Thank you for bringing it to us.

I think about half the human race is directly descended from Charlemagne.

Can't wait to give him a hard time about it...

My 39th Great Grandfather.

Most everyone I know has him in their line. I've got him multiple ways!

BTE My brother looks a lot like all the pictures of Charlemagne.

Then again, on average, at 1,200 years in the past, the average individual living today is likely to have had on the order of a trillion ancestors (can make an argument for somewhat more). There may be a few duplicates amongst those trillion.

We are all far more closely related than one might imagine.

Then again, as the saying goes, you can choose your friends.

What is/was the story of why there was doubt?

http://in.news.yahoo.com/1200-old-bones-father-europe-charlemagne-unearthed-germany-055630570.html

Frank Ruhli, Head of the Center for Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, said that it might appear as an obvious conclusion but it isn't, as Charlemagne was exhumed and reburied many times with parts of his body given away as relics, so identifying his skeleton is not an easy task, Discovery News reported.

Ruhli, who announced the results of the study last week, 1,200 years after Charlemagne's death, said the bones appear to belong to a single individual, an old and rather tall man. This matches contemporary descriptions of Charlemagne.

As opposed to, say, the magician at the Renaissance Fair who goes by Zoltan the Adequate (Latin: Zoltanus Adaequatus).

to Monty Python's Life of Brian. All the Roman soldiers that slept with women in Jerusalem told the women their names were Naughtius Maximus or Biggus Dickus.

And Michael Palin (Pilate) insisted he had a friend in Rome whose name really was Biggus Dickus. And he had a wife, Incontinentia Buttocks.

about Vikings where one of the main characters is Thorkell the Misaligned.

Always loved that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivar_the_Boneless

There is some disagreement as to the meaning of Ivar's epithet "the Boneless" (inn Beinlausi) in the sagas. Some have suggested it was a euphemism for impotence or even a snake metaphor (he had a brother named Snake-in-the-Eye). It may have referred to an incredible physical flexibility; Ivar was a renowned warrior, and perhaps this limberness gave rise to the popular notion that he was "boneless". The poem "Háttalykill inn forni" describes Ivar as being "without any bones at all".

Alternatively, the English word "bone" is cognate with the German word "Bein", meaning "leg". Scandinavian sources mention Ivar the Boneless as being borne on a shield by his warriors. Some have speculated that this was because he could not walk and perhaps his epithet simply meant "legless"—perhaps literally or perhaps simply because he was lame. Other sources from this period, however, mention chieftains being carried on the shields of enemies after victory, not because of any infirmity.

“ Of historical personages the author knows of only one of whom we have a vague suspicion that he suffered from osteogenesis imperfecta, namely Ivar Benløs, eldest son of the Danish legendary king Regnar Lodbrog. He is reported to have had legs as soft as cartilage ('he lacked bones'), so that he was unable to walk and had to be carried about on a shield.[9] ”

There are less extreme forms of this disease where the person affected can lack use of their legs but otherwise be unaffected, as may have been the case for Ivar the Boneless. In 2003 Nabil Shaban, a disability rights advocate with osteogenesis imperfecta, made the documentary The Strangest Viking for Channel 4's Secret History, in which he explored the possibility that Ivar the Boneless may have had the same condition as himself. It also demonstrated that someone with the condition was quite capable of using a longbow, such that Ivar could have taken part in battle, as Viking society would have expected a leader to do.

Thanks for the info!

He has a short story called "We Are Norsemen" and one of the main characters is "Thorkell the Misaligned."

A warrior/scholar who loved learning (even thou he reportedly couldn't write) and brought about a mini-renaissance in France and Germany. Head of the Holy Roman Empire, which my teachers liked to point out wasn't really an empire, nor Roman, and certainly not Holy.

First non-white Muslims then
he launched a bloody war of extermination against the Saxon and other pagan German tribes under his control.
So after killing thousands of pagans, Charlemagne did manage to create a virtually uniform Christian kingdom

Head of the Holy Roman Empire by death and destruction
If you can't convert them kill them ? no not my kind of king but each to his own

dynamics with 21st Century morality - a morality that was shaped by that death and destruction. Hard to believe any-ANY- early Middle Age person, especially a leader of a country would be anything but aggressive to the point of our perceived brutality in establishing order and their idea of civilization. Our judgment of death and destruction - their clear conscience of order and civilization. An argument for the times.

Sitting on a throne with an orb and scepter with a big bejeweled gold crown and wearing a fine fur robe.