History is one big soap opera. How’s this for a tangle:
In The Carolingians: A Family Who Forged Europe, Pierre Riché writes about Carloman and Pippin III, the Short, two sons of Charles Martel, to both of whom he left the Frankish kingdom when he died. Carloman was Charlemagne’s grandfather. Page 51 provides quite the family tree. I’ll break down the paragraph and highlight the important bits, primarily because that makes the confusing passage easier to digest:
[Upon the death of Charles Martel] Carloman and Pippin found their first adversaries within the family.
– Their half-brother Grifo, the son of the Bavarian Sunnichild, reckoned on playing the part of an equal heir, as witnessed by a letter to him from [missionary, archbishop of Mainz] Boniface. He wanted to take possession of his due, but neither Pippin nor Carloman accepted this, and they imprisoned him in the bastion at Chèvremont, near Liège, while his mother was consigned to the guard of the nuns of Chelles.
– In another quarter, Chiltrude, the elder sister of the mayors of the palace, had secretly fled the kingdom with the help of friends and married Odilo, duke of Bavaria. This new relative of the Carolingian family hoped to play some political role; he enjoyed papal support and had also lately concluded a pact with Duke Hunald of Aquitaine. Upon the death of Charles Martel, Hunald had of course revolted against the heirs.
– Finally, Theutbald of Allemania, the brother of the Lantfrid subdued by Charles Martel, made a new grab for autonomy and a restored duchy.
Carloman and Pippin would thus be occupied for several years to the south and east of the kingdom.
OK, so: Charlemagne is linked to his grandfather Carloman by virtue of having more or less the same name. Charlemagne’s grandfather’s sister, from the royal standpoint, betrayed Charlemagne’s grandfather by marrying his adversary-by-proxy. This is presumably a source of shame for the family. [If I put this in my dissertation, is the evidence for that last sentence common knowledge? Do I have to explicitly present it?]
In the Song of Roland (France, 1095-1099), Roland is Charlemagne’s nephew.
In the Karlamagnús Saga (Norway, 13th century), Roland is both Charlemagne’s nephew and his son by his sister named Gilem. When Karlamagnus finds out Gilem is pregnant, he “[gives] his sister to Milon, and [makes] him duke of Brettania. The boy [is] born seven months later.”
Italians make yet another case. From Italo Calvino’s preface to Orlando Furioso di Ludovico Ariosto raccontato da Italo Calvino (Milano: Mondadori 1995, sadly only available in Italian, it’s a brilliant book):
Di Roland la tradizione francese non dice se non l’ultima battaglia e la morte. Tutto il resto della sua vita, nascita, albero genealogico, infanzia giovinezza avventure prima di Roncisvalle, egli le troverà, sotto il nome di Orlando, in Italia. Viene così stabilito che suo padre è Milone di Clermont (o Chiaromonte) alfiere di re Carlo, e sua madre è Berta, la sorella del sovrano. Avendo Milone sedotto la fanciulla, per sfuggire alle ire del regale cognato, la rapisce e fugge in Italia. Secondo alcune fonti Orlando nasce in Romagna, a Imola, secondo altre a Sutri, nel Lazio: che sia italiano non c’è dubbio. (11-12)
(The only things that the French tradition tells about Roland are his last battle and his death. The rest of his life, birth, family tree, childhood youth adventures before Roncesvalles, the character acquires under the name Orlando, in Italy. Thus, his father is established as Milon of Clermont (or Chiaromonte), Charlemagne’s standard bearer, and his mother is Berta, the king’s sister. Having seduced the girl, in order to escape his sovereign brother-in-law’s wrath, Milon kidnaps her and flees to Italy. According to some sources Orlando is born in Romagna, in the town of Imola; according to others, in Sutri, Lazio: of his Italian origin there is no doubt.)
OK, so:
1. Historian Riché claims, presumably based on good evidence, that the Carolingians had a shameful episode a couple of generations previous to Charlemagne’s. This was during the 700s, A.D.
2. The French write down The Song of Roland at the end of the 11th century. Roland is established as Charlemagne’s nephew; there is no further discussion about the dynasty. There is no historical evidence for or against kinship between Charlemagne and the Count Hruodlandus mentioned by Einhard’s account of a battle with the Basques, the only historical mention of a Roland.
3. I would speculate that plenty of gossip about the Carolingian propagated amongst their subjects: it seems to be just the way people react to celebrities, no? Or do I need to substantiate this?
4. The Norse give their tale an incestuous twist: Roland’s father is Charlemagne, and his mother Charlemagne’s sister Berta. The cover-up husband, married into the incest, is named Milon. It would be important, however, to know whether they combined the two stories about Charlemagne’s family, fabricated juicy gossip about Charlemagne, or uncovered yet another shameful secret.
5. The Italians keep Berta, but buy the story: Roland’s mother is Berta and his father is Milon. If there was incest involved in real life, then the Italians become complicit in covering it up; but then, they may have done so in ignorance of the real events.
It just seems to me that there’s a possibility that the Frankish storytellers (who were, in some cases, the king’s unofficial biographers) deliberately covered up for their sovereign, that Norwegians ran a gossip column exposing the secret, but that the Italians never got the memo encoded into the Norse saga and bought the lie, but were vain enough to appropriate the credit for Roland’s survival.
I’m not sure this is provable, though. But one thing that thinking about this has already taught me is: reading relevant histories is not merely “an OK expenditure of dissertation-researching time for my general education.” It may prove to be an absolutely necessary tool that points me more precisely about why stories were told in these particular ways, at these particular historical points.
