This week we’re finally looking at the do-nothing kings, les rois fainéants, as exactly that: kings who sat the throne, and besides the title and crown, had very little to say in the actual administration of the land over which they nominally ruled.

Knife's Edge (S2: E14)

Welcome to Thugs and Miracles, the podcast where we’re looking back at history through the eyes of the kings and queens of France – from the fall of the Roman Empire to the fall of the guillotine.To tell our story, T+M uses the royals as a unifying thread, but we don’t look at just the kings; we try to understand what life was like for the people living under them. How must it have felt to live and die, all within a 10-mile radius of where you were born? For women, how must it have felt to live in a system which, under the Salic law, prohibited them from owning land? How exactly was life in the Middle Ages, this so-called “dark age”? More than answering questions, we tell the stories of the people who made history. We tell you the story of the beautiful Frankish queen who had an affair with a god. We explore Clovis and his conversion within the deepest lines of battle, and we explore his wife, Clotilde, and why she pushed so hard to change his religion – even risking her own life in the...

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Knife's Edge (S2: E14)

Knife's Edge (S2: E14)