Charlemagne, The Father of Europe, died in the year 814 and left only one surviving son to take the helm of the Carolingian Empire, which spanned the lion’s share of the European continent. But his heir, Louis the Pious, had three sons, who each got a parcel of the empire when he died. Then those…
Tag: Charlemagne
71. Irene of Athens, First Empress of Rome
Powerful women have always had to play the game a little differently than their male counterparts, but the story of Irene of Athens, who played politics with enough dexterity to become Empress of the Byzantine Empire for about 20 years in the 8th century, is extraordinarily complicated. The daughter of a prominent Greek family, she…