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The Sibling Rivalry That Wrecked an Empire, and Other Self-Destructive Royal Family Episodes

Khalid Elhassan January 5, 2020 33 min

Wars of the Roses - Battle of Bosworth Field — The Wars of the Roses, during which the Plantagenet Dynasty destroyed itself. Encyclopedia Britannica

11. The Royal Who Threw Out Her Baby

It is hard to find a more cartoonishly evil mother than Fredegonde (circa 545 – 597). She started off as a servant of Audovera, wife of Frankish king Chilperic I of Soissons, and caught the king’s eye. She convinced him to divorce Audovera and dump her into a convent, then became Chilperic’s mistress. Chilperic eventually ditched Fredegunda to marry a noblewoman, Galswintha. So Fredegonde personally strangled Galswintha to death.

Fredegonde then resumed her place at Chilperic’s side, as his official mistress and queen consort. In 580, a dysentery epidemic afflicted king Chilperic, as well as two of his sons with Fredegonde. She took that as a sign of divine displeasure for her sins, and made some efforts to mend her ways, but soon reverted to being cartoonishly evil. While besieged in a city, another of her sons, a baby, became seriously ill. Worried that she might catch whatever her kid had, Fredegonde ordered him cast away, and let him die.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.