PC: Charlemange Crowns a Roman as HRE

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For the purposes of this question, let's say Charlemange was not excited by the prospect of being crowned titular emperor of a dead, non-frankish empire and decides to have the Pope crown a male from one of the few remaining Roman aristocratic lines.

Charlemange of course retains all the power as king, with the potential HRE acting as a puppet figure head for him to control.

How plausible is this, and what are the ramifications if it were to happen this way?
 
Was there even any Roman aristocrat who could claim descend from Roman noble families?

And I am not sure that anyone would want to be just puppet emperor.
 
For the purposes of this question, let's say Charlemange was not excited by the prospect of being crowned titular emperor of a dead, non-frankish empire

Which summarize roughly the IOTL situation, interestingly. Carolingian Empire wasn't considered as the resurrection of Roman Empire (in spite of its popularity, it have zero credibility when one look to sources, and is generally academically discarded)

Calling Carolingian as "Roman Empire" or "HRE" is at best making an anachronism and not understanding at all the nature of royal power and institutions in the IXth century; at worst deliberatly ignoring sources in favour of biased historiography.

(From the one pulling that in first place, I understand you didn't created this notion just for the thread, of course)

and decides to have the Pope crown a male from one of the few remaining Roman aristocratic lines.
The main problem about this, particularily, were that Roman aristocrats were close , maybe a bit too close, to ERE.
One shouldn't confuse pontifical and monastic institutions (that indeed knew a growing temporal power over the Ducatus Romanus), and Roman families.

Eusthatius, the last byzantine duke of Rome before Carolingian takeover (you had other dukes up to the IXth century, but they're growingly mixed with pontifical offices) had enough ties with ERE to be sent as an ambassador on Ravenna.

You can have another exemple of this defiance with the events of the Procession of the Greater Litanies in 799, where Romans or at least powerful factions, attempted to get rid of Leo III.

Or the factions fighting on pontifical institutions, more or less related to religious disputes with Constantinople (as Syrians) but also political.

Charlemange of course retains all the power as king, with the potential HRE acting as a puppet figure head for him to control.

There's the greater problem about legitimacy. Virtually all reference to "Roman" in Carolingian texts, is about the pontiff (or the Romanus populus as in the inhabitants of Rome and their "natural leader" the pope).

The idea of Francia was a Christian dominion, having the dominion over Christians (in the similar idea that Constantinople had such and subsequently lost it, at least on legitimacy grounds) was extremely tied up with the Roman question.
Charlemagne didn't wait for 800 to meddle with religious matters, as can be pointed with the Council of Frankfurt, and renouncing the inter-dependent relationship between the pontiff and the king would have represented a huge problem of legitimacy and royal ideology : don't forget that this relationship began to form since the early VIIIth century at this point and that it coincided with the legitimisation of Peppinid/Carolingian takeover.

Crowining someone else as an Emperor, evenmore so a Roman, would have meant toppling all of the institutional/political/royal edifice built by his predecessors for no really good reasons.

As an aside, I'll add that a good deal of Carolingian justifications of their rise was they had to topple feeble kings that were mere puppets (of course, there's a huge part of what we'd call propaganda there). Just creating a similar situation for no good reason makes really little sense when it comes to contemporary mindset.

So, to be honest, it's quite absurd.

Now, if you look at the IOTL situation : we have a papacy that was an important identitarian and political marker, and that had an important Syrian or Greek presence up to the mid VIIIth century.
Charlemagne and his successors managed to "exploit" a localism that existed in Rome and that favoured Roman popes, to help cut off links between ERE and papacy even more than they were.

You had to wait more than one century to have popes that weren't Roman in origin, acting when it comes to Carolingians, while more than a mere figurehead, as a dependent institution.
A large part of what you describe in your OP did happened, for the papacy.
 
Please, his father Pepin overthrew the Merovingians, a prestigious figurehead dynasty, because they were redundant. Why would Charlemagne set up another, and one with more prestige than him? He already has the Pope.
 
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GdwnsnHo

Banned
The only way (and this is knife-edge barely) I can see that you could reconcile this is to

1) Have Charlemagne have Roman Wife. Ideally a member of the Imperial Family, or someone that can be claimed to descend from a Roman Emperor - particularly the WRE.

2) Name the firstborn son of this union, the heir to the Carolingian Empire, and perhaps give him authority over Italy when he grows up.

3) Demand that the Pope, on Charlemagne's deathbed declare his son Emperor of the Franks and the Western Roman Empire - Holy Roman Emperor - or something of that ilk.

Now, you've got your Romano-Frankish Roman, not merely a figurehead, but the 'rightful' Roman Emperor by the mothers line. 'Charles Augustus Karling'.

If you'll indulge some Westeros-inspired silliness.

"Charles Augustus Karling, Emperor of the Franks and the Romans, Holy Roman Emperor, Heir of Caesars, Son and Heir of Charlemagne, Beloved of God, and Protector of the Realm, and King of Italia."
 
For the purposes of this question, let's say Charlemange was not excited by the prospect of being crowned titular emperor of a dead, non-frankish empire and decides to have the Pope crown a male from one of the few remaining Roman aristocratic lines.

Charlemange of course retains all the power as king, with the potential HRE acting as a puppet figure head for him to control.

How plausible is this, and what are the ramifications if it were to happen this way?

Charlemagne didn't want the Pope to crown anyone. The Pope pulled a fast one did it to try to make it look like the secular power was subordinate to the religious, which Charlemagne was aware of.
Plus everything that LSCatilina said.
 
I am actually really curious what portion of the Roman nobility even still exists outside of Byzantine territory. What even qualifies you as a Roman noble in this era as distinct from Italians? Did that speak Latin?
 
I am actually really curious what portion of the Roman nobility even still exists outside of Byzantine territory. What even qualifies you as a Roman noble in this era as distinct from Italians? Did that speak Latin?

Actually, it seems they were mostly Lombards who lived in and around Rome. The Tusculani and Crescentii (though these were a century after Charlemagne), for example.
 
I am actually really curious what portion of the Roman nobility even still exists outside of Byzantine territory. What even qualifies you as a Roman noble in this era as distinct from Italians? Did that speak Latin?

Quite pragmatically, it doesn't as the Roman* nobility was distinguished by its relations with Byzantine or, later, pontifical institutions.

Even in the latter case, you had a real political mess : while the ducal title still technically existed up to the IXth century (or even Xth century, but it had little connection with the actual Ducatus Romanus), you had dukes in Tuscia (Toto, the brother of Constantine III) or Campania (Gregorius) as well from the old romanus pars since the VIIIth century.

These families can be considered as Roman nobility, as they're tied to the pope. But it gives you an idea about the chaotic situation.

*As in, nobility from the city of Rome or tied with the Ducatus Romanus. You had nobility considering itself Roman in Italy and southern Gaul (as with Provencal patrices) up to the VIIIth century, but it's not really what the OP asked for and this nobility was integrated with Frankish, Gothic or Lombard nobility relatively easily.

Actually, it seems they were mostly Lombards who lived in and around Rome. The Tusculani and Crescentii (though these were a century after Charlemagne), for example.

Roman nobility, even on its extended sense, can't really be traced back to Lombard nobility as it's understood in the VIIIth/IXth centuries.

Assuming the rule over Tusculum didn't knew important changes in the Late Carolingian period, Tusculani can be issued from families of the Ducatus Romanus in its strictest sense (neither Tuscia or Campania). Possibly a lesser branch of a better known familily (and "better known" for the preceding period is quite of a joke).
Familial names hints at a relation with ERE, which is not that credible to just have popped out in the late IXth century, when an earlier connection would make more sense.

The same, while less sure, could be said on Crescenti (essentially because they're less known).
 
Yeah, if you're going to go by onomastic evidence the "Roman Nobility" comes off as very Greek-sounding, though naturally you get progressively more Germanic names in succeeding centuries as the Roman nobility becomes more involved in imperial politics and is augmented/replaced by "new" noble families in the region with Lombard/Frankish/German roots. (Consider that the first recorded Tusculani lord, in the late 9th century, is named Theophylact; the last, in the 12th century, is named Raino/Rainaldus.) I've read claims that various Roman noble families were descended from one or another of the ancient Roman gentes but the actual evidence to support that is 100% nonexistent.

In everything else I can for the most part just echo what LSCatilina has said. Being a "Roman noble" depended primarily on one's connection with the power structure and offices that extended from the Pope. The earliest of these families very likely had their roots in the ERE and/or Rome itself, but Lombard/Frankish/German ancestry was certainly no bar to later families becoming part of the Roman nobility over the course of the 11th and 12th centuries (and even the 10th, as Alberic of Spoleto was for a while the strongman of Rome and married into the Tusculani family, and he was certainly not a "Roman" by birth or descent).
 
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Well he did almost have a Roman Empress. That being Irene.

I'm not sure why this story managed to get taken that seriously, to be honest.

St. Theophanes is the only one mentioning it, among a whole lot of chronicles (both Latin and Greek) and it must be understood as a part of anti-Studite narrative (these being eventually issued from Irene's monastic patronage).

It makes little sense both from a Byzantine or Frankish perspective.
 

Spengler

Banned
I'm not sure why this story managed to get taken that seriously, to be honest.

St. Theophanes is the only one mentioning it, among a whole lot of chronicles (both Latin and Greek) and it must be understood as a part of anti-Studite narrative (these being eventually issued from Irene's monastic patronage).

It makes little sense both from a Byzantine or Frankish perspective.
Oh I know, but then its about as serious as Charlemange refusing the title of Emperor.
 
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