Duel of queens. A true story from the Visigothic era that makes the House of ...

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It all started with Gosvinta , twice queen of Hispania. Her story begins with the uprising of her husband, Atanagild, against King Agila I. In 552 Gosvinta and Atanagild called the Byzantine troops to their aid and with her help they eliminated Agila and took over the Visigothic throne Gosvinta and Atanagildo soon wove a solid network of alliances to sustain their power and in those alliances, their daughters, the young princesses Galsvinta and Brunequilda, were another element. In 566 they married the youngest of them, Brunequilda, to Sigebert of Austrasia and the following year, they married the eldest, Galsvinta, to Chilperic of Neustria, Sigebert's brother. Two sister princesses for two brother kings . It seemed like a fairy tale.

But it was not a story, but a nightmare: Chilperico was a brutal and libertine man. “He possessed many women,” contemporary Gregory of Tours tells us, but he swore to get rid of them all and honor BTC Users Number Data only Galsvinta. He did not keep his word and humiliated Galsvinta again and again by showing himself before the entire court with her favorite lover , Fredegunda . Galsvinta, vexed, expressed her intention to leave the court and return to Hispania, but with this she sealed her death : that same night Chilperico and Fredegunda sent her an assassin who, getting into the Hispanic princess's bed, drowned her by slowly squeezing her neck. with the hands.



That murder was the beginning of a ruthless “private war” that shook the kingdoms of the earth for almost fifty years. In the center of that gale of conspiracies, wars and murders, were Gosvinta, queen of Hispania and mother of the murdered woman, and Brunequilda , queen of Austrasia and sister of the unfortunate Galsvinta, since both swore to kill Chilperico and Fredegunda.

Just one year before the assassination of Galsvinta, in 567, his father, Atanagild, died in Hispania, and the Goths , fearful of becoming entangled in new civil wars that would further weaken them against their enemies, elected a new king: Liuva I. Liuva was well aware that the widowed queen, Gosvinta, was not a woman who could be cornered and that is why he agreed with her on a compromise solution : he, Liuva, would reign in Gaul Narbonensis, the southern region of Gaul that they still controlled. the Goths, while Leovigildo , his brother, would marry Gosvinta and.