Monarchy could take the form of empire. Only in Italy perhaps, among western lands, was there still a sense of Constantinople as the imperial centre of the Roman world. Tenth-century historians, namely Widukind, Liudprand, Flodoard and Richer, produced powerful images of royalty. In this respect, Italy in the tenth century was different from other post-Carolingian lands. And even in Italy, but still more clearly elsewhere in Frankish Europe, an ideal-type of Carolingian government was transmitted to the learned through the written residue of capitularies, conciliar decrees and documents. In the course of the tenth century, the patrilinear dynastic link with the Carolingians was broken in both west and east Frankish kingdoms. In 888, the old Carolingian realms had created kings out of their own guts. The west Frankish kingdom has been treated in much recent historiography as a tenth-century paradigm. The caliph's response to the tenth-century Ottonian kingdom prefigured that of many modern historians.

The central theme in the history of eighth-century Francia is the rising power of its Carolingian rulers, above all of Charles Martel (715-41 ), Pippin III (741-68) and Charlemagne (768-814). Until the late seventh century Aquitaine had been an integral part of Frankish Gaul. The inventories of church lands, which later served as the basis for accusing Charles Martel of having plundered the church, were produced as part of a developing process of estate management, but which was much stimulated by the increasing use of written records from the mid-eighth century onwards. At the level of political and military history, the growth of Carolingian power may be understood in terms of an initial military success which allowed Charles Martel to take advantage of a balance of power operating progressively in his favour. In the south of Frankish Gaul, the old Visigothic province of Septimania had been added to Frankish territory and the Franks were able to intervene in Italy.