02910cam a2200325 4500 566173492 TxAuBib 20220628120000.0 220204s2022||||||||||||d|||||||||||eng|u 2022003730 9781432899332 hardcover 1432899333 hardcover TxAuBib Puhak, Shelley. The dark queens : the bloody rivalry that forged the medieval world / Shelley Puhak. Large print edition. Waterville, Maine : Thorndike Press, a part of Gale, a Cengage company, Gale Cengage Learning, [2022] pages (large print) ; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references. A wedding in Metz -- Meeting the Franks -- The fall of Charibert -- New alliances -- A missive to Byzantium -- The slave queen -- All the king's men -- The siege -- The witch and the nun -- Back channels -- Uprising -- The laws of sanctuary -- Crime and punishment -- "Wise in counsel" -- Fredegund's grief -- Brunhild in the breach -- The regency -- Set ablaze -- Brunichildis regina -- The king is dead -- The vexations of King Guntram -- The Gundovald affair -- The diplomatic arts -- The dukes' revolt -- A royal engagement -- The defiant nuns -- Allies and assassins -- Forlorn little boys -- The fading of the kings -- The dual rule -- Brunhild's battles -- The fall -- Epilogue: Backlash. "The remarkable, little-known story of two trailblazing women in the Early Middle Ages who wielded immense power, only to be vilified for daring to rule. Brunhild was a foreign princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. Her sister-in-law Fredegund started out as a lowly palace slave. And yet-in sixth-century Merovingian France, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport-these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms, changing the face of Europe. The two queens commanded armies and negotiated with kings and popes. They formed coalitions and broke them, mothered children and lost them. They fought a decades-long civil war-against each other. With ingenuity and skill, they battled to stay alive in the game of statecraft, and in the process laid the foundations of what would one day be Charlemagne's empire. Yet after the queens' deaths-one gentle, the other horrific-their stories were rewritten, their names consigned to slander and legend."-- Provided by publisher. 20220628. Brunehaut, Queen, consort of Sigebert, King of Austrasia, 534-613. Fredegund, Queen, consort of Chilperic I, King of Neustria, -597. Queens France Biography. Merovingians Biography. France History To 987. Biographies. TXJOU