Charles II may refer to:

Charles the Bald (13 June 823 – 6 October 877) was the King of West Francia (843–77), King of Italy (875–77) and Holy Roman Emperor (875–77, as Charles II). After a series of civil wars that began during the reign of his father, Louis the Pious, Charles succeeded by the Treaty of Verdun (843) in acquiring the western third of the Carolingian Empire. He was a grandson of Charlemagne and the youngest son of Louis the Pious by his second wife, Judith.

Struggle against his brothers

He was born on 13 June 823 in Frankfurt, when his elder brothers were already adults and had been assigned their own regna, or subkingdoms, by their father. The attempts made by Louis the Pious to assign Charles a subkingdom, first Alemannia and then the country between the Meuse and the Pyrenees (in 832, after the rising of Pepin I of Aquitaine) were unsuccessful. The numerous reconciliations with the rebellious Lothair and Pepin, as well as their brother Louis the German, King of Bavaria, made Charles's share in Aquitaine and Italy only temporary, but his father did not give up and made Charles the heir of the entire land which was once Gaul and would eventually be France. At a diet in Aachen in 837, Louis the Pious bade the nobles do homage to Charles as his heir. Pepin of Aquitaine died in 838, whereupon Charles at last received that kingdom, which angered Pepin's heirs and the Aquitainian nobles.

Carol II (15 October 1893 – 4 April 1953) reigned as King of Romania from 8 June 1930 until 6 September 1940. He was the first member of the Romanian royal family to be raised in the Orthodox faith.

Early life

Palatine Zweibrücken (German: Pfalz-Zweibrücken), or the County Palatine of Zweibrücken, is a former state of the Holy Roman Empire. Its capital was Zweibrücken (French: Deux-Ponts). Its reigning house, a branch of the Wittelsbach dynasty, was also the Royal House of Sweden from 1654 to 1720.

Overview

Palatine Zweibrücken was established as a separate principality in 1444, when Stefan, Count Palatine of Simmern-Zweibrücken divided his territory, Pfalz-Simmern and Zweibrücken, between his two sons. The younger son, Louis I, received the County of Zweibrücken and the County of Veldenz.

Palatine Zweibrücken ceased to exist in 1801, when it was annexed by France. After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, some parts of it were returned to the last Duke, King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria, who joined them with other former territories on the left bank of the Rhine to form the Rheinkreis, later the Rhenish Palatinate.

Origins

Charles II August Christian (German: Karl II. August Christian; 29 October 1746 – 1 April 1795) was Duke of Zweibrücken from 1775 to 1795. A member of the Palatine House of Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld, a branch of the House of Wittelsbach, he was the elder brother of the first King of Bavaria, Maximilian I, and of Queen Amalia of Saxony.

Biography

Charles was born in Düsseldorf, the oldest of five children of Frederick Michael, Count Palatine of Birkenfeld-Bishwiller-Rappoltstein and Countess Palatine Maria Franziska of Sulzbach. His father converted to his mother's Roman Catholic faith shortly after his birth, he and his siblings being raised in that denomination. He inherited the duchy of Zweibrücken from his paternal uncle, Duke Christian IV, in 1775. He was heir presumptive to his childless cousin Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria whom, however, he predeceased. He ceded to his younger brother Maximilian Joseph the county of Rappoltstein in 1776, having inherited it when their father died in 1767.