Charles the Simple

Born several months after his father's death, Charles III, known as the Simple — in the sense of straightforward rather than foolish — was the posthumous son of Louis the Stammerer and his second wife Adelaide of Paris. Twice passed over as a child, first in favor of Charles the Fat and then of the Robertian Odo of Paris, he was crowned by Odo's opponents at Reims in 893 and became undisputed king of West Francia only after Odo's death in 898.

The year 911 brought the two defining acts of his reign. By the agreement of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte he granted the Viking leader Rollo lands around the lower Seine in return for baptism and the defense of the river against other raiders, a settlement from which the duchy of Normandy developed. In the same year the death of Louis the Child, the last East Frankish Carolingian, led the nobles of Lotharingia to attach themselves to Charles rather than to the newly elected Conrad I, restoring the Carolingian heartland around Aachen to his rule. His attachment to Lotharingia, and his promotion of the Lotharingian favorite Hagano, fed resentment among the West Frankish magnates.

Charles married first Frederuna, who died in 917, and then Eadgifu, a daughter of King Edward the Elder of Wessex, linking the Carolingians to the West Saxon royal house; their son was the future Louis IV. In 922 the magnates rose against him and crowned Robert I, brother of the late King Odo. At the battle of Soissons in 923 Robert was killed, but Charles's forces were defeated, and he was lured into captivity by Herbert II, count of Vermandois, while the crown passed to Rudolph of Burgundy.

He spent most of his remaining years a prisoner, used intermittently by Herbert as a bargaining counter, and died at Péronne in 929. Eadgifu had escaped to England with their young son, whose upbringing at the Wessex court would later earn him the byname d'Outremer. Despite the ignominy of his end, Charles's Norman settlement and his brief recovery of Lotharingia were among the most consequential acts of any late Carolingian king.