The Kingdom of the Franks, also known as the Frankish Kingdom, the Frankish Empire or Francia, was the largest post-Roman barbarian kingdom in Western Europe. It was ruled by the Frankish Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties during the Early Middle Ages. Francia was among the last surviving Germanic kingdoms from the Migration Period era.
The partition of the Frankish kingdom among the four sons of Clovis with Clotilde presiding, Grandes Chroniques de Saint-Denis (Bibliothèque municipale de Toulouse)
The political divisions of Gaul at the inception of Clovis's career (481). Note that only the Burgundian kingdom and the province of Septimania remained unconquered at his death (511).
The division of the Frankish kingdom on Clovis's death (511). The kingdoms were not geographic unities because they were formed in an attempt to create equal-sized fiscs. The discrepancy in size reveals the concentration of Roman fiscal lands.
The division of Gaul on Chlothar I's death (561). Though more geographically unified realms were created out of the second fourfold division, the complex division of Provence created many problems for the rulers of Burgundy and Austrasia.
The barbarian kingdoms, also known as the post-Roman kingdoms, the western kingdoms, or the early medieval kingdoms, were the states founded by various non-Roman, primarily Germanic, peoples in Western Europe and North Africa following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century. The formation of the barbarian kingdoms was a complicated, gradual and largely unintentional process, as the Roman state failed to handle barbarian migrants on the imperial borders, leading to both invasions and invitations into imperial territory, but simultaneously denied barbarians the ability to properly integrate into the imperial framework. The influence of barbarian rulers, at first local warlords and client kings without firm connections to any territories, increased as Roman emperors and usurpers used them as pawns in civil wars. It was only after the collapse of effective Western Roman central authority that the barbarian realms transitioned into proper territorial kingdoms.
20th-century painting of Alaric I, leader of the Visigoths 395–410, entering Athens after capturing the city in 395
Coin of Desiderius, king of Italy 756–774, with the inscription DN DESIDER REX (dominus noster Desiderius rex)