Better dead than shorn. The killing of Chlodomer’s sons and the character of Queen Clotilde

This article studies the portrayal of the character of Clotilde in Gregory of Tours’s Decem libri historiarum with particular attention paid to the killing of Chlodomer’s sons (3.18). It argues that this, along with other episodes attested in Fredegar, is a contaminations from a tradition in which Clotilde was portrayed as a virago in contrast to the quasi-hagiographical Tours tradition on which Gregory in the main depended. This creates an internal tension in her character that later authors, both scholarly and belletristic, have either attempted to minimize or to bring into the foreground in their own narratives.