Georgiana remembered that in The Godfather, Michael Corleone was the youngest son. After his eldest brother Sonny died, his second brother should originally have inherited the Godfather's position.
But Victor, as the elder brother, believed that he should be the one looking after his younger brother, rather than having his younger brother look after him.
It felt as though Victor were disabled. Even if Michael did not see it that way, those around them would still compare Victor and Michael.
Many remembered Pepin, but few remembered his elder brother Carloman, a loser in the "struggle for the hat."
He had once served as Mayor of the Palace alongside Pepin, purged the great nobles loyal to the Merovingian dynasty alongside him, and fought the Bavarians and Saxons alongside him. But once all their external enemies had been eliminated, the two could not share a crown. In the end, Carloman lost to Pepin in a duel, and was forced to retreat to Monte Cassino Abbey on the Apennine Peninsula in Italy, where he died after Pepin.
Since Clovis I, all monarchs of France had been buried in the Basilica of Saint-Denis, but Carloman was not among them. The Carloman I buried in the Basilica of Saint-Denis was Pepin's son. As that ghost had said, he was Pepin's second son. Pepin's eldest son was Charlemagne, the founder of the Holy Roman Empire in Germany. Yet Charlemagne was not born in wedlock; Carloman I was the first child Pepin and Bertrada had after their marriage.
Charlemagne's father was certainly Pepin, and Bertrada was indeed Charlemagne's mother. Before Napoleon attained his current status, Josephine's inability to bear children had not mattered much. Now, however, it had become enough to shake her position.
Octavian had married an aristocratic woman who had borne two children, and the