The first royal dynasty of the Franks, which ruled Gaul from the fifth century until 751 — the line of Clovis I, ended by the deposition of Childeric III.
The dynasty took its name from Merovech, a shadowy fifth-century leader of the Salian Franks; the first firmly historical king is his descendant Childeric I, buried at Tournai with a spectacular treasure of gold and garnet. Merovingian kingship was marked by a distinctive symbol: the kings alone wore their hair long and uncut, the reges criniti or "long-haired kings," a sign of their royal blood.
From a base in northern Gaul the family expanded rapidly as Roman power collapsed, absorbing rival Frankish kingdoms and Gallo-Roman territory.
Clovis I, who reigned from 481 to 511, transformed the Franks into the dominant power of Gaul: he defeated the last Roman commander at Soissons, crushed the Alemanni, and drove the Visigoths beyond the Pyrenees. His conversion from paganism to Catholic Christianity — sealed by his baptism at Reims by Bishop Remigius — aligned the Frankish monarchy with the Gallo-Roman Church and set it apart from the Arian kingdoms around it.
After Clovis the kingdom was repeatedly divided among his heirs into the sub-kingdoms of Neustria, Austrasia, and Burgundy, producing a violent politics of partition, reunion, and feud that the chronicler Gregory of Tours recorded in vivid detail.
By the later seventh century real power had passed from the kings to the Mayors of the Palace, the chief officials of the royal household. The Arnulfing–Pippinid family — the future Carolingians — made the office hereditary and ruled in the kings’ name, while the Merovingians became figureheads later mocked as the rois fainéants, the "do-nothing kings."
The dynasty ended in 751 when the mayor Pepin the Short, with the sanction of the papacy, deposed the last Merovingian, Childeric III, and had himself made king — replacing the long-haired line with the Carolingian dynasty and cutting Childeric’s hair before shutting him in a monastery.