Brunhild and Fredegund

January 10, 2022 7:53 AM

Shelley Puhak writes in Smithsonian magazine about the long-reigning, ambitious Frankish queens Brunhild and Fredegund.
posted by jedicus (5 comments total)

What a well told story! It's an adaptation of the author's book on the topic. Perhaps the book answers a couple of the questions I have.. How do we know so much about these people? I assume Puhak is filling in gaps and making a good narrative for us, and that's OK with me, but it's interesting to know what lenses we're learning things through. And what in these women's past led them to realize such ambition? Were they particularly unusual or are there lots of other women who were just as interesting but maybe not quite as successful? Fredegund started as a slave!
posted by Nelson at 9:19 AM on January 10, 2022 [2 favorites]

The source must be Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks. The linked Wikipedia article on Gregory has a summary of the History and the other link is to an abridged English translation. Gregory was bishop of Tours in the sixth century and was living at the same time as Fredegund and Brunhild.
posted by JonJacky at 10:26 AM on January 10, 2022 [3 favorites]

These kinds of stories are important to tell, as she writes at the end of the article:

As a girl, I gobbled up biographies of female historical figures: activists, writers and artists, but few political leaders, and even fewer from so deep in the past. I don’t know what it would have meant for me, and for other little girls, to have found Queen Fredegund and Queen Brunhild in the books we read—to discover that even in the darkest and most tumultuous of times, women can, and did, lead.

I think it would have been meaningful for me to have discovered such stories as a boy, as well. Just pre-ordered the book, thanks for this post!
posted by LooseFilter at 10:53 AM on January 10, 2022 [3 favorites]

This reminds me of reading The Boyfriend School. It's a book about romance novelists and one of them is a historical expert who writes romance novels based on very old stories. I don't have the copy of the book to check, but I definitely remember that one name-checking Fredegunde and wanting to write a romance based on her and Chilperic. Though given how that went IRL, whether or not it would sell....
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:00 AM on January 10, 2022

Florence H.R. Scott has a Substack Aelgif-who? about early medieval women in England, which might be of interest. From what I’ve seen, a lot of the time it involves reading around what was recorded, and not believing them credulously, and in particular looking at who was responsible for the records.
posted by scorbet at 11:58 AM on January 10, 2022 [1 favorite]