Hello and welcome to the history of the Germans, Episode 82, the Constitution of the Realm.

What do you do once you've condemned your eldest son and heir to life imprisonment?

Exactly. You have a party, or more precisely, you have two parties.

But as always with Frederick the second, these are not just knees-ups for entertainment,

but elaborately staged political events.

The first is a wedding.

The second, a grand get-together of the whole realm.

And then there's a third, a funeral of a kind you would not have expected from

our rational, seemingly agnostic hero. Lots to unpack, as always. Now, before we start,

just a reminder, the history of the Germans podcast is advertising free, thanks to the

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Last week we left Frederick sitting in judgment over his wayward son.

This family rift was not based on a fundamental personality clash, as had been the case

with his namesake, Frederick II Prussia, nor was it the case of unbridled ambition,

as it had been when Richard the Lionheart and his brothers rose up against their father, Henry

II. The rift had been almost entirely political. Henry, the King in brackets, believed that

all the resources of the family, which meant basically the resources of Sicily, should be employed in rolling back the encroachment of royal power.

He wanted to force the princes to disgorge the rights and privileges they had extracted from Philip of Swabia and Otto IV during the recent civil wars. Frederick's poverty was the exact opposite.

Forcing the Pope into a recognition of the Emperor as his equal,

...