descent from Charlemagne even though it had been his own forebears who had seized the throne from Charlemagne's descendants. The strength of his memory and legend made him the natural originator of lordship, the best legitimization. If the links were tenuous that was all the more reason to stress them, and where they did not exist that was all the greater reason to invent them.
The first family tree to come down to us from any of the great noble families is that of the counts of Flanders, compiled about 950. It does not much stress their male ancestry; rather the whole emphasis is placed upon the (actual) marriage of an ancestor to the daughter of Charles the Bald. Such marriages were the landmarks of a family's arrival, but they were also a recognition of the status and power which it had already gained, of close ties and loyal service to a king's predecessors. To remember them and celebrate them in a family tree was discreetly to remind kings that their own greatness had come from the valour, loyalty, and skill of those who served them, and so not to grudge what had been given for their service.
Great men justified their own status and identified themselves in other ways as well. They named their children to remind themselves and others of their own descent and kin, often taking a name from a bride's family if it had particularly illustrious connotations. The bonds of kinship could stretch very wide. In 1148 a member of a relatively minor Roman family boasted of his kinship to King Stephen of England by virtue of the king's Lombard grandmother. Such ties could also nurture strong bonds within the kin. On one occasion the same Stephen was on the point of taking a castle and wished to execute its garrison. Kinsmen of those inside implored his clemency, and in recognition of their service he had to grant it. Kinship could also be a handicap, however. In Flanders it became the custom that both parents must be of noble origin if a child were to be regarded as noble. Marriage into a family of servile origin, however great it might have become, could lose a man his own nobility.
Nobility could mean different things at different times. In essence it referred not to a man's valour or his power or his
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