confirmed as Charles III, the only legitimate heir to the throne. [6]
Ansgarde passes into obscurity after this episode, and the date of her death is not conclusively known.
The Carolingian Empire (800–887) was a Frankish-dominated empire in Western and Central Europe during the Early Middle Ages. It was ruled by the Carolingian dynasty, which had ruled as kings of the Franks since 751 and as kings of the Lombards in Italy from 774. In 800, the Frankish king Charlemagne was crowned emperor in Rome by Pope Leo III in an effort to transfer the Roman Empire from the Byzantine Empire to Western Europe. The Carolingian Empire is sometimes considered the first phase in the history of the Holy Roman Empire.
Carloman I, German Karlmann, Karlomann, was king of the Franks from 768 until his death in 771. He was the second surviving son of Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon and was a younger brother of Charlemagne. His death allowed Charlemagne to take all of Francia.
Carloman II was the King of West Francia from 879 until his death. A member of the Carolingian dynasty, he and his elder brother, Louis III, divided the kingdom between themselves and ruled jointly until the latter's death in 882. Thereafter Carloman ruled alone until his own death. He was the second son of King Louis the Stammerer and Queen Ansgarde.
Louis III was King of West Francia from 879 until his death in 882. Despite questions of his legitimacy and challenges against his ascendance to the monarchy, Louis would prove to be an effective leader during his reign, notable for the defeat of Viking invaders at the Battle of Saucourt-en-Vimeu in August 881 that would later be immortalized in the poem Ludwigslied. He also led a less successful military campaign against Boso of Provence with help from Charles the Fat.
Charles the Fat was the emperor of the Carolingian Empire from 881 to 887. A member of the Carolingian dynasty, Charles was the youngest son of Louis the German and Hemma, and a great-grandson of Charlemagne. He was the last Carolingian emperor of legitimate birth and the last to rule a united kingdom of the Franks.
Louis V, also known as Louis the Do-Nothing, was a king of West Francia from 979 to his early death in 987. During his reign, the nobility essentially ruled the country. Dying childless, Louis V was the last Carolingian monarch in West Francia.
Fils de France was the style and rank held by the sons of the kings and dauphins of France. A daughter was known as a fille de France.
The House of Capet ruled the Kingdom of France from 987 to 1328. It was the most senior line of the Capetian dynasty – itself a derivative dynasty from the Robertians and the Karlings.
Boso was a Frankish nobleman of the Bosonid family who was related to the Carolingian dynasty and who rose to become King of Lower Burgundy and Provence.
The Elder House of Welf was a Frankish noble dynasty of European rulers documented since the 9th century. Closely related to the Carolingian dynasty, it consisted of a Burgundian and a Swabian group. It has not been definitively clarified, however, whether the two groups formed one dynasty or whether they shared the same name by coincidence only. While the Elder House became extinct in the male line with the death of Duke Welf of Carinthia in 1055, his sister Kunigunde married into the Italian House of Este and became the ancestor of the (Younger) House of Welf.
Middle Francia was a short-lived Frankish kingdom which was created in 843 by the Treaty of Verdun after an intermittent civil war between the grandsons of Charlemagne resulted in division of the united empire. Middle Francia was allocated to emperor Lothair I, the eldest son and successor of emperor Louis the Pious. His realm contained the imperial cities of Aachen and Pavia, but lacked any geographic or cultural cohesion, which prevented it from surviving and forming a nucleus of a larger state, as was the case with West Francia and East Francia.
Hugh or Hugo was an illegitimate son of Lothair II, king of Lotharingia, by his mistress Waldrada. His father made him Duke of Alsace in 867.
The Bosonids were a dynasty of Carolingian era dukes, counts, bishops and knights descended from Boso the Elder. Eventually they married into the Carolingian dynasty and produced kings and an emperor of the Frankish Empire.
Emma of France was a Frankish queen. The daughter of Robert I of France, she was a descendant of the powerful aristocratic Robertian family; her younger half-brother was Hugh the Great, the duke of the Franks and count of Paris.
Adélaïde of Paris (Aélis) was a Frankish queen. She was the second wife of Louis the Stammerer, King of West Francia and mother of Charles the Simple.
Richilde of Provence was the second wife of the Frankish emperor Charles the Bald. By her marriage, she became queen and later empress. She ruled as regent in 877.
After the death of the last Habsburg monarch of Spain in 1700, the childless Charles II, the Spanish throne was up for grabs between various dynasties of Europe despite Charles having left a will naming his heir. In this will, Charles left Philip, Duke of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV of France, the possessions of the Spanish Crown.
Louis the Stammerer was the king of Aquitaine and later the king of West Francia. He was the eldest son of Emperor Charles the Bald and Ermentrude of Orléans. Louis the Stammerer was physically weak and outlived his father by a year and a half.
Succession to the French throne covers the mechanism by which the French crown passed from the establishment of the Frankish Kingdom in 486 to the fall of the Second French Empire in 1870.
Louis IV, called d'Outremer or Transmarinus, reigned as King of West Francia from 936 to 954. A member of the Carolingian dynasty, he was the only son of king Charles the Simple and his second wife Eadgifu of Wessex, daughter of King Edward the Elder of Wessex. His reign is mostly known thanks to the Annals of Flodoard and the later Historiae of Richerus.