Pepin the Short

About Pepin the Short

Pepin the Short (c. 715–768) was a pivotal Frankish politician who served as the Mayor of the Palace and later the first King of the Franks from the Carolingian dynasty. His most significant historical action was deposing the last Merovingian king, Childeric III, with the blessing of the Papacy, effectively establishing the Carolingian dynasty that would later include his son, Charlemagne. This strategic move, marking the formal beginning of the Carolingian rule, is why MIT’s Pantheon project ranks him at #628 in historical importance among roughly 15,000 influential figures.

Despite this foundational role in early medieval European history, Pepin the Short’s modern internet attention is relatively low, aligning almost perfectly with his historical ranking, resulting in an attention gap of approximately 1x. In 2025, his Wikipedia pages garnered 365K views. This figure is significantly less than his contemporary, Catherine of Aragon (a politician/noble from a similar broad era, who achieved 2.0M views) or even William the Conqueror (3.0M views), though he remains more visible than historically more important figures like Khalil Gibran (#370, only 35K views).

His momentum suggests modest, stable interest, with a slight decline of 7% in Q3 attention compared to Q1 of 2025, though his overall year-over-year viewership saw a slight uptick of +6.8%.