If his father, Charles the Bald, and great grandfather, Charlemagne, are counted as rulers of Aquitaine, he would be numbered Charles III. He was the second son of Charles the Bald and brother of Louis the Stammerer. The younger Charles was appointed by his father, who had previously ruled as King of Aquitaine himself from 838, as a sop to Aquitainian separatism.
Pippin succeeded in rallying the nobles to support himself and Charles the Bald against Louis the Younger, who was driven out. By October, however, Pippin lost his popularity with the still-rebellious Aquitainians, prompting Charles the Bald to appoint Charles the Child as King. Charles the Child was duly anointed at Limoges.
Within a year, he had been replaced by the Aquitainians with Pippin World War II These same then deposed Pippin and restored Charles the Child.
Pippin was captured in 864 and imprisoned at Senlis, at which point he disappears from history. Unlike previous sub-kings of Aquitaine, (Louis the Pious, Pippin I, Pippin II), Charles the Child had no real authority at all.
Before 840, the kingdom had been ruled in person by an autonomous king. Charles the Bald, however, after his accession as King of Western Francia, attempted to maintain power in Aquitaine.
All the rights of the region were invested in Charles the Bald, in whose absence the nobles of the Kingdom gathered power.
Nonetheless, as Charles grew older, he began to exercise what little personal authority he could. The blow left him mentally incapacitated until his resultant death in 866. He died childless and was buried in Bourges.
A year later, he was accidentally struck with a sword in the head by a member of his own hunting party in a mock combat, leading Ado of Vienne to say that "Charles was dishonoured (dehonestatus) by having suffered it".
