This short conclusion reflects on the book’s overarching themes and arguments, asking how we should characterise Flodoard and understand his place in the history of medieval historical writing. Several implications for the study of tenth-century political history and the cultural development of the Latin West are re-emphasised. In a concluding discussion of audience, I suggest that the readership of Flodoard’s works may have been quite narrow because he was a ‘liminal’ author of types of history that no longer met the interests or expectations of post-Carolingian audiences.

This chapter offers a rationale for the book and an introduction to Flodoard’s career and works. It summarises key political developments in the tenth-century West Frankish kingdom and provides an outline of the dominant historiographical interpretations of the period. In theory, Flodoard should be a star witness in debates about the nature of political and social change in the kingdoms and polities that succeeded the Carolingian empire, but his works have tended to be overlooked in favour of charters and other ‘documentary’ evidence. When Flodoard has been invoked by scholars, this usage has tended to be uncritical, primarily because he appears to be a straightforward, impartial writer. From what Flodoard himself tells us about his career, however, this apparent neutrality is clearly an illusion, and therefore an authorial strategy that requires interrogation. Finally, this chapter provides a historiographical survey of the major political and literary approaches to medieval historiography and medieval authors that underpin the methodology of this book.