Following the death of the legendary Frankish King Clovis, his son Clothar I divided the mighty realm his father had hacked out from the warring warlords of Europe between his four sons. But peace was not to reign…the most ambitious of his brood - Chilperic - seized Paris, his brother’s domain, following his death. Drawn to his swelling power, a seemingly humble yet beautiful slave girl, Fredegund, rose up from obscurity to become Chilperic’s mistress. Little did he know what a ruthless force of nature he had invited into his bed. Before long, she had persuaded him to cast aside his first wife, Audovera. His second, Galswintha, was not so lucky. Soon after their marriage she was found strangled to death, and Fredegund - her probable murderer - was crowned queen in her place. Meanwhile, Galswintha’s equally merciless sister, the intelligent Queen Brunhilda of Austrasia was plotting the gruesome downfall of her sister’s killer, hungry for revenge. The terrible and enduring feud between these two remarkable women had begun… Join Tom and Dominic for this most unbelievable of stories in the second instalment of their series on the rise of the Franks, as they unveil the clash of two indomitable warrior queens, drenched in blood, violence, vengeance, scheming, and witchcraft. The outcome of their civil war would reshape the face of the West. _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
What is the story of Fredegund and Brunhild?
Craigie, so that is a shock.
Bombshell.
A real bombshell. And what's the reaction across the sort of Frankish world? So do people say, oh, good on you, this is reasonable behaviour, or is this going to make Chilperic and Fredegund pariahs?
Well, the place where it particularly reverberates is in the court of Austrasia, where Chilperic's brother Sigbert is king. And the reason for that, why it particularly reverberates there, is partly because Sigbert and Chilperic really detest each other. But it's also because Sigbert is also married to a Visigothic queen.
And this queen is the younger sister of Galswintha, so the princess who's just been murdered. And she had arrived in Austrasia the year before, so in 567. And the name of this princess, this Visigothic princess married to Sigbert, is Dominic Brunhild.
Okay, so now we've got the other great player in the drama, Brunhild. We have. And now we can obviously understand why Brunhild absolutely despises Fredegund. And vice versa, because Brunhilde clearly is never going to forgive her for the death of her sister. But we talked about Fredegund. Brunhilde herself is a pretty remarkable woman, isn't she? She's incredibly fashionable.
She's very beautiful. She's very elegant. And she's brilliant at politics.
She really is. Very like Fredegund. So she's in a difficult situation. She's a foreigner in a Frankish court, but she's already in the space of a year showed herself to be a very shrewd, a very tough political operator. And she's made a point of forging alliances with the kind of, you know, the leading men at Sigbert's court. So that's one thing that she's done.
But the key thing she's done, and it's what basically queens are there for, in the opinion of their husbands, is that she's fulfilled her prime duty, which is to give Sigbert a son. And Sigbert's son is called Childebert. And he is born at Easter. He's baptized at the great Christian festival of Pentecost. And this seems to everyone in Austrasia an absolute marker of divine favor.
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