Charles the Younger

Charles was designated as the heir of the bulk of Charlemagne's lands but predeceased his father, leaving the empire to be inherited by his younger brother Louis the Pious.

In 774, as Charlemagne was besieging Pavia, capital of the Lombard Kingdom, he sent for Hildegard and his sons to join the army at the camp outside the city.

[4] In 781, Charlemagne and Hildegard brought their younger children, including their sons Carloman and Louis to Rome, leaving Pepin and Charles in Francia.

[5] In Rome, Pope Adrian I baptized the children, and in the process Carloman was renamed Pepin, now sharing a name with his half-brother.

[15] Charlemagne declared a blockade on all trade from England, which lasted three years until a treaty negotiated by Alcuin of York was agreed to.

Wandelbert, a monk writing in the mid-ninth century, recounts a story of the two brothers travelling with their father down the Rhine, each in their own boat.

[a] By the 780s, Pepin was seen as illegitimate, and though earlier Frankish inheritance practices did not distinguish sons by their mother's marital status, it seems this distinction was becoming important.

[27] In 800 Charles joined his father in surveying his lands and defenses in Neustria where Danish pirates had been raiding, before the two travelled to Rome together.

At mass on Christmas Day, 25 December 800, Leo crowned Charlemagne as emperor and anointed Charles as a king.

[29] Charles continued to be a key lieutenant and military leader for his father,[30] as Charlemagne rarely led armies directly in his later year.

Charles, as his eldest son in good favour, was given the largest share of the inheritance, with rule of Francia proper along with Saxony, Nordgau, and parts of Alemannia.