In 858, at the coaxing of
Charles the Bald, his cousin, he and his brother betrayed
Louis the German when he sent them on an espionage mission and went over to Charles, who rewarded them handsomely because he had lost his Bavarian
honores. He acted as Duke of Transjurane (Upper) Burgundy from then until about 864.
He married Judith, daughter of
Eberhard of Friuli, and later
Waldrada of Worms, by whom he left a son,
Rudolf, who later became
King of Transjurane Burgundy, and a daughter,
Adelaide of Auxerre, who married
Richard, Duke of Burgundy, and had issue.
Adelaide of Tours (c.820-c.866) was a daughter of
Hugh of Tours and his wife Ava.
Since Robert was born in 866, well after her first husband died, he is more likely to be her offspring. His grandson was
Hugh Capet, the first
King of the
House of Capet.
His family became politically powerful when Louis the Pious chose his oldest daughter as his 2nd wife upon the death of his consort
Ermengarde of Hesbaye. Though Welf himself never became publicly prominent, his family became interwoven with the
Carolingian dynasty.
Welf married Hedwig (Heilwig), daughter of the Saxon count Isambart; Hedwig later became abbess of Chelles. The couple had the following children:
Hedwig (
c. 778 – after 833) was a
Saxon noble woman, the wife of Count
Welf I and mother-in-law of Emperor
Louis the Pious through his marriage to
Judith, her daughter.
She was possibly born at
Altdorf in the
Frankish lands of
Alamannia (present-day Germany). According to Bishop
Thegan of Trier, she was a member of the Saxon high nobility, the daughter of Count
Isambart. She had a sister, Adalung des Franken, half-brother Hunfrid I de Recia e de Istria, and a brother Guelph, Count of Andech.
In her later life (about 826) she appears as
abbess of
Chelles near
Paris,
[1][2][3] however, it is uncertain if she had already become a widow by then.
