Theudebert Getting Married

Theudebert’s life didn’t change much from the last post, though the pieces of land that his father simply could not live without were found farther and farther away. When killing his brothers doesn’t work, Theuderic has another great idea. He can just recapture some of the land that had been lost to the Spanish Goths!* But he’s very busy, so he sends one of his sons (Theudebert will do).

Theudebert wins some spectacular victories at Beziers and Dio, but war tires one so quickly, so he decides to send notes inviting cities to simply offer themselves up instead of being captured. The wife of some schmuck who had been at Beziers is, at the time, running Cabrieres. Deuteria responds quickly, and lays it on pretty thick:

Dear Theudebert,

Hi, Tiger. How are you? I hope that you’re doing well. You’re so strong, and noble, and princely, that you simply must be. Because of the aforementioned qualities, I we invite you to be my our ruler here in Cabrieres. Do stop by our town soon, and do with me it what you will.

Love,

Deuteria

This sounds pretty good to Theudebert. Words like “active” and “resourceful” have been used to describe Deuteria, and it isn’t entirely clear that they refer to her capabilities as a ruler. So, Theudebert swings by and meets Deuteria and falls in love with her on the spot. After some nominal protests (“But Theudebert, son of Theuderic, what about your betrothed, Wisigard, daughter of the Longobard King Wacho? Oh I see.”), she ends up pregnant.

Some time passes, some less interesting things happen: Theudebert betrays his father, Theuderic dies, there’s a massive war for his throne that Theudebert magically wins, and Deuteria has her baby. Theudebert is actually a pretty good ruler, according to Gregory, but that might be because of the part where he stopped making the church in Clermont-Ferrand pay taxes.**

So, Theudebert. Pretty good king, not great husband, it turns out.

Deuteria wakes up one day and notices that her daughter is actually starting to age. I suspect that most parents realize this fairly frequently, and do, quite often, panic. Shit, she thinks, my daughter is becoming a woman, and my husband likes women an awful lot. I had better attach her to a cart pulled by untamed bulls and send it over a cliff. It’s the only way.***

Then, after being betrothed to Wisigard for seven years, all of the other royals start to get a little antsy. Fine, Theudebert isn’t going to marry her. But he can at least call the wedding off, right? This suggestion enrages the most pious king, so he divorces generically spurns(?) Deuteria and marries Wisigard who has apparently waited patiently all this time. ****

All for naught! Wisigard dies almost instantly, but Theudebert is just so tired of Deuteria’s energetic resourcefulness, and marries someone else.

Poor, crazy Deuteria.

Still, the Trashy Romance turned High Tragedy isn’t the most interesting aspect of this story. It’s the marriage politics.

Deuteria was married when she seduced Theudebert seduced her, though it seems likely that he could have been or was killed Theudebert’s invasion. The little Common-Law arrangement that they got goin’ on while in Spain TOTALLY COUNTS as marriage, but it’s dismissed by reference to their legitimate marriage upon return to France. The relatives aren’t uppity about the fact that he married Deuteria when he promised to marry Wisigard, but that he wouldn’t marry Wisigard regardless. Even the third marriage, not described in detail at this point, is pretty obviously chronologically delineated in this story. It’s almost pitiable to watch Gregory try and fit the Merovingian monarchs’ still-Germanic marriage practices (read: fairly informal) into a good, Catholic model. Theudebert’s the first real chance that he gets, so he takes it and runs. No polygamy (there are spaces between wives, and they’re almost all legitimate!), no concubines. It’s all comparatively tame!

So far.

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*Note the use of passive voice. It’s remarkably unclear exactly whose fault the disintegration of Clovis’ magnificent kingdom is, and Gregory does a pretty good job of hiding that it even happened, at least until this point in the text. It’s almost as if the brother-kings woke up one day, rubbed the sleep of civil war out of their eyes, and said, “Shit where did all the land go.” An easy (maybe too-easy) explanation might be that these are Arians, the evil false Christians that every real Catholic hated more than anything for about 6 centuries, and that Gregory wants this to be about Catholics beating Arians and not about Arians suddenly being all up in the middle of Aquitaine.

**Maybe the taxes are why Richy had to sleep in a closet.

***I'm still a little bit unclear on the mechanics of hitching an untamed bull to a cart. Did she do it herself? Did she ask some nice, burly men to do it? It seems like that would produce some awkward questions. “I’m sorry, you want what done with these bulls? Right. And then what are you going to do with the cart?” “Oh, you know, just something we always did back in Spain, haha.”

****I would like to draw your attention to chronology, here. My presentation is a little unoriginal; this and the preceding paragraph refer to Book III, chapters 26 and 25, respectively. Gregory is not hugely interested in preserving chronology between narratives, but is generally pretty good when talking about the same subject, as he is here. It looks like Deuteria’s daughter was seven at the oldest when her mother decided that she was womanly and needed to have her purity protected.