Einhard

Einhard was born around 775 into a Frankish world that was being remade. He became a courtier and servant to Charlemagne, then stayed on under his son Louis the Pious. Somewhere in that span he sat down and wrote the Vita Karoli Magni, a biography of the emperor he'd known firsthand. The work survived as one of the early Middle Ages' most valuable literary inheritances — a rare window into the man who built an empire, rendered by someone who'd watched him do it.