David I, King of Scotland

Reigned from 1124 to 1153, continued the "bloodless Norman conquest" and the new "Anglo-Norman aristocracy. First king to issue silver coins.

King David I (or Dabíd mac Maíl Choluim; also known as Saint David I or David I "the Saint") (1084 – May 24, 1153), was King of Scotland from 1124 until his death, and the youngest son of Malcolm Canmore and of Saint Margaret (sister of Edgar Ætheling). He married Matilda, daughter and heiress of Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria, in 1113 and thus gained possession of the earldom of Huntingdon.

On the death of King Edgar in 1107, the territories of the Scottish crown were divided in accordance with the terms of his will between his two brothers, Alexander and David. Alexander, together with the crown, received Scotland north of the Rivers Forth and Clyde, David the southern district with the title of Earl of Cumberland. The death of Alexander in 1124 gave David possession of the whole starting on 27 April of that year.

In 1127, in the character of an English baron, he swore fealty to Matilda as heiress to her father Henry I, and when the usurper Stephen ousted her in 1135 David vindicated her cause in arms and invaded the Kingdom of England. But Stephen marched north with a great army, whereupon David made peace. The peace, however, was not kept. After threatening an invasion in 1137, David marched into England in 1138, but sustained a minor defeat on Cutton Moor in the engagement known as the Battle of the Standard.

He returned to Carlisle, and soon afterwards concluded peace. In 1141 he joined Matilda in London and accompanied her to Winchester, but after a narrow escape from capture he returned to Scotland. Henceforth he remained in his own kingdom and devoted himself to its political and ecclesiastical reorganisation. A devoted son of the church, he founded five bishoprics and many monasteries. In secular politics he energetically forwarded the process of feudalisation and anglicisation which his immediate predecessors had initiated. He died at Carlisle. David I is recognised by the Roman Catholic Church as a Saint, although he was never formally canonized.

He had two sons, Malcolm (not to be confused with Malcolm IV of Scotland, this Malcolm's nephew) and Henry and two daughters, Claricia and Hodierna.

More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_I_of_Scotland

Agni ruled the Swedes after his father, a very powerful and celebrated man. Agni went to Finland, victorious over their king Frosti and took his daughter, Skjalf Frostasdottir. That evening, at their first stop in a woods by a river, he married her, but in his drunken stupor, she managed to use the gold amulet he wore, belonging to Visbur, his great, great, great grandfather and hung him, hence returning with her men to Finland. Agni was buried on the spot called Agnefet; on the east side of the Tauren, and west of Stoksund.
Heimskringla, Ynglinga Saga, Section 22

Agne or Agni Skjafarbonde was a mythological king of Sweden, of the House of Yngling.

Snorri Sturluson relates that he was the son of Dag the Wise, and he was mighty and famous. He was also skilled in many ways.

One summer, he went to Finland with his army where he pillaged. The Finns gathered a vast host under a chief named Frosti (the Jotun Frosti who was the father of Snær the Old, and consequently Agne's great-great-great-great-grandfather).

A great battle ensued which Agne won and many Finns were killed together with Frosti. Agne then subdued all of Finland with his army, and captured not only great booty but also Frosti's daughter Skjalf and her kinsman Logi (in the older Ynglingatal only her kinsman, but in Heimskringla he was her brother, which seems to be a mistake by Snorri Sturluson).

Agne returned to Sweden and they arrived at Stocksund (Stockholm) where they put up their tent on the side of the river where it is flat. Agne had a torc which had belonged to Agne's great-great-great-grandfather Visbur (who, interestingly, was the son of Skjalf's niece Drífa). Although, they were related, Agne married Skjalf who became pregnant with two sons, Erik and Alrik.

Skjalf asked Agne to honour her dead father Frosti with a great feast, which he granted. He invited a great many guests, who gladly arrived to the now even more famous Swedish king. They had a drinking competition in which Agne became very drunk. Skjalf saw her opportunity and asked Agne to take care of Visbur's torc which was around his neck. Agne bound it fast around his neck before he went to sleep.

The king's tent was next to the woods and was under the branches of a tall tree for shade. When Agne was fast asleep, Skjalf took a rope which she attached to the torc. Then she had her men remove the tent, and she threw the rope over a bough. Then she told her men to pull the rope and they hanged Agne avenging Skjalf's father. Skjalf and her men ran to the ships and escaped to Finland, leaving her sons behind.

Agne was buried at the place and it is presently called Agnafit, which is east of the Tauren (the Old Norse name for Södertörn) and west of Stocksund, i.e. in what is still to this day called Agnehögen (Agne's mound) in Lillhersby.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agne

Her father, Dag, was a famous king from the Dagling family
Heimskringla, Ynglinga Saga, Section 24

Dubrawka of Bohemia (Czech, Doubravka; Polish, Dobrawa or Dabrówka; born circa 925/931, died 977) was the daughter of Duke Boleslav I of Bohemia and of Adiva of England, daughter of King Edward the Elder of England.

Dubrawka was first married to Günther von Merseburg. They had a son named Ekkehard I. Margrave Ekkehard I of Meissen, Duke of Thuringia, married Suanehild Billung and their son, Margrave Hermann of Meissen, married Regelinda (or Reginlindis), a daughter of Boleslaus (or Boleslaw I Chrobry).

After Günther von Merseburg's death, his widow Dubrawka married Mieszko I in 965.

FATHER: Boleslaus I the Cruel

SIBLINGS: Boleslaus II the Pious, Mlada (Maria) and Strakhkvas (Christian).

HUSBAND: Mieszko I

CHILDREN: Boleslaus I of Poland, Vladivoj and Swietoslawa.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubrawka"

Dagobert I (c.603–January 19, 639) was the king of Austrasia (623–634), king of all the Franks (629–634), and king of Neustria and Burgundy (629–639). He was the last Merovingian dynast to wield any real royal power. Dagobert was the eldest son of Clotaire II and Berthetrude, or possibly Haldetrude. Clotaire II had reigned alone over all the Franks since 613, and Dagobert became the king of Austrasia when her independent nobles demanded a king of their own. In 623, Clotaire installed his son Dagobert in Austrasia.

On the death of his father in 629, Dagobert inherited the Neustrian and Burgundian kingdoms. His half-brother Charibert, son of Sichilde, claimed Neustria but Dagobert opposed him. Brodulf, the brother of Sichilde, petitioned Dagobert on behalf of his young nephew, but Dagobert assassinated him and gave his younger sibling Aquitaine.

Charibert died in 632 and his son Chilperic was assassinated on Dagobert's orders. By 632, Dagobert had Burgundy and Aquitaine firmly under his rule, becoming the most powerful Merovingian king in many years and the most respected ruler in the West.

Also in 632, the nobles of Austrasia revolted under the mayor of the palace, Pepin of Landen. In 634, Dagobert appeased the rebellious nobles by putting his three-year-old son, Sigebert III, on the throne, thereby ceding royal power in the easternmost of his realms, just as his father had done for him eleven years earlier.

As king, Dagobert made Paris his capital. During his reign, he built the Altes Schloss in Meersburg (in modern Germany), which today is the oldest inhabited castle in that country. Devoutly religious, Dagobert was also responsible for the construction of the Saint Denis Basilica at the site of a Benedictine monastery in Paris.

In 631, Dagobert led three armies against Samo, the Slavic king, but his Austrasian forces were defeated at Wogastisburg.

Dagobert died in 639 and was the first of French kings to be buried in the royal tombs at Saint Denis. His second son, Clovis II, from his marriage to Nanthild, inherited the rest of his kingdom at a young age.

The pattern of division and assassination which characterise even the strong king Dagobert's reign continued for the next century until Pepin the Short finally deposed the last Merovingian king in 751, establishing the Carolingian dynasty. The Merovingian boy-kings remained ineffective rulers who inherited the throne as young children and lived only long enough to produce a male heir or two, while real power lay in the hands of the noble families (the Old Noblesse) who exercised feudal control over most of the land.

Dagobert was immortalized in the song Le bon roi Dagobert (The Good King Dagobert), a nursery rhyme featuring exchanges between the king and his chief adviser, Saint Eligius (Eloi in French). The satirical rhymes place Dagobert in various ridiculous positions from which Eligius' good advice manages to extract him. The text, which probably originated in the 18th century, became extremely popular as an expression of the anti-monarchist sentiment of the French Revolution. Other than placing Dagobert and Eligius in their respective roles, it has no historical accuracy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagobert_I

When King Sigebert III died in 656, Grimoald the Elder had Sigebert's son Dagobert II shorn of hair and packed off to an Irish monastery and then proclaimed his own son, Childebert the Adopted (or Adoptivus), king of Austrasia

Dagobert II (c.650 – December 23, 679) was the king of Austrasia (676 – 679), the son of Sigebert III, one of the rois-fainéants ("do-nothing kings") and the last Merovingian dynasty to rule independently in Austrasia, with the exception of Charles Martel's dubious candidate Clotaire IV.

The Arnulfing mayor of the Austrasian palace, Grimoald the Elder, the son of Pippin of Landen, and Dagobert's guardian, had had his son Childebert adopted by Sigebert, who was at the time still childless. When Sigebert died in 656, Grimoald seized the throne for his own son and had Dagobert tonsured. The tale that Dagobert was ordered to be killed, that his death was published about, but that he was spirited out of the country seems to be an embellishment, perhaps developed to explain the silence of Dagobert's mother Chimnechild. She may have cooperated with Grimoald to set up Childebert the Adopted; later she hoped by marrying her daughter Bilichild to Childeric II to keep the eventual Austrasian heir in her bloodline. [1] It has also been hypothesised that Chimnechild was not Dagobert's mother, thus her reason for abandoning him.

Dagobert was given to the care of Desiderius, Bishop of Poitiers, where there was a cathedral school. The boy was sent on to a monastery in Ireland, sometimes identified as Slane, and to be further polished as a page at an Anglo-Saxon court in England. An old tradition relates that he had married Mechthilde, an Anglo-Saxon princess, during his exile, but the tradition that among his daughters was Saint Hermine, abbess of Oëren, and Saint Adula, abbess of Pfalzel, are fabrications, perhaps designed to link the saintly foundresses of these abbeys with the revered Merovingian line.

In the meantime the great nobles of Austrasia appealed to Clovis II, king of Neustria, who expelled the usurpers, executing Grimoald and Childebert, and added Austrasia to his own realm. The dating of these events is greatly confused, they occurred perhaps as soon after 656 as 657 or perhaps as late as 661, under Clotaire III, Clovis' son. The effective ruler however was the Neustrian major domo Ebroin, who was obliged in soon thereafter (in 660 or 662) to give the Austrasian realm a king of its own once more: the choice was the child king Childeric II, brother of Clotaire III, with a mayor of the palace, Wulfoald, as regent. The young king was assassinated on a hunt near Maastricht in 675, and in the chaotic power struggle that ensued, the Austrasian magnates, who wanted a king of Merovingian blood, pressed Wulfoald for the return of Dagobert, while opponents of Wulfoald acclaimed one Clovis III, possibly an impostor. Ebroin returned from a monastic "retirement" to lead Clovis' partisans, but Wulfoald effected Dagobert's succession in 676, partly through the help of Wilfrid, Archbishop of York, on Clovis' untimely death. In spite of the continuing bitter enmity of Ebroin and the party who had attempted to press Clovis as an alternate candidate, Dagobert was restored to a portion of his rightful lands, a territory along the Rhine, which pious tradition relates that he governed with the mildness and piety his childhood experience had taught him, but which history suggests he left largely to the mayor of the Austrasian palace, while he concerned himself more with the founding of cloisters and abbeys, including Surburg and Wissembourg in Alsace, where the Duke was his cousin. Nonetheless, he was undoubtedly an intelligent, educated man, an adult at the time of his succession, who could not be completely controlled by factions and mayors.

The dynamics of Dagobert's career are largely a passive reflection of the competition between two sources of power, patronage and prestige, the palace institutions of Neustria on the one hand, and on the other, of Austrasia, firmly in the control of the Arnulfing dynasty that would become the Carolingians in the following century. In the chaos, the search for a consistent, rational pattern is hard to follow in the shifting loyalties.

During revived conflict between Neustria and Austrasia, Dagobert in his turn was murdered in another hunting incident, December 23, 679, near Stenay-sur-Meuse in the Ardennes, probably on orders from Ebroin, still mayor of the palace in Neustria. Wilfrid must have remained in Austrasia until this time, because, according to his biographer, Wilfrid left Austrasia after the death of Dagobert, in mortal danger from the supporters of Ebroin. At the cloister of Stenay afterwards there grew a cult of Dagobert, venerated as early as 1068 as "Saint Dagobert". The cult spread from there into Lotharingia and Alsace, and Saint Dagobert is recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, like his father and many royal Merovingians.

After Dagobert's brief reign, leaving his lands without a male heir, the lords of the Rhineland divided the territory among themselves, while Pippin II, Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia (679 – 714) dominated Austrasia, and left the throne empty until after the battle of Tertry (687), when he accepted Theuderic III.