Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

We all know that King Henry VIII found himself in a world of trouble trying to get out of his numerous marriages.

But you might not be aware that we can actually trace the arc of royal divorce scandals

right back to the 9th century, and a Carolingian ruler called Lothar II.

Edinburgh University's Professor Charles West has explored this story of marital strife in his

recent book, The Fall of a Carolingian Kingdom, Lothoringer 855 to 869, and he spoke to David

Musgrove.

Today I'm very pleased to be joined by Professor Charles West from Edinburgh University,

whose author of a recent book entitled The Fall of a Carolingian Kingdom, Loforindia 85 to 869.

What we're talking about today is a scandal that unfolded in the reign of Lofar the Second in this

Carolingian kingdom. But we'd better take stock before we dive in and try and situate ourselves a little bit.

Can you paint a picture for us of the political makeup of Western and Northern Europe in the early

9th century and tell us a little bit about the legacy of Charlemagne?

Absolutely, Dave. Charlemagne is, of course, the best known of the Carolingian rulers,

mainly because he creates this huge empire.

It's amounts a million square kilometres, so it's Charlemagne who expands the Frankish lands to include Bavaria and Saxony, and also of course Northern Italy.

So he creates this massive empire which territorially dominates Western Europe.

So that's why he's such a big imposing figure at the time as well as also historiographically.

Okay, so we've got our bearings there. We're going to talk, as I said, about the reign of Lofar II.

So we need to understand him. Can you tell us how he came to power and where and when did he reign?

So Lothar is a descendant of Charlemagne. So what happens with Charlemagne's empire is that it is divided amongst his he's a dynasty.

As I said early, he's most famous rule of the Carolingian dynasty. As it happened, Charlemagne is only one son called Louis, but Louis's got several sons. And each of them makes a claim to be a kind of king, or in fact, one of them becomes an emperor in his own right. And so Lothar's actually a great grandson of Charlemagne. So he's in this family, but he is a king of a kind of little separate part of what had been at the United Empire. So his father is someone called Lothar I, which is why he's called Lothar the Second. And he stakes a claim to a third of Lothar the First's kingdom. So in other words, he's ruling over a fraction of Charlemagne's Empire. I should stress it is quite a big kingdom.

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