The marriage also sought to isolate Charlemagne's brother Carloman I, who ruled over the central territories of Francia.
Carolingian historian Janet Nelson writes that the alliance between the Franks and Lombards arising out of the marriage to Desiderata was directed against Charlemagne's brother Carloman, whose territory it encircled.
[1][page needed] The marriage was opposed by Pope Stephen III, who in the summer of 770 wrote to Charlemagne and Carloman bemoaning the union between "the most notable race of the Franks and that fetid brood of the Lombard's that had brought leprosy into the land.
One school of thought is that the name derives from an editorial error in a 19th-century copy of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica which capitalized the 'D' in desideratam filiam (Latin for 'desired daughter').
[4][page needed] The Italian writer Alessandro Manzoni in his tragedy Adelchi gave her the name Ermengarda.