Rosamund or Rosamunde was the daughter of Cunimund

Cunimund

Cunimund was a king of the Gepids in the 6th century. Cunimund was the last of the Gepid kings and led them in their defeat by the Lombards in 567.-Background:...

, king of the Gepids, and wife of Alboin

Alboin

Alboin was king of the Lombards from about 560 until 572. During his reign the Lombards ended their migrations by settling in Italy, the northern part of which Alboin conquered between 569 and 572...

, king of the Lombards

Lombards

The Lombards , also referred to as Longobards, were a Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin, who from 568 to 774 ruled a Kingdom in Italy...

.Rosamund was born into a kingdom in crisis, as the Gepid people had been fighting a losing battle against the Lombards since 546, firstly within the context of a Lombardic-Byzantine alliance, and later against the Lombards and the Turkic Avar nomads. These wars had seized the lives of not only her grandfather king Thurisind, but also her uncle, Thurismund, both of which served to establish a long standing hatred of the Lombards in her father, Cunimund, which he passed down to her. This hatred was what spawned the final war of the Gepids, as Cunimund attempted to win back lost lands against the Lombards. The war, however, quickly turned, and in 567, the Gepid Kingdom would be completely subdued by a mixture of Lombard and Avar forces, her father was decapitated and she, along with many other Gepids, was taken as a prisoner of the Lombards. However, in an attempt to secure a male heir and following the death of his first wife Clotsuinda of Frankia, Alboin took her as his wife. Alboin was noted for his cruelty towards her; his most famous act of cruelty was reported by Paulus Diaconus, who states that at a royal banquet in Verona, Alboin forced her to drink from the skull of her dead father (which he carried around his belt), inviting her "to drink merrily with her father" . After this, she began plotting to have her husband, Alboin, assassinated. Thus, Rosamund met with the king's arms bearer and her lover, Helmichis, who suggested using Peredeo, "a very strong man", to accomplish the assassination. Peredeo refused to help, and that night mistakenly had intercourse with Rosamund, who was disguised as a servant. After learning that he had committed adultery with his king's wife, Peredeo agreed to take part in an assassination attempt in fear of the king's retribution. After the great feast, Alboin went to bed inebriated, at which point Rosamund ordered the king's sword bound to his bedpost, so that should he wake in the middle of the assassination attempt, he would be defenseless. Alboin did wake, only to find himself unarmed. He fended off his attackers temporarily with a footstool, but was killed. Due in part to the work of Paulus Diaconus, there seems to be some confusion about who actually killed Alboin, with both Helmichis and Peredeo assigned as sole murderer, however, recent scholarship suggests that it was the work of multiple men, including Helmichis, Peredeo and Elmigisilus. Immediately afterwards, Helmichis would marry Rosamund and attempt to usurp the throne by claiming kingship, however, this was met with little support from the various duchies of the Lombard kingdom, and thus, she, Helmichis, Alboin's daughter by his first wife, Albsuinda

Albsuinda

Albsuinda was the only child of Alboin, King of the Lombards in Pannonia , and his first wife Chlothsind, daughter of the Merovingian king of the Franks Chlothar...

, fled to the Byzantine stronghold of Ravenna

Ravenna

Ravenna is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and the second largest comune in Italy by land area, although, at , it is little more than half the size of the largest comune, Rome...

 with a large proportion of Alboin's private treasures with them. After this, she attempted to curry favour by marrying the exarch

Exarch

In the Byzantine Empire, an exarch was governor with extended authority of a province at some remove from the capital Constantinople. The prevailing situation frequently involved him in military operations....

 of Ravenna, Longinus, who had helped them plan the murder of Alboin . At the urging of Longinus, she attempted to murder her former lover Helmichis by poisoning, handing him the drink after he had washed; however, she was instead murdered by Helmichis, who forced her to drink the poison before committing suicide by the same means.

Rosamund in later culture

Rosamund would inspire many later tragedies, based on her life, particularly in Italy, where the folk song Donna Lumbarda was passed down orally through the generations, inspiring later renditions of the tale. The first true tragedy, Giovanni Rucellai's Rosmunda, was first performed in 1525 and would serve as the basis for many later tellings of the story in the Italian language, such as Vitorrio Alfieri's 1783 work of the same name and a Sam Benelli play of 1911. The conspiracy to murder Alboin would also inspire the 1961/2 film Rosamunda e Alboino, aka Sword of the Conqueror etc, by Carlo Campogalliani.

In the English language, the story would also be considered a tragedy, albeit more often neglected than in the Italian tradition, but would be treated by the pre-raphaelite poet Algernon Charles Swinburne

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...

 in his 1899 work Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards .