This week we’re getting ready for the big event, the royal rumble, the epic battle for the ages that would, one way or another, seal the fate of Europe as either a Christian or Muslim land…

Okay, okay, I’m getting a little carried away with the UFC/WWE fight build-up, but given the way that some commentators talk about the Battle of Poitiers/Tours, well, it’s easy to get spun up. And this hype gets a touch of official recognition: if you remember back to the first episode of this podcast, we discussed the Gallery of Battles in Versailles and all of the paintings in that hall that depict the military glories of France up until the Age of Napoleon. Well, the painting of the Battle of Poitiers is, on the historical timeline, the second painting that we will be getting to, the first having been Clovis and his outstretched arm at the Battle of Tolbiac (also known as this show’s cover art!). This means that out of all of the other battles we have discussed up until this point, a period covering about 240 years since Tolbiac, this is the first battle that is deemed important enough to have made it to the Gallerie.

Here's the craziest thing about this battle, IMO, and we'll be discussing it quite a bit in today's build-up episode to Poitiers: there's an argument to be made that the savior of Francia was not Charles Martel, but Odo of Aquitaine! Odo had already defeated the Umayyads once, in 721, when they marched on Toulouse. He landed a crippling blow, killing and wounded thousands of Umayyad fighters and killing their commander at that time. Later, in 732, it was Odo who faced the reconstituted Umayyad forces at Bordeaux, and it was Odo who called in Charles Martel for back-up. Odo even made one of the key flanking maneuvers in the actual 732 battle (more on that next week!). With all of this said, Charles wouldn't have had time to build his armies if Odo hadn't given him the space to do so. Charles may not have known the Umayyads were headed his way if not warned by Odo, and they may have had much larger numbers and a better base of operations if Odo hadn't beat them in 721. But does anyone recall Odo today? Not many.

Let's fix that!

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Final note for the day: I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about another project we’re working on here at T+M. In a few weeks, in the mid to late part of July, Amazon plans to roll out a new feature for Kindle called Vella. Vella is a platform for serialized fiction, stories told episode by episode, and we’ve decided to publish one of the projects we’re working on to this new platform, to be one of the first published when it goes live. What’s cool about this is that we’ve been working on a story based around Fredegunda and Brunhilda pretty much since we first talked about them here on this podcast. Their story is dark, thrilling, and audacious, and is absolutely perfect to be broken out in more scope and detail. And Vella seems the perfect place to do this, as telling serialized stories over time is kinda what we’ve been doing for the better part of the past two years! 

With all of that said, be on the lookout for Kindle Vella, and when it goes live, look for our story on there. The title is Queens of Blood, and we’ll be sure to let you know if there and any changes and the Vella launch date here and on the socials. Anyway, if you’ve ever wanted to help the show and you’ve already rated us and left a review, well, here’s another way! We hope you'll check it out and enjoy!

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Listenable: History of the Merovingians, 451-613