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please god before i ever get on a plane to SF, let this happen to me first to spare me the embarrassment "Le Meurtre de la reine Galswinthe (The Death of Galswintha) 1846 by Eugène Philastre. Oil on canvas, 194 cm × 244 cm. Above is an illustration of a 6th-century crime that would cause decades of family feuding and civil war. Sleeping in the bed was Galswintha, daughter of King Athanagild of the Visigoths (r. 551-567). She married the Frankish Merovingian Dynasty's King Chilperic of Soissons in 566 or 567. The marriage of these newlyweds didn't quite have a happy ending evident by the depiction. By the time Galswintha arrived in Chilperic's court, the king was already smitten with his life-long partner, Fredegund. The Visigoth princess' bitter existence in France was amplified by bad news from Spain - her father who died very soon after the wedding. Possibly because of Fredegund's insistence, combined with Galwsintha's loss of political usefulness following the death of her father, King Chilperic quickly came to despise his marriage to his Visigoth wife. He ultimately decided to end the marriage, and he did so in brutal fashion. The story of what happened to poor Galswintha was recorded by one of Chilperic's acquaintances, Bishop Gregory of Tours (c. 539-594), who wrote "In the end he had her garroted by one of his servants and so found her dead in bed" (History of the Franks, 4.28). This murder would bring the Merovingian Dynasty to civil war, spanning the reigns of several successive kings. As it happened, Chilperic's brother, King Sigebert of Austrasia, had also married a Visigoth princess-Queen Brunhild, the sister of Galswintha. In response to the murder, Sigebert and Brunhild went to war against Chilperic and Fredegund, a conflict that was carried on by their respective branches of the Merovingian Dynasty." words by Suruchi @ sue__17 on ig