Robert II, Count of Hesbaye
Robert II (Rodbert, Chrodobert) (died 12 July 807) was a Frankish nobleman who was count of Worms and of Rheingau and Count of Hesbaye around the year 800. He is the earliest-known male-line ancestor of the French royal family called the Capetians (including the Valois and the Bourbons), and of other royal families which ruled in Portugal, Spain, Luxembourg, Parma, Brazil and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
Descendants
Robert of Hesbaye is the earliest ancestor of the dynasty known as the Robertians who is identified with some confidence. His son was Robert III of Worms, and his grandson was Robert the Strong. He was the great-grandfather of two Frankish kings, Odo and Robert, both of whom ruled the kingdom of Western Francia.
One of Robert of Hesbaye's male-line descendants was Hugh Capet, the founder of the French royal dynasty which ruled France until 1848, although with a brief interregnum caused by the French Revolution and the First French Empire. A junior line has held the Spanish Crown since 1700; the current monarch Felipe VI and his family are direct descendants. Various cadet branches of the Capetian dynasty have ruled other countries, including Navarre, Italian states prior to unification, and others.
Possible ancestry
Robert was probably the son of Thuringbert of Worms and Rheingau, and thus a grandson of Robert I, Duke of Neustria (c. 697–748). An alternate theory has him as the son of Robert, son of Thuringbert.
It is also possible that Ingerman of Hesbaye and Cancor were the brothers of Robert of Hesbaye, and Landrada, mother of Saint Chrodegang, archbishop of Metz, is likely to have been his sister. Ermengarde, the wife of emperor Louis the Pious, was probably his niece.
Sources
- Bouchard, Constance Brittain (2015). Rewriting Saints and Ancestors: Memory and Forgetting in France, 500-1200. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 9780812290080.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
- Settipani, Christian, Les Ancêtres de Charlemagne, 2e édition revue et corrigée, éd. P & G, Prosopographia et Genealogica, 2015
- Settipani, Christian. Addenda aux "Ancêtres de Charlemagne, 1990
- Riché, Pierre, The Carolingians: a family who forged Europe