Laon in the context of Counts and dukes of Valois

Pepin the Short (Latin: Pipinus; French: Pépin le Bref; German: Pippin der Kurze; c. 714 – 24 September 768) was King of the Franks from 751 until his death in 768. He was the first Carolingian to become king.

Pepin was the son of the Frankish prince Charles Martel and his wife Rotrude. Pepin's upbringing was distinguished by the ecclesiastical education he had received from the Christian monks of the Abbey Church of St. Denis, near Paris. In 741, after Pepin and his older brother Carloman besieged their half-brother Grifo (who did not accept their father's plans for succession) at Laon and imprisoned him in a monastery, he and Carloman succeeded their father as the Mayor of the Palace; In effect, Pepin reigned over Francia jointly with his elder brother, Carloman. Pepin ruled in Neustria, Burgundy, and Provence, while his older brother Carloman established himself in Austrasia, Alemannia, and Thuringia. The brothers were active in suppressing revolts led by the Bavarians, Aquitanians, Saxons, and the Alemanni in the early years of their reign. In 743, they ended the Frankish Interregnum [fr] by choosing Childeric III, who was to be the last Merovingian monarch, as figurehead King of the Franks.

Dudo, or Dudon, was a Picard historian, and dean of Saint-Quentin, where he was born in the 960s. He was an erudite scholar and he likely acquired his education in Liège or perhaps Laon. By 987, Dudo had become a canon at St Quentin, the abbacy of which was held by the counts of Vermandois. In that year he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Richard I of Normandy by Albert I, Count of Vermandois, which was successful. Dudo became a frequent visitor to the Norman court in the two years prior to Richard's death in 996. In a letter to Adalbero, Bishop of Laon, Dudo said that, as a result, Richard asked him to write a work recording "the customs and deeds of the Norman Land, the rights established within the kingdom of his great-grandfather Rollo". During a second stay in Normandy, Dudo wrote his history of the Normans, a task which Duke Richard had urged him to undertake. Very little else is known about his life, except that he died before 1043.

The siege of Laon was a Frankish siege of the rebel Grifo's fortified city of Laon in 741. The Frankish army under the Mayors of the Palace, the brothers Carloman and Pepin the Short, besieged the fortress and took Grifo, the Mayors' half-brother, captive.

Grifo (c. 726–753) was the son of the Frankish Mayor of the Palace and de facto ruler of the Franks Charles Martel and his second wife Swanachild.

After the death of Charles Martel, power may well have been intended to be divided among Grifo and his half-brothers Pepin the Short and Carloman. Grifo, who was considered illegitimate by Pepin and Carloman, was besieged in Laon by his half-brothers, captured, and imprisoned in a monastery.

Robert II (c. 972 – 20 July 1031), called the Pious (French: le Pieux) or the Wise (French: le Sage), was King of the Franks from 996 to 1031, the second from the Capetian dynasty. Crowned Junior King in 987, he assisted his father on military matters (notably during the two sieges of Laon, in 988 and 991). His solid education, provided by Gerbert of Aurillac (the future Pope Sylvester II) in Reims, allowed him to deal with religious questions of which he quickly became the guarantor (he headed the Council of Saint-Basle de Verzy in 991 and that of Chelles in 994). Continuing the political work of his father, after becoming sole ruler in 996, he managed to maintain the alliance with the Duchy of Normandy and the County of Anjou and thus was able to contain the ambitions of Count Odo II of Blois.

Robert II distinguished himself with an extraordinarily long reign for the time. His 35-year-long reign was marked by his attempts to expand the royal domain by any means, especially by his struggle to gain the Duchy of Burgundy (which ended in 1005 with his victory) after the death in 1002 without male descendants of his paternal uncle Duke Henry I, after a war against Otto-William of Ivrea, Henry I's stepson and adopted by him as his heir. His policies earned him many enemies, including three of his sons.

Saint Leudwinus, Count of Treves (Ecclesiastical Latin: [ˈlɛu̯d.vi.nus]; also Leodewin, Liutwin, Ludwin, etc.; c. 660 – 29 September 722 AD in Reims) founded an abbey in Mettlach. He was Archbishop of Treves and Laon. As patron saint of the Mettlach parish, his relics are carried through the town by procession at the annual Pentecost celebration. His feast day is September 29. He was the son of Saint Warinus, the paternal grandson of Saint Sigrada, and nephew of Saint Leodegarius.

The Valois (UK: /ˈvælwɑː/ VAL-wah, also US: /vælˈwɑː, vɑːlˈwɑː/ va(h)l-WAH, French: [valwa]; originally Pagus Valensis) was a region in the valley of the Oise river in Picardy in the north of France. It was a fief in West Francia and subsequently the Kingdom of France until its counts furnished a line of kings, the House of Valois, to succeed the House of Capet in 1328. It was, along with the counties of Beauvais, the Vexin, Vermandois, and Laon, part of the "Oise line" of fiefdoms which were held often by one individual or an individual family as a string of defences against Viking assault on Paris.

The medieval county and duchy of Valois was located in northern France. It was included in the northeastern part of the government of Île-de-France, while being part of the province of Picardy. Its capital was Crépy-en-Valois.

Alexander of Lincoln (died February 1148) was a medieval English Bishop of Lincoln and a member of an important administrative and ecclesiastical family. He was the nephew of Roger of Salisbury, a Bishop of Salisbury and Chancellor of England under King Henry I, and he was also related to Nigel, Bishop of Ely. Educated at Laon, Alexander served in his uncle's diocese as an archdeacon in the early 1120s. Unlike his relatives, he held no office in the government before his appointment as Bishop of Lincoln in 1123. Alexander became a frequent visitor to King Henry's court after his appointment to the episcopate, often witnessing royal documents, and he served as a royal justice in Lincolnshire.

Although Alexander was known for his ostentatious and luxurious lifestyle, he founded a number of religious houses in his diocese and was an active builder and literary patron. He also attended church councils and reorganised his diocese by increasing the number of archdeaconries and setting up prebends to support his cathedral clergy. Under Henry's successor, King Stephen, Alexander was caught up in the fall from favour of his family, and was imprisoned together with his uncle Roger in 1139. He subsequently briefly supported Stephen's rival, Matilda, but by the late 1140s Alexander was once again working with Stephen. He spent much of the late 1140s at the papal court in Rome, but died in England in early 1148. During his episcopate, he began the rebuilding of his cathedral, which had been destroyed by fire. Alexander was the patron of medieval chroniclers Henry of Huntingdon and Geoffrey of Monmouth, and also served as an ecclesiastical patron of the medieval hermit Christina of Markyate and Gilbert of Sempringham, founder of the Gilbertines.