Bilichild

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Bilichild (also Bilichildis, Bilichilde, or Blithilde) was the cousin and wife of the Frankish king of Neustria and Burgundy, Childeric II. The two were married in 668 despite the opposition of such important men as the Bishop Leodegar. Nevertheless the marriage produced two children: Dagobert and Daniel, later King Chilperic II.

Childeric became sole king of the Franks in 673. While on a hunting trip in the Forest of Lognes, near Livry, in Picardy, Bilichild, along with her husband the king and her eldest son, the five-year-old Dagobert, were assassinated by a band of dissatisfied Neustrians—Bodilo, Amalbert, and Ingobert. The royal trio was buried in Saint-Germain-des-Prés at Paris, where her tomb and that of Dagobert were discovered in 1645 and pilfered.

Her younger son, Daniel, was whisked off to a monastery and from there retrieved forty years thence to lead the Franks as king.

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Lexikon des Mittelalters


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