January 13, AD 888

Charles the Fat

Charles the Fat dies at Neidingen

He died not as a reigning emperor but as a deposed one, only weeks after his nephew Arnulf drove him from power.

13 January 888, at Neidingen

Charles III — Charles the Fat — died at Neidingen on 13 January 888, aged about 48.

He had been deposed in November 887 by his nephew Arnulf of Carinthia, so he was no longer the effective ruler of the reunited Frankish realms when he died. He was buried at the Abbey of Reichenau, not at the estate where he died.

Nobody knows what killed him

Charles had suffered recurrent illnesses in his later years, but the fatal diagnosis is unknown.

Modern scholarship cautions that the familiar claims — epilepsy, a surgical trepanation — depend on doubtful retrospective interpretations of terse annalistic language; the reported operation may instead have been bloodletting for a headache.

The successors came later, not that night

His death left no single accepted successor to all his former territories, and regional kingships consolidated across the following months.

West Francia did not have a new crowned king that day. Odo of Paris was first crowned at Compiègne on 29 February 888 by Walter, archbishop of Sens.

Odo needed a second coronation on 13 November before the kingdom's leading nobles acclaimed him, and the Carolingian challenge from Charles the Simple developed later still — he was crowned in 893.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 2 audit passes

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What the sources leave uncertain

The 13 January date and Neidingen location are well supported.
The place-name also appears as Neudingen in modern usage.
The nature of Charles’s illness is disputed. Sources attest serious illness, but epilepsy cannot be securely diagnosed and the alleged trepanation may instead have been bloodletting for a headache.
The political fragmentation was a process spanning the deposition of November 887 and the elections and coronations of 888—not a single action performed at the moment of death.