[3] His mother was Saint Balthild and his elder brother was Chlothar III,[3] who was briefly sole king from 661 but gave Austrasia to Childeric the next year.

[4] Childeric married his cousin Bilichild,[5] who gave birth to two sons: Dagobert and the future king Chilperic II.

The final straw for the magnates of Neustria was Childeric's illegal corporal punishment of a nobleman named Bodilo.

In 675, Bodilo and his friends Amalbert and Ingobert conspired to assassinate the king, who was killed, along with his wife Bilichild and his five-year-old son Dagobert, while hunting in the forest of Livry (present-day Lognes).

Childeric, his wife, and their son Dagobert were buried in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, near Paris, where their tombs were discovered in 1645 and the contents pilfered.