This thesis investigates the foundations of kingly authority in the Merovingian Frankish kingdoms, CE 511-657. In particular, this authority is examined from its material base, the control (or lack thereof) of violence. It proceeds systematically through the three primary elements of Merovingian kingship - the king as military commander, the king as law-giver, and the king as protector of Christianity - to examine the ways kings interacted with the nobility, the class with actual control over the mechanisms of violence. The thesis concludes that, while the Frankish kings tried to use all of these to control the nobles and thereby expand their own power over violence, they in fact achieved the opposite, and by the later 7th century no longer held much real power at all.
Francis Ladd (Wed,) studied this question.