Interesting little tidbit about Charlemagne I just saw on H2:

[Brigid]

When his father died in 768, he ruled a divided Frankish kingdom with his brother Carloman I. In 771, Carloman died under "unexplained circumstances". "Unexplained?" Suuure.

[scarletwoman]

1. It's good to be the King.

You don't have to explain nuthin' to nobody.

[davekriss]

6. So went GWB's wet dream

[Rye Bread Pizza]

10. I agree GWB was a lousy president...

But I don't think we should be blaming him for Charlemagne and Einhard. Just saying.

[davekriss]

12. Apologies

I had remembered the following with Bush using the word "king" instead of "dictator":

If this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier... as long as I'm the dictator. Hehehe.

[Aristus]

2. "Unexplained" could simply mean there's no documentation on the subject.

Not an unreasonable circumstance in the early Middle Ages.

[Brigid]

3. True.

But you gotta admit, veeerrrry suspicious in this case.

[Rye Bread Pizza]

4. Einhard

Unfortunately, most of the information we have regarding Charlemagne is from the VERY bias Einhard. Most of his lies tend to be by omission instead of outright falsehoods however. Such as what happened to Carloman's wife and children after they fled to the Lombards.

[Brigid]

5. *checks wikipedia*

Sounds like this, too, is uncertain, but somewhat suspicious.

[LeftyMom]

7. Frankish history was pretty much all like that.

There's this thing that happens with certain sharks that give live birth where they'll have many young developing from egg sacs and the ones that develop the fastest eat the others until only two very healthy and very well nourished pups are actually born (one from each side of the divided uterus.) The Franks in particular had a tendency to make their siblings and extended relatives go missing in a way always reminds me of that.

But as mentioned upthread there was absolutely no practice of unbiased documentary history in the middle ages, so everything we have to go on is either court historians writing the official biography of their sovereign (with all the biases that would entail) or church historians writing to flatter or malign rulers based on their theological biases (Gildas is the best example of this. Dude was a raving loon but he's our only source for a lot of stuff in Britain in the sixth century.) So any time you only have one source you have to give it some serious side eye.

I'm kind of excited that H2 is actually showing some history for once. It seems to be heading down the Bigfoot's Ice Road Alien Junk Shop road that History proper went down some time ago.

[Recursion]

8. But Carloman had joined a monastery a decade before he died

That's the bigger question to me: whether Pepin convinced the Pope to keep him in Rome, or whether he actually was repentant for going all Michael Corleone on the Alemanni.

[UTUSN]

9. R#2 & K for, and in our time Shrub mocked Jeb n/t

[CatWoman]

13. I saw that yesterday

the "unexplained" is even more suspicious as the brothers hated each other and communicated solely via letters.

[snooper2]

14. We have our own Charlemagne Du'er, where is he! I think he mad

After I explained Charlemagne was an asshole fundie piece of shit- "convert or DIE"!