I plan to complete my book, entitled Charlemagne’s Practice of Empire. The book reconsiders how Charlemagne and his men exercised their power, arguing that royal authority was far more flexible, ad hoc, and tolerant of diversity than scholars have previously recognized. I examine the nature of Charlemagne’s exercise of power in three thematic sections, addressing tools of control and coercion, innovations and the pace of change, and the balancing of standardization and diversity. Rather than simply imposing Frankish control on conquered regions, Charlemagne and his men sought to use them as a testing ground for techniques of rulership later imported back to Francia. The process of learning from conquered regions is particularly clear in the Kingdom of Italy. It is this analysis of how the conquest of Italy changed Charlemagne’s rulership which I hope to write in Rome.