It tires me to relate all the troubles that befell the peoples and kingdom of the Angles, Saxons, Britons, Picts and Scots. If I had a thousand mouths with a thousand tongues I could not relate all their tribulations. So it is high time I told you how matters stood in the kingdom of the Franks, where, to be Frank (see what I did there?) things were only slightly less depressing.

For many years the Franks had been ruled by Jacsirax, a Gaul who was not much loved by the people but generally thought wiser and better than his enemy, Marina ‘the Pain’. This Marina had deposed her father, who was just called Gendarmerie and was very unpopular except with rascals and bandits. Consulting her advisers, she had adopted a cunning plan to fool the Franks. Marina started to wear trousers made from a Genoese cloth called ‘denim’ and by this clever ruse she fooled the Franks into thinking that her beliefs were entirely different from her father’s.

After Jacsirax, however, the Franks chose a Hun called Sarko to be their ruler but after the space of one lustrum[1] they drove him out again. In his place they elected Franciscus Hollandensis but he proved to be even less popular than Sarko the Hun and after a single lustrum he too was expelled and all his faction with him. Now there was a bitter struggle for power between Marina and one of Franciscus’ former counts, a young Gallo-Roman called Macronius. Many Franks did not care for either but the wiser among them knew anyone was better than Marina. Thus it was that Macronius became the ruler of the Franks and Marina skulked back to her castle and plotted with the Tsar of the Rus, Vladimir son of Vladimir about how to overthrow Macronius.

This Vladimir was very wise and sly. He hated the Western Empire and had great influence over Donald the Jester and Nigellus the Fool as well as Marina. Indeed, he spent vast treasures to support them and any other vainglorious scoundrel that he thought he could get to do his bidding and cause trouble.

As it happened, though, the Franks are an unruly and tumultuous people and rarely stay pleased with their rulers for long. After a year or so had passed Macronius became very unpopular and there was great unrest. Eventually he was faced with an uprising called the Rebellion of the Saffron Tunics. No one knew what the Saffron Tunics wanted but there was, I am sorry to say, much fighting in the civitas of the Parisi. After that Marina became more powerful again. Thus were matters among the Franks.

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[1] A spell of 5 years – Ed.