When the chancellor finished speaking, the five ministers wore five different faces.
War Minister Orm stared blankly at the ceiling; Æthelwulf nodded off again; the eunuch chamberlain toyed with the trinkets on his necklace. Only Goodwin and Horst seemed to be thinking.
Suddenly a guardsman burst into the council chamber—
the king summoned everyone at once.
"Have the Franks crossed the sea?"
Orm slapped the table with excitement. Æthelwulf jolted upright, coughing loudly.
"Who—who's attacking us?"
Vig stretched lazily and rose.
"Don't listen to Orm's nonsense. A cross-channel invasion is extremely difficult— even if 'Baldy' Charles wants war, he'd need three months just to prepare ships, levies, and supplies. Ten pounds says Orm is wrong again."
They entered the great hall. Ragnar handed Vig a slip of parchment; Vig's expression tightened as he read aloud:
"Lothar, king of Middle Francia, has died.
His will divides the realm into three parts—one for each son:
the northern kingdom of Lotharingia,
the middle kingdom of Burgundy,
and the Italian kingdom in the north of the peninsula
(excluding Rome, Naples, Sicily)."
At present, the Frankish realms practiced partible inheritance: when a king or lord died, his lands were divided equally among all sons.
It came from old Germanic tribal custom—land was the collective property of the clan, and maintaining unity required equal shares.
In the fifth century, a Frankish chieftain named Clovis crushed Rome's power in Gaul and founded the Merovingian dynasty. His death split the realm among four sons, and the kingdom endured centuries of division and reunion. Royal authority shriveled; power passed to the mayors of the palace, until Mayor Pepin III (son of Charles Martel) seized the throne.
But Pepin's Carolingian dynasty did not learn from their predecessors. They kept the same self-crippling inheritance system, creating the three realms of today:
West Francia ("Baldy" Charles),
Middle Francia (Lothar),
and East Francia (Louis "the German").
Ragnar leaned forward like a hunting beast.
"What do you all think?"
Orm, unsurprisingly, barked the answer first:
"War! Strike West Francia, seize loot, fill the treasury!"
The others hesitated. When no one spoke, Vig stepped forward.
"Put simply, it's a case of 'the elder brother dies, the uncles and cousins quarrel over his estate.'
It is an internal Frankish matter.
If we intervene now, they'll set aside their quarrels and unite against a common foreign foe—us. We would be fighting all Frankish kings at once. The odds are terrible."
Ragnar closed his eyes. A rare opportunity… too tempting to ignore.
He proposed a compromise:
"Then we will not attack—yet. Prepare weapons, ships, and supplies, and wait to see what happens."
Vig protested strongly.
"The palace leaks like a sieve. If we begin preparations, news will reach the Franks within the week, pushing them to reconcile.
I advise we do nothing.
If they truly descend into civil war, then we prepare."
But Ragnar did not take this advice.
In the following weeks, tension in Frankia escalated. Charles the Bald— emboldened by victories in Aquitaine and Brittany—summoned his forces to Reims to "persuade" his nephews.
Not to be outdone, East Frankia's Louis gathered his vassals at Cologne.
Would a war really break out?
Most Frankish lords dreaded the idea. Charles and Louis did too—they only meant to frighten each other into concessions.
Then the papal envoys arrived with a convenient excuse to back down:
"Reliable intelligence confirms large stocks of grain and ships amassed in London.
The usurper Ragnar of Britain may cross the channel at any time."
With this "threat," Charles and Louis declared joint protection over their nephews' realms. The three mini-kingdoms were to pay annual tribute—protection money split by the two uncles.
And because West Francia was the strongest, Charles gained the coveted title Romanorum Imperator Augustus—"Emperor of the Romans," a symbolic echo of Charlemagne's coronation.
When Charlemagne died, the imperial title passed to his son Louis the Pious, then to Louis's son Lothar.
Now Lothar was gone.
Charles had finally seized the title he'd dreamed of—empty though it was, it sounded magnificent.
Charles marched north with twenty thousand men, patrolling the coast and warning the "British usurper" to stay put.
When the news reached London, Ragnar felt humiliated.
Ignoring Vig's pleas, the king marched to Dover with the Royal Guard and local levies. The two kings stared each other down across the channel for a full month, exchanging insults through envoys.
"You filthy northern savage! Set foot on shore and taste a Frankish lance!"
"You bald rat! Have you forgotten how you begged for peace? One day I'll visit Paris again and use your skull as my drinking bowl!"
By July, they had exhausted every insult known to mankind.
Charles's troops exceeded their forty days of free service and now required pay—he had to dismiss half his army.
Across the channel, Ragnar's purse was even thinner. Supplying thirteen thousand men was impossible; under Vig's relentless nagging, he disbanded thousands of militiamen.
At last both kings ended the shouting match and returned home.
Ulf seized Vig by the sleeve.
"My lands are ruined! These ten thousand louts trampled my fields, hunted in my forests without permission, harassed my villages—your cabinet owes me compensation!"
Vig sighed, fully committed to giving up on dignity.
"To feed Ragnar's army, I had to borrow fifteen hundred pounds from the Norse merchants. Half of it's already gone.
If I compensate you, there'll be nothing left to pay the Royal Guard."
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