Queen Mother Gerberga: Protecting Her Sons – and Her Power

When brother-in-law King Charles seized her late husband’s lands, Gerberga decided to fight for her sons’ inheritance and her own power as queen mother and regent.

After Frankish King Carloman died at age 20 in December 771, Charles moved swiftly to seize the kingdom. Was it determination or desperation that made Gerberga flee with an entourage to Lombardy? Was it her idea or did her late husband’s magnates persuade her?

We don’t know how she reached the realm of Charles’s ex-father-in-law. She would have either had to cross the Alps or go by sea. The slow travel in general posed the danger of brigands, but add winter weather and at least one boy too young to ride, and this journey becomes especially risky.

We don’t know much about Gerberga, except that she was a Frankish noblewoman selected by father-in-law Pepin to marry Carloman, but we can make a few guesses…