Charlemagne was a Woman? New Painting Confirms what Historians Have Long Suspected.

Charlemagne is a name ripe with dignity and admiration and it simply rings of masculinity and alpha-male leadership; there's just one problem - he's a she.  A medieval painting from the Spanish archives (only opened in 1975 at Franco's death and still not completely explored) shows us, finally, a contemporary painting of Charles the Great that answers our questions once and for all.  I've got a link to the painting and the relevant article at the end of this post.

We medieval historians have long scratched our heads over certain passages in Charlemagne's history.  Why, for example, did Charlemagne spend so much time with his daughters rather than his sons (as we learn from his personal historian, Einhard)?  And why does Notker the Stammerrer (in a volume sometimes attributed to "The Monk of Gaul") tell us that Charlemagne's visitors were shocked to see him wearing men's hunting clothing when he rode instead of the fancier clothing they had expected him to wear?  Was his hunchbacked son imprisoned because he knew the truth?  (The details of that imprisonment have been hidden from us.)

There's more.  A famous poem in the middle ages ('Floris and Blancheflour') is a romance that comes to us in many different versions.  In one particularly interesting one, the hero is a man who looks like a woman.  While pursuing the woman he loves, he hides out in an Emir's harem and is able to pass for a woman, and when he lays down with his girl they are mistaken for a pair of ladies by everyone in the company.  We are later told that this man is Charlemagne's grandfather (on his mother's side).  Did the poet know a secret about Charlemagne that could only be told to us in code?

It's been long suspected that this is so, but I've already said too much and the painting will speak for itself.  Click to go to  the painting.