AHC: Carolingian Empire Endures (2023 ed)

[Nuraghe]

while I was doing some research on my own, on the exarchate of Ravenna, I came to find an interesting detail, namely that during the reign of the iconoclastic Emperor Leo III ( 717-41 ) Italy reached such a critical point that there there were many who thought of offering the imperial crown to other political actors, possibly local, it was only the intervention of the pope that avoided a total political division with Constantinople due to the serious threat represented by King Luitpdrando for Ravenna itself ( which he occupied twice before its definitive conquest ) and obviously Rome, so at a later stage there was also an attempt to involve the Franks in the issue, even going so far as to suggest to Charles Martel a possible marriage between one of his sons and a daughter of the exarch in office at the time ( some historians lean towards Eutychius, but I am not so convinced of this ), therefore it is not impossible to think that some pontiff might think of recognizing a previous Frankish king as Roman emperor, especially if a policy hostile to Rome and uncaring of the Italian situation continues in Constantinople, remembering that Otl Pepin the short and the future Charlemagne were recognized as Roman patricians by the Pope and the people of the city in 755, is that the question of the imperial title circulated within the Caroline court from the actual conquest of Pavia in 774 ( I know very well that it is long before the Pod but I thought it would be interesting to add it to the discussion )

Always to expand this trend, I remembered that the first attempt at imperial coronation in Rome with Papal approval occurred with the Exarch Eleutherius who in 619, on the advice of the archbishop of Ravenna, tried to proclaim himself Emperor of the West and for to further legitimize his new position, he wanted to be acclaimed by the Roman population and by the Pope in the Capitol Hill as official recognition ( but during the journey towards the Urbe he was intercepted and killed in battle ) without forgetting that in the years following the death of Teia in the battle of Monti Lattari in 553, the Gothic resistance in Po Valley, had promised the King of the Franks in case of success, that he could also become sovereign of the Goths, as well as confirming his control over the Friulian region, so the birth of the imperial ambitions of the Franks can easily be traced back to this period