Two Queens at The Forge of History

The Dark Queens-The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World by Shelley Puhak (2022) – As the power of the Roman Empire waned, a new power rose in western Europe. The Merovingians unified the Frankish tribes into a single powerhouse kingdom for two and a half centuries. For decades, two queens, Brunhilda and Fredegund, would dominate the kingdom.

Brunhilda, the educated Visigoth princess, married into the Merovingian dynasty to build an alliance with the powers in northern Spain. Fredegund, a former enslaved girl whose beauty convinced a king to make her his queen. Married to two brothers, the sisters-in-law waged war on each other through treachery, murder, and war. In the centuries that followed their deaths, chroniclers diminished and vilified both women. In a careful, detail-filled history, poet and Notre Dame of Maryland University professor Shelley Puhak uses all available resources to expose a clear view of these two powerful women. Those intertwined stories show why the men of their time feared and followed them.

Neither Brunhilda nor Fredegund were shy, wallflowers. They would be fierce enemies from the moment Fredegund had Brunhilda’s only sister murdered in her bed. That opened the enslaved woman’s path to the throne and set decades of violence in motion between the two queens. Fredegund displayed an outstanding eye for military matters, along with all the politics of the court she learned while serving her two predecessors as queen.

The stories are fascinating and terrifying. These women wielded near-ultimate power in a time and culture that had little use for women beyond childbearing and political advantage. Puhak dug deep to find many great stories about the events that surrounded the two queens. My favorite by far is the story of some contemporaneous royal ladies forced to live in a convent. This was a common Merovingian practice when the king grew bored with a wife or she could no longer give birth to an heir. The exiled sisters rebelled, fled the convent, raised an army and laid siege to the convent! Merovingian queens were not to be messed with. The “Dark Queens” made war, ordered assassinations, faced down the male nobility, and played politics with the church. Both served as regents for underage sons, with Brunhilda doing so for sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons.

As closely linked as they were in life, their deaths were very different. One died of natural causes, and the other died in a violent and bloody act of official revenge. What followed their deaths was a concerted effort to erase them from history as much as possible and to defame their names in whatever was left. This book is an attempt to rectify those assaults on their history.

Shelley Puhak does a great job of balancing the careful history of her story with deft storytelling that brings the queens to life. The Carolingian dynasty that followed often overshadows the Merovingians, so much of the history of this time period isn’t well known. Puhak brings great narrative skills to the effort to shine a light on this time and people.

Rating – **** Recommended.