Charlemagne

Biography

Charlemagne (Charles the Great) became King of the Franks in 768 and King of the Lombards in 774. On Christmas Day of the year 800, Pope Leo III crowned him Emperor of the Romans in St. Peter’s Basilica — the first person to hold the imperial title in western Europe since the fall of Rome in 476. His reign united most of western and central Europe under a single ruler for the first time since antiquity.

His court at Aachen drove the revival of learning known as the Carolingian Renaissance: the standardization of handwriting into the Carolingian minuscule from which lowercase letters descend, the copying and preservation of classical texts, and a network of cathedral and monastery schools across the empire. He died at Aachen in 814 and is buried there.

Charlemagne is the deepest documented ancestor in this archive and its most heavily sourced: 116 source descriptions are attached to his FamilySearch record (LZ62-TSV). The descent reaches him through the maternal line — through the Plantagenet kings of England, the Capetian kings of France, and the Carolingian dynasty before them. Because nearly all medieval and modern European royalty descends from Charlemagne, the connection is not unusual in itself; what the archive documents is the specific, generation-by-generation chain that links him to John, Perry, and Patrick Long.

That chain is set out in full on the Plantagenet Descent page, which also records the two stretches — the Aquitaine ducal generations between Eleanor of Aquitaine and Hugh Capet, and the Robertian–Carolingian junction immediately below Charlemagne — that are documented in the FamilySearch ancestry walk but not yet enumerated generation-by-generation. The headline figure of thirty-eight generations follows that walk’s count and carries the usual caution for descents of this depth.

Key Accomplishments

• King of the Franks from 768; King of the Lombards from 774
• Crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day, 800 — the first Western emperor since 476
• United most of western and central Europe under a single rule
• Patron of the Carolingian Renaissance — the revival of learning, script, and classical scholarship
• Established a network of cathedral and monastery schools across the empire

Descent to the Brothers

The milestone anchors of a thirty-eight-generation descent — named anchors, not every generation. The complete generation-by-generation chain, including the stretches not yet individually enumerated, is on the Plantagenet Descent page. Click any PID to open the FamilySearch record.

Generation Count

Confidence

VERIFIED on Charlemagne’s own record (LZ62-TSV, 116 FamilySearch sources — the most-documented ancestor in the archive). The descent to the brothers is documented generation-by-generation on the Plantagenet Descent page through FamilySearch’s canonical tree and Douglas Richardson’s Magna Carta Ancestry, with two intermediate stretches — the Aquitaine ducal generations and the Robertian–Carolingian junction — marked Research-in-Progress rather than enumerated, and no identifiers invented to fill them. The thirty-eight-generation depth follows the Phase-7 walk count and is stated as approximate at the deepest links.

External Links & Sources

1. Charlemagne — Wikipedia
2. FamilySearch: Charlemagne (LZ62-TSV, 116 sources)
3. Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families (2nd ed., 2011)
4. Internal: the full thirty-eight-generation chain on the Plantagenet Descent page