Hello and welcome to the history of the Germans, Episode 17, the not yet holy Emperor

Henry II.

I hope you enjoyed the last two episodes when we took a break from the narrative and had

a bit of a look around Germany in the year 1000.

But now it's time to go back to our story.

Back in episode 14, Otto III, the Madcap Holy Man intended on renovating the Western

Roman Empire had died on January 24, 2002, in Patrano in central Italy. On his death, his whole dream collapsed within days.

The Romans had already expelled the Germans, but now the rest of the Italians rose up,

and elected a new king, Mark Graf Ardwin, Novivrea.

Otto's friends and supporters barely managed to carry his body back home.

The funeral cortege was constantly harassed by Ardwin's soldiers, the local minor nobles and

the city dwellers, until they reached the relative safety of Verona.

From Verona, the procession crossed the Alps and arrived in Bavaria in late February

early March. There the procession is greeted Alps and arrived in Bavaria in late February early March.

There the procession is greeted by Henry, Duke of Bavaria.

Now we've encountered Henry before. He's the son of Henry the Cualsum and the grandson of Henry,

brother and bane of Otto the Great. His branch of the family had forever believed that they were the true

royal house, and that the Ottos had usurped the crown through fiendish machinations at the

battles of Burton and Andanach. Their ancestor had been born in Aura Regis, i.e. when the

dynasty's founder, King Henry the Fowler, was already king. That should

have given him the claim under Byzantine rules, but somehow the crown went to Otto the Great,

who had been born the son of a mere duke. For 60 years the Henrys had tried to claim their

...