For someone ranting about technicalities, you might try to get the spelling right. It's Charlemagne, not Charlemange.
Why "Charlemagne"? That's not his name.
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BRKNG! Charlemagne hated French people for calling him Charlemagne!
Yes, but close doesn't count in the eyes of the OP; we must be absolutely precise. Lecture 45 of The Other Side of History states that the term "Crusade" wasn't invented until the 18th century, so that's out. "Cruce signatus," another phrase for crusader which means "signed with the cross," didn't get first used until the late 12th century. Perhaps the German phrase has a similar date of origin, which would make it invalid for the First Crusade. Everything I've read states that that squad called themselves pilgrims and nothing more. Since most were French, the contemporary word would have been "pèlerin." Perhaps "Conte Pèlerin" was proposed for the title back at Paradox HQ but their marketing department shot it down
The closest word I could think of in Old French would be "soi cruisier" in The life of St Thomas, the Martyr, participate in a crusade in that context. Though if I remember correctly, the term "Croiserie" was mentionned in the XII century in Robert de Clari's chronicle, "croiserie" being another word for Crusader "Marked by the Cross" or the verb crucesignare "Taking the cross".
Then again, I studied the topic of crusades years ago, so I'm not an 100% sure. I'll have to review the subject.
He was Occitan of culture, Angevin of ethnicity and king of the English. He is the nightmare of any nationalists.
Ah, but he wouldn't have recognised the name "Lionheart". After all, he was Richard "Cœur de Lion"...
He is amongst the most beloved of our kings. Mostly because his brother John was seen as responsible for the taxes and imposts levied against the people to support the crusade and the ransoms.
Also he inspired Robin Hood, who is of course in the game, though not playable, unfortunately.
When I started learning about the middle ages, one the first things I found out was that "Cœur de Lion" was popular because he had a brother to do all his unpopular stuff for him.
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There were tribal identities and greater identities at that time, though - "I am a Frank of this tribe, I am a Roman of this theme, I am a Lombard under this King", etc. nationalism dates to a Roman times. "Senate and the PEOPLE of Rome", that's populist nationalism even if they worshiped the Caesar which dissipated with Christianity anyway.
He was Occitan of culture, Angevin of ethnicity and king of the English. He is the nightmare of any nationalists.
A dream for Anglo-French unionists.
Since I am belgian, and he was possibly born in Liège, Belgium, we should call him "Grote Sjarel", loosely translated to "Big Willy".
It was.
At one point we even technically had the same king.
Henry V of England was the (semi-)legal heir to Charles VI of France after their particular round of the Hundred Years War. This left Henry VI as technical heir to France upon Henry V's death, but the French (not surprisingly) declared for their former Dauphin.
Had Henry V succeeded and ruled for some years, the thrones could have been merged.
Now it's less of an ambition though, although there was talk of France trying to join the commonwealth at one point, and even talk of France accepting the Queen of Britain as nominal head of state at one point after the second world war.
The King part I knew about. But it seemed like Joko talked about an actual political party that exist nowadays for a moment, so I was a bit surprised.
Now for France joining the Commonwealth... I didn't know they talked about that back in the day.
During the last days of the Battle of France, Churchill proposed a union of the two countries. It read:
"France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations, but one Franco-British Union. The constitution of the Union will provide for joint organs of defence, foreign, financial and economic policies. Every citizen of France will enjoy immediately citizenship of Great Britain, every British subject will become a citizen of France."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-British_Union#World_War_II_.281940.29
It is no more wrong than wanting him to be called Karl. You might as well complain about people referring to Marcus Antonius as Mark Antony, Kurus as Cyrus (we won't even touch the issue of different alphabets), Kongzi as Confucius, or Yeshua as Jesus.
It is equally pointless to say that he was either German or French, because there were neither yet. There were Germanic tribes living (generally) east of the Rhine, and a Romance population living west of the Rhine (remember, that we generally date the beginning of Old French to be the Oath of Strasbourg, which was between Charlemagne's grandsons). The heartland of the Frankish kingdom was the territory that we now recognize as France. That is where the political, economic, and cultural weight of the kingdom was. Aside from a few parts of Austria and Swabia, almost the entirety of the German parts of the Frankish realm were conquered by Charlemagne himself. There's a reason why we call that country France and not Gaul, you know. It was the most important part of the Frankish territory.
Apocryphally he's meant to have said when we were taking it back from the Axis that if we had to do it again in 30 years we'd just keep it. Doesn't sound entirely unlike his brand of humour, but not quite what you'd hope to hear.
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