Charlegmane the Events

The game pretty much guides you from what I've been able to observe. In the beginning, your mother is quite in charge. Then they bring your historical pals about and try to marry you into the Lombard royal family. Provinces turn from Frankish to French spontaneously and a characters do so at a much faster rate. You can swim against the tide or embrace it, dunno what the roleplaying implications are (i.e. any events etc.), other than obviously you lose the heavy infantry cultural retinue and get the knights. (Which has not been optimal so far for my CM because he has the HI Commander trait, so I won't be changing until I earn Cav Commander, but it will mark a symbolic transition from post-tribal society to feudal Frenchness when it happens, and it should perhaps facilitate integration with the Occitan parts of your realm.) I suspect there will be some papal-related events around 800 AD and perhaps something to spice up my relations with the Byzzies. I went for a Byzzie marriage instead of Lombardian, so it might get tricky with Italy.

You can read Wiki entries for him, his brother, his mother, father maybe, the Byzzies, Desiderius and the Kingdom of Asturias and the Umayyad Caliphate in Spain, and Saxon wars. Reading Wiki will give you just enough of a picture to know what's going on without getting too serious about the history.

It could also be a good idea to read the CK2 Song of Roland e-book for two bucks. What better introduction could there be?