In spring 996, a solemn procession of horsemen came riding down the alpine passes of northern Italy,

and onwards towards the mighty city of Rome.

Once the capital of the known world, times had been hard of late for the great city,

finding itself increasingly dominated by men from the north.

With gilded swords and glittering coats of mail,

most of those present were veterans of the near perpetual border wars, fought by their kinsmen

to retain hegemony over their massive and at times unwieldy state.

Many came from the rich and fertile lands along the Rhine River Valley.

Some, the rolling hills of Bavaria. Others,

the dark forests of Thuringia. A few of the men present, likely even hailed from the Slavic

marches on the northeastern borders of the realm.

Their leader, however, like all German kings, since Henry the Fowler first forged together

their state amidst the chaos of the Magyar invasions, was a Saxon. At just 16 years old, practically all of those years spent in stoic education and

preparation for rule. He had just come of age. And now, following in the footsteps of his

father and his grandfather before him, he'd ridden south to the

imperial city to stake his claim as successor to the emperors of ancient Rome. That king was the

ruler of East Francia, Otto III, the first iteration of the German state. And just as his father

and grandfather had done before him, he was about to become an emperor. For many of those

battle-hardened power brokers present, the event was an especially celebratory

one. After all, for a boy king to survive into adulthood amidst a sea of rebellious subjects,

scheming family members and hostile foreign powers, was a remarkable achievement. Of which which much of the credit should be given

to his widowed mother, Theofano. For Otto himself, however, a solemn, exceptionally well-educated

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