Talk:List of Frankish Kings

Contents

1 Origins, Britain, France 2 France in the 6-8th Century 3 Merge, revision 4 Formatting

Origins, Britain, France

I believe the Carolingians started as Mayors of Palace of Austrasia, not Neustria. User:Jamesdowallen

Sorry to rain on your parade. How did you arrive at the conclusion that A Merovingian or Carolingian was crowned King of Nothing until one sunny morning, a Capetian plunderer woke up, beat his wife, kicked the dog, ate a leg of beef, and thumped his chest, declaring himself King of France? Next, why would Wikipedia be completely out of step with Enclclopedia Britannica and others? Triton

I dont understand your complaint. The Merovingians and Carolingian where Kings of the Franks.

And in that land today known as England, how do we break it down into King of the Teutonic Angles, the etc. etc. As I said before, the first Kings of England did not rule over England as we began calling it centuries after they died. The point (again) is these people ruled over teritory with a name and borders we know today but were different before. So, if annointed Kings at Reims who were born and raised in Paris or any part of what we now call France, live and die there, then they can be called French if we can call Ethelred (?) English. If your ancestor was born in the Texas of 1830, raised in Texas, died in Texas, and wasburied in Texas, then is he a Texan or some tlabel you wish to create because Texas had not then joined the union. Franks is a France of people who were only a part of Clovis' Kingdom. And (again) why does Encyclopedia Britannica and every other authoritive source except Ms. K list the Mervingians as kings of France? Triton

I would be perfectly willing to have to Merovingians included on the French monarchs page, however there are some who seem to be adamently opposed to such a move, and until that issue is resolved (if ever), I figure we should have the Merovingians listed somewhere.

I agree, lets put them in with Huck Finn. Triton

Triton -- if you look at the British Monarchs page, lists kings separately under their individual kingdoms, all of which are now in geographical britain. And this page is unnecessary, because there were already separate pages for Merovingians and Carolingians -- and their dynasties, with explanations. By your reasoning, you do realize, I hope, that we should also be adding the Burgundian Kings and the Visigothic Kings of Toulouse as French? And What about Syagrius -- Gregory of TOurs, writing from a distance, called him a king, but most scholars agree that he held a more Roman title, probably magister militum, IIRC. Please stop. User:JHK

I am a little puzzled. If all ancient or modern rulers are bounded to lists accroding to modern geographical areas, Merovingians shall also be listed under French monarch in the same fashion of the List of British monarchs since they governed areas which eventually comprise modern France. As always, We should clearly state the controversies around the actual beginning of France. User:kt2

So, I'll move over to the British monarchs and start making separate pages and like Ms. K did to the Merovingians, completely disconnect some of them from the entire world. Right? Isn't that how Ms. K has demanded it be done here. And oh yes, I'll delete all photos twice. Triton

Then of course, we could model the list of French Monarchs the exact same as the List of British monarchs, couldn't we?Triton Hi kt -- I think the part that is sticky is the fact that Britain is by nature made up of several kingdoms, more at some times than others -- so it makes sense for the article to be as it is, although it needs editing. The adjective is used differently, though -- just like the legendary Arthur isn't a "British King" -- he's King of the Britons. The name Britain comes from what the ROmans named the area (I think after the people who lived there, but I'm franckly not certain). Even when the Heptarchy existed, people still called the geographical place Britannia. But that's not the case with France -- well into the Carolingians, the Germanic rulers almost always called themselves kings of a people -- not a place. And if they had called themselves kings of a place, wouldn't the Mervingians have called themselves Neustrian or Austrasian -- not French? Also, no one else claims the various British kings as their own and not british -- or they might say, well, only British because Wales is part of Britain. WIth Franks, though, other countries do count them as part of their heritage. sorry if this is a bit muddled -- I'm a bit tired by now. User:JHK

The big difference between Britain and France, is that Britain is an island with a clear geographical identity whereas France is a part of the European landmass whose borders are basically politically and culturally defined. As such it can only be defined with respect to a particular time period and set of rulers. Britain on the other hand can be defined independently of politics and culture by its coastline. If we were to create a list of European or Eurasian monarchs, the parallel with Britain would be closer. -- User:Derek_Ross

um.... okay. Well then we should isolate lists of Eurasian rulers from their lands, i.e. creating list according to different cultural and/or political entities or groups, but not where these groups resided. For instance Germanic monarchs, Visigothic monarchs etc. The French monarchs should then include monarchs starting from the time when the "modern French race" or any kind of distinctive modern French entity began to form. kt2

I wasn't actually suggesting that we should create a Eurasian list. It would be rather big and probably unwieldy. Just trying to point out that the parallel between France and Britain isn't that close. -- Derek Ross

The comparison is relastyed to 1) place name, 2) territory. Despite the Brit island, it still had multiple "Kings". Wasn't it Longshanks who finally nailed down Wales? Then Cumbria is a War by itself. My maternal ancestors were a tribe of Scotti who came from Ireland c.500 to land in what is now Ayrshire, Scotland. They of course, brought their king and immediately after landing started fighting for more territory. In any event, Ms. K will never accept your ideas.Triton

Triton, I am not getting it - how your historical facts are related to the difference between France and Britain? Derek and Julie - I am not suggesting a Eurasian list. BTW if Germanic rulers called themselves kings of peoples, their lists should then be created according to different groups of peoples, i.e. Frankish kings Visigothic kings etc. User:kt2

think that works, but from a usefulness point o view, I'd say people like to look up things under familiar terminology -- it didn't use to be a problem having overlaps with explanations *sigh*. JHK

agree, that's exactly why we don't have Leopold I of the Belgians but Leopold I of Belgium. BTW your idea just explains, "100% accuracy yields total confusion", a phenomenon at wikipedia. User:kt2

There's lots of craziness here. Point 1: Visigothic kings are usually heard of as "Visigothic Kings" not as "Kings of Spain", or whatever you'd like to call them. But, this British comparison is bogus - "Britain" is a geographical term, which already referred to Britain in Roman times, and, pretty much, as far back as we have records for. Thus, it's perfectly appropriate to have "British Monarchs" as an adjective to describe monarchs of Britain. "French", on the other hand, is quite different. If we wanted to have "List of Gallic Monarchs", I'd be happy to have the Frankish Kings on there, but, as others have said, we'd have to also have the Visigothic Kings of Toulouse, and the Kings of the Burgundians, and so forth. Of course, a list of Gallic monarchs would be silly, because we don't generally use the adjective "Gallic" or the noun "Gaul" anymore... So, again, some place names are people neutral, due to the fact that the regions have pretty much always been called the same thing: the peninsula which most of modern Turkey is on can be called "Asia Minor" or "Anatolia" for any historical period. A "List of Anatolian Monarchs" could go from the Hittites to the Ottomans. A "List of Turkish Monarchs", on the other hand, could not, because it wouldn't make any sense. Similarly, calling Clovis a "Frenchman" simply doesn't make any sense, because he wasn't French. Part of the problem, of course, is the bizarre evolution of the word French, which originally, as "Frankish", referred to a Germanic tribe living in Roman Gaul, but eventually came to refer to the Romanized peoples of Gaul... Ack! john 04:25 27 May 2003 (UTC)

France in the 6-8th Century

May a French specialist of this period intervene in this odd, unhistorical debate? History has its traditions against which battling is idlesome, unless new facts are discovered. Clovis and his descent are regarded as French just because they have been acknowledged as such for centuries by the French people; and because Kings of France have always vindicated being their successors (which is not the case with the Visigoths and the Kings of Asturias, Leon, Castila, Aragon). This is not a matter of passport: no Green Card was required for being crowned, in these times. Shall we deny that the Yuan and the Qing were Chinese emperors, although they were respectively Mogolian and Mandjurian? That Alexander the Great is a Greek monarch, although he was a Barbarian (Macedonian)? That William the Conqueror is a British ruler although he was a Norseman and never reigned over Wales, Scotland, and Ireland... nor Gibraltar (but he did over the Channel Islands!) Shall we call the Plantagenets English, or French monarchs? I suggest that some more time could be wasted in discussing an important question of the same kind: may we call the Pilgrim Fathers American? As regards the "questionable limits of France" in the 6th-8th centuries, it is well established that after defeating (in approximate chronological order) the Gallo-Romans, the Burgundians, the Alamans, the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Thuringians, Clovis' sons reigned over 80% of what is presently France, plus Belgium, the Netherland, and Switzerland. Indeed, we could call them Belgian...

Not to restart a long, long dormant debate, but the point is that at the time of Clovis, there was no such thing as "France". The Plantagenets were not English, but they were monarchs of England. Clovis, though a Frank, cannot really be said to be a monarch of France, as France did not yet exist in the 5th century (he was, however, a monarch of Gaul). Anyway, let's let sleeping dogs lie, on this one. john 07:22, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)

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Merge, revision

I merged this page with the former Merovingian Dynasty and Carolingian Dynasty pages, turned those two into redirects, reformatted the entire damn list into HTML tables, and fixed a large number of links on other pages — all in an attempt to make the crazy relationships with all the splits and rejoins of the kingdoms a bit more lucid. It was not my intent to make any semantic changes, and I sincerely hope no information was lost.

The new page was initially sandboxed on User:Djmutex/Sandbox Frankish rulers (which is therefore now obsolete) and approved of by several people, so I hope I stepped on nobody's toes. — djmutex 21:47 31 May 2003 (UTC)

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In any case, this list of Frankish Kings is presently rather confusing and contains several errors (specially with Dagobert I). This is my attempt to make things more clear (but I still have some problems with formatting and setting the proper links). I put it here for further discussion. Besides, it should be noted that the name "Theuderic" is never used by French historians, who use "Thierry" instead. There are some other minor differences on this ground; but this one is particularly misleading. One more thing: the usual practice is to number Merovingian kings in one single series (since they were all titled "Kings of the Franks", not "King of such or such place"). Thus, there should not be two "Theuderic I" and two "Theuderic II", as it is presently. These are commonly known as "Thierry III" and "Thierry IV".

447-511

*Merovech 447-458 *Childeric I 458-481 *Clovis I 481-511

Upon Clovis' death, the kingdom was split among his four sons.

	Paris	Soissons	Orleans	Reims (later Metz)
511-524	*Childebert I 511-558	*Clotaire I 511-561	*Chlodomer 511-524	*Theuderic I 511-534 *Theudebert I 534-548 *Theudebald 548-555
524-555		Clotaire I
555-558		Clotaire I
558-561	Clotaire I
561-567	*Charibert I 561-567	*Chilperic I 561-584	*Guntram 561-592 (Orleans & Burgundy)	*Sigebert I 561-575 (Metz)

Upon the death of Charibert I, Frankish Gaul reached its final threefold division into Neustria (in the west), Burgundy, and Austrasia (in the east).

	Neustria (Soissons, later Paris)	Burgundy (Orleans)	Austrasia (Metz)
561-612	*Chilperic I 561-584 *Clotaire II 584-628	*Guntram 561-592 *Theuderic II 592-613	*Sigebert I 561-575 (Metz) *Childebert II 575-595 (Austrasia) *Theudebert II 595-612 (Austrasia)
612-613	Clotaire II	Theuderic II
613-623	Clotaire II
623-629	Clotaire II		*Dagobert I 623-639
629-630	*Charibert II 629-630
630-633	Dagobert I (with Charibert II, sub-king in Aquitania, 630-632)
633-751	Dagobert I *Clovis II 639-658 *Clotaire III, (652-673), 658-673 *Theuderic III, 673-691 *Clovis III 691-695 *Childebert III 695-711 *Dagobert III 711-715 *Chilperic II 715-720 *Theuderic IV 720-737 *Childeric III 742-751		*Sigebert III 632-656 *Dagobert II 656-660 *Childebert (usurper) 660-661*Childeric II 661-675 *Dagobert II, restored 675-679 Interregnum: rule of the Mayors of the Palace, then Dukes of the Franks (root of the Carolingian dynasty)

Latest source: M. Sonnet, T. Charmasson, A.-M. Lelorrain, Chronologie de l'histoire de France (Paris, 1994).

I think your suggestions are basically good, although I believe they're usually called "Theuderic" or "Theodoric", or some such, in English, rather than Thierry, and we're supposed to use the common English usage. john 05:13, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Formatting

I'm afraid I may have botched up the formatting somewhat in an attempt to get the various templates working, and keep that table at the end. If anyone can offer suggestions on the formatting of the templates, I'd be happy to learn. Kaisershatner 13:19, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)