Research Notes:

The Liber Historiæ Francorum records that "Chlotharius…rex" had seven children by "Ingunde", the same six as are named in Gregory of Tours with a marginal note adding "Blitchildim" as the seventh child and specifying that she married "Ansbertus nobilissimus" and by him was mother of "Arnoldum". An alternative origin for Bilichildis is provided by the Chronico Marcianensi de Sancta Rictrude which names “Dagobertum Regem et Blithildem sororem eius” as children of “Lotharius…[et] Beretrudam” (chronologically impossible if she was the grandmother of Arnoul Bishop of Metz), but commenting that “others say” that Bilichildis was the daughter of “primi Lotharii avi istius”, adding that Bilichildis married “Ansberto Duci nobili in Germania”. The Carmen de Exordio Gentis Francorum names "Hlotharius [rex]…filia…Blithild" and records her marriage to "Ansbertus". The recorded names of the alleged children of Bilichildis do not have a Merovingian ring about them. It is uncertain whether Bilichildis existed at all or whether she and her family were invented for the purposes of compiling a Merovingian descent for the Carolingian dynasty, an enterprise undertaken in Metz from the late 8th century onwards. Her absence from the list of the children of King Clotaire given by Gregory of Tours certainly suggests that she was a spurious later invention, although Gregory's treatment of the families of the early Merovingians was not exhaustive... Settipani demonstrates convincingly that there are sufficient indications in other primary sources that parts, if not all, these reconstructions may be based on historical fact. Sifting the fact from the fiction is inevitably speculative. ¹