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In retrospect, Louis I was pretty damn lucky. Frankish tradition during Charlemagne, which was passed on to good ol' Pious, was to basically split land between their sons. Since he had no sons survive childbirth but Lothair (who then had a ton of daughters but only one son), there was nobody to split it with for four generations in total. What if this weren't the case?

My contribution to the topic is that there probably would be a much later invention of primogeniture. Louis I really helped out with that greatly (splitting land with Lothair II's theoretical sons as viceroys with only one emperor, that being the firstborn), but it wasn't until the empire was kept relatively intact for a fourth time when things solidified. Having that process cut off at the head would probably complicate things a lot.
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