CHARLEMAGNE (c. 748–814)
King of the Franks and the Lombards, Emperor of the Romans
[2 versions, Alpha and Maxis Match]
*TRAY FILES & CC AFTER THE JUMP*
The most familiar portraits of Charlemagne depict him as an old man with a flowing mane of gray hair and a huge beard, but these all date from centuries after he lived and represent a later idealized version of him with little basis in reality. For my Sim-lemagne, I wanted to reflect the reality of his time, when most portraits of European rulers depicted them with neat bowl cuts, and while they sometimes had facial hair, it was usually short and neat.
I also wanted to use the fact that he’s one of the first rulers we have a contemporary physical description of. He was over 6 feet, hugely tall at a time when the average man was 5′7″ (get out your height sliders, ladies), and his biographers commented on his impressive size and slightly protruding belly, though examinations of his skeleton suggest he was fairly slender. We also know he was fair, typical for the Franks, the Germanic tribe he descended from.
As for his clothes, he preferred to dress in a way much simpler than his wealth and power might have allowed. He almost always wore a blue cloak and a sword, which I did my best with in his everyday outfit. His contemporary biographer, Einhard, said he always dressed in the traditional Frankish way and despised foreign clothes, though he allowed himself to dress in the Roman fashion twice when he was visiting there out of respect. He was also crowned Roman Emperor by the Pope in 800, so between those two things, for his formal outfit I decided to let the realism go a little bit and make him look like a kind of medieval take on a traditional Roman Emperor (which, hey, he pretty much was).
Dude had a huge family, complete with multiple wives and concubines and over a dozen children, so I’ll probably be working on those folks soon so you can give this poor guy a household.
And sorry for all the clipping issues. It was a flowy time.
TRAY FILES
