Richild of Lotharingia
Overview
Biography
(See also Genealogical Table(s): 1)Richild was the daughter of queen Theutberga’s sister, Richild, and Count Biwin, thus a member of the Bosonide clan of Lotharingia. Her brother Boso arranged her marriage with the newly widowed Charles the Bald who was more than twenty years older and they were married towards the end of the year his first wife Ermentrude died, 869. Charles had political reasons to want an alliance with the Bosonides, as Lothar II had when he married Theutberga. Richild and Charles had several children, of whom only a daughter lived to adulthood. Richild was the object of several impassioned letters from pope John VIII, pleading with her for help to the beleaguered church, threatened by pagan invasions in Rome (and by “evil” Christians) and one critical letter from Hincmar accusing her of simony. Charles became emperor in 875. When he was dying, he left the royal insignia in Richild’s hands, to strengthen her position in negotiations over the succession (1), but she had to invest her stepson Louis the Stammerer with them. Having lost her power at the court, she retired to her family lands in Lotharingia/Lorraine.