The King Who Created Medieval Bohemia

In 12th-century Bohemia, every royal funeral sparked a civil war. Dr. Eleanor Janega discovers how Přemysl Otakar I survived backstabbing brothers, imperial betrayals, and a dodgy divorce to seize power. Find out how this 'spare' prince outmanoeuvred the Emperor to forge a powerful hereditary kingdom. MORE: Pope vs. Emperor: The Investiture Crisis Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/pope-vs-emperor-an-11th-century-crisis/id1564113746?i=1000661233624 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/38PEiua6Udd1XtzbZQGGnb Matilda of Canossa, Tuscany Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/eg/podcast/matilda-of-canossa-medieval-italys-iron-countess/id1564113746?i=1000766605495 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/1o5NkDSts2jqiNdv4iDqaG Czech Braveheart: Jan Žižka Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/czech-braveheart-jan-%C5%BEi%C5%BEka/id1564113746?i=1000585143330&itscg=30200&ls=1&mttnsubad=6442463604&at=1000l3ctA&itsct=podfollow_podcasts&ct=gone-medieval-eplink Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/59wq9imDllVuDj97YoPCxl Gone Medieval is presented by Dr Eleanor Janega. Edited by Amy Haddow, the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week, including Eleanor and Matt's new documentary Medieval Summer. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Matt Lewis?

  From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr Eleanor Janiger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:42Eleanor Janega?

  Hello, I'm Dr Eleanor Janiger, and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gob-smacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were, and how we got here.

• 1:23Eleanor Janega?

  In the late 12th century, Bohemia was at a crossroads. For generations, it had lived with a simple but unsettling reality. Every time a ruler died, the people held their breath. No one could be entirely sure who would wear the crown next, because every succession was disputed, and usually only resolved by violence. Welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Dr Eleanor Janiger, and today I'm uncovering the story of a prince who changed the rules of the game forever. Born into a turbulent, backstabbing family, where destiny was only one battlefield away,

• 2:06Eleanor Janega?

  Pchemysl Otokar I transformed 25 years of bloody family chaos into cold, hard, legal status. Along the way, deals were cut, wives discarded, and popes defied. How did one man, outwit the emperor, secure the Golden Bowl of Sicily and forge a powerful hereditary kingdom from the ashes of a divided duchy? Join me for one of my favorite periods of history: the rise of Bohemia's first hereditary king.

• 2:44Eleanor Janega?

  Now, this was less a succession system than a recurring family crisis. The Bohemian throne was not a royal one, but a ducal one. That is, its rulers were known as dukes, not kings. And it was elected, not hereditary, even though one dynasty, the Pchemyslids, almost always held power. The Pchemyslids had been in charge of Bohemia since written records began, but they were far from being one big happy family. Brothers turned on brothers for the top job. Cousins marched on Prague with private armies. And other noble families switched allegiances whenever it suited them, while the Holy Roman Emperors looked on with quiet satisfaction.

• 3:29Eleanor Janega?

  If you kept the Bohemians reliant on the empire for fancy titles, then it stood to reason they wouldn't cause any issues. A divided Bohemia was a useful Bohemia: wealthy enough to pay its dues, divided enough to never become a threat.

• 3:51Eleanor Janega?

  Just imagine trying to build a prosperous kingdom under those conditions. Every royal funeral threatened to descend into a civil war. Every ambitious prince believed destiny was only one battlefield away. Family reunions were probably best avoided. In other words, things were a mess. There had been two kings of Bohemia already: Vladišlas II and Vladišlas II. But there was a catch. Both men had been named king for services rendered to the Holy Roman Emperor, which is why the title was not hereditary. When each king died,

• 4:35Eleanor Janega?

  his son quietly reverted to being Duke of Bohemia. Royal titles and privileges vanished almost as quickly as they'd been granted: medieval glitter, imperial terms and conditions attached. But by the 13th century, a ruler appeared who was politically savvy enough to stand out amongst his rivals and eventually ensure that, going forward, the rulers of Bohemia would always be kings, not mere dukes. Along the way, deals would be cut and abandoned, wives divorced and returned, engagements made and broken,

• 5:19Eleanor Janega?

  and friendships kindled and quashed. But one man would stand out as the first hereditary king of Bohemia. His name was Pchemysl Otokar I.

• 5:37Eleanor Janega?

  The Pchemyslid dynasty had ruled Bohemia for centuries, so long, in fact, that their origins had already dissolved into legend. According to tradition, they descended from the mythical plamen Pchemysl, summoned from his fields to marry the prophetess Lambouche, and found the Czech state itself. Whether anyone actually believed that scarcely mattered. Like all good royal origin myths, it reminded people that this family had always ruled, and therefore, perhaps always should.

• 6:11Eleanor Janega?

  The man who changed the rules of the game, Pchemysl Otokar I, was born in 1155, a particularly turbulent time in Bohemia. His father was King Vladišlas II, but Otokar was not the eldest son. In fact, he wasn't even born to his father's first wife. When that first wife died, Vladišlas needed a new one, as medieval kings generally did. Dynastic planning waits for no widower. Judith of Thuringia was chosen, and Otokar was their firstborn son. Pchemysl Otokar had five older half-siblings, including his father's named heir Frederick.

• 6:56Eleanor Janega?

  Another half-brother, Adalbert, also known by the Czech name Voitek, would go on to be the Archbishop of Salzburg. And his sister, Agnes, who would eventually rise to be the abbess of St. George's convent in Prague. So, Otokar was important, but he was not the obvious heir. He was a spare in a family where spares had a habit of becoming a problem. King Vladišlas II's fancy title was a result of his close, personal friendship with the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Barbarossa was one of those rulers who seemed never to take off his armor. With his unmistakably red beard,

• 7:38Eleanor Janega?

  hence the nickname Barbarossa or Red Beard, he spent most of his time stomping across the German and Italian lands, suppressing rebellious cities, settling disputes among princes, confronting popes, and reminding anyone inclined to forget that the empire still claimed authority over much of Europe. If there wasn't a campaign underway, Barbarossa probably had his sights set on the next one. Vladišlas proved exactly the sort of ally Barbarossa appreciated. He repeatedly led Bohemian contingents across the Alps, fought in Italy, participated in sieges and ceremonies, and earned the emperor's confidence. His reward came in 1158,

• 8:23Eleanor Janega?

  when Barbarossa named Vladišlas king. It was a glittering achievement, and all very cool from Vladišlas's perspective. Here he was hobnobbing with the creme de la creme of European society. But it also came at a cost. The Bohemian nobles had little enthusiasm for these endless excursions into northern Italy. They watched as their knights disappeared over the Alps, their taxes rose, and their king seemed to devote all his attention to imperial ambitions rather than domestic affairs. Resentment simmered. Where was their so-called king, exactly?

• 9:06Eleanor Janega?

  It simply was not good enough. Even medieval nobles liked a little customer service. So, a revolt broke out, led by the Moravian dukes. Moravia, the southeastern historic land which today farms part of the modern Czech state alongside Bohemia and Czech Cilecia, was always a thorn in the side of Prague. The Bohemian dukes wanted their neighbors, often ruled by cadet branches of the Pchemyslid family, to be meek and subservient. But Moravia was wealthy, and its rulers could make claims just as compelling as the senior branches of the family. Thus, Vladišlas was forced to fight his way through Moravia,

• 9:51Eleanor Janega?

  retaking key strongholds like Bornau and Olomos. It was a successful gambit. But Vladišlas was worried. If he had to fight his own subjects to retain control of the kingdom, the nobility might well be eyeing up an alternative successor to his firstborn son Frederick. This was probably on the money, because Bohemia was still formally an elective duchy, and the very same nobles Vladišlas had just been battling were the ones who would need to elect and confirm his son as their ruler. Vladišlas had a cunning plan. In 1173, when Otokar was about 18,

• 10:35Eleanor Janega?

  Vladišlas decided he would abdicate, setting up his son Frederick to be elected while he was still alive to make sure that, you know, everything went the way he wanted it to. Surely, it was a foolproof plan?

• 10:51Eleanor Janega?

  No. It was, in fact, the sort of foolproof plan that immediately attracts several fools. Because Vladišlas had not received permission from the emperor to do it, and he did not have the consensus of Bohemian nobles backing the plan either. In medieval politics, missing one of those things was unfortunate. Missing both was basically an invitation to chaos.

• 11:20Eleanor Janega?

  Otakar’s older half-brother Frederick kept the ducal throne of Bohemia for less than a year. And soon, there was a new duke, Sobieslav II, a Plemmlitsl cousin from another branch of the family. He didn’t last that long either. The Moravian prince Konrad II Otte of Nojmo sided with Frederick. Further afield, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa heard that his old ally Vladislav had been outmaneuvered and got involved, while Pope Alexander III also weighed in against Sobieslav.

• 11:58Eleanor Janega?

  Poor Sobieslav was set aside and eventually shuffled off to die in obscurity. Frederick was well-liked by the imperial side, but seemed destined to annoy the local nobility, just like his father before him. He almost immediately turned against Konrad, the Moravian prince, because he decided that his brother Otakar should have some Czech lands to call his own. It was probably an attempt to keep Otakar, by now a bona fide grown-up, occupied and onside. However, that really upset Konrad. Frederick was driven out of Prague by troops and only managed to slink back in with Barbarossa’s

• 12:43Eleanor Janega?

  help in 1182. To smooth things over, Barbarossa raised Moravia to the status of a margrevate, a territory governed by a margrave, originally a kind of frontier lord or military commander. This made Konrad even more powerful. Barbarossa also gave Frederick’s cousin Henry Bzyslav, the bishop of Prague, princely status. That meant the Czech lands now effectively had three competing rulers: Frederick in Bohemia, Konrad in Moravia, and Henry Bzyslav in Prague’s bishopric, all under the thumb of the Holy Roman Emperor.

• 13:28Eleanor Janega?

  This was a bit of a blinder on Barbarossa’s part, but he hadn’t figured on one thing: Otakar was not weak like his brother, and he had no intention of going away. Otakar decided that he was going to press his brother’s claim, and perhaps, in the longer term, his own, against Konrad’s position in Moravia. He amassed troops, and in December 1185 at Loodmitze, Otakar fought in support of his brother Frederick against Konrad’s forces. The battle was bloody, and Otakar emerged with a reputation as something more dangerous

• 14:09Eleanor Janega?

  than a spare prince: a competent war leader. In a family of people with claims, that is the moment everyone starts looking at you slightly differently. Yet even victory had to be translated into politics. In 1186 at Kneem, the Plemmlitsls negotiated a compromise, under which Konrad recognized Frederick as overlord, but was confirmed as ruler of Moravia, and crucially, as Frederick’s successor in Bohemia. It was a thoroughly Bohemian settlement.

• 14:49Eleanor Janega?

  Nobody entirely trusted it, nobody was fully pleased by it, and everyone was already drooling at the thought of the next funeral. So here’s a little hydration break to make sure you’re still with me. Bohemia is still a duchy, not a secure kingdom. Vladislav II has tried and failed to pass power neatly to Frederick, his elder son. Frederick is back in Prague, but fragile. Konrad, the Moravian cousin rival, has been recognized as the next man in line.

• 15:29Eleanor Janega?

  Otakar, our man, has not yet gotten the throne, but he’s proved that he can fight. Got that? On the 25th of March 1189, as he was preparing to join the Third Crusade, Frederick died, and as the terms of the Kneem agreement dictated, Konrad became duke. Konrad had got this far because the Czech nobility had supported him, and in return, the nobility managed to wrangle a new set of rights out of the newly minted duke.

• 16:12Eleanor Janega?

  One hand washes the other, preferably before the next bout of plague. These rights guaranteed, among other things, that freemen could go to provincial courts if they felt they were being abused by the duke, that daughters and brothers of lords could inherit family lands if relatives died without heirs, rather than those lands being seized automatically by the duke, and that land could only be confiscated if everyone had first checked there was no customary chain of inheritance to follow. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that if the crown is guaranteeing the rights of freemen and lesser nobles, said crown is not particularly strong.

• 16:55Eleanor Janega?

  Please see King John and Magenacarta for more information, although, in fairness, the Czechs got there first. I’m just saying. Konrad was no exception to this rule, and in order to ensure that his rule was accepted, he got back to what weak Bohemian rulers did best: cozying up to the Holy Roman Emperor. But now, the imperial crown had changed hands. Barbarossa had died while on crusade, ignominiously taken out by drowning in a river, and Henry VI was now on the throne. Like his father before him, Henry VI had big plans.

• 17:39Eleanor Janega?

  He wanted to expand his influence further south on the Italian peninsula and was fighting for Sicily. He threatened to attack the Byzantine Empire, only backing down when Emperor Alexius III Angelos agreed to pay him. Even then, Henry expanded his power in areas Constantinople traditionally thought of as its own, making the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia and the Kingdom of Cyprus formal dependents of the empire. To top it all off, he wanted to make sure the Holy Roman Empire became a hereditary monarchy, and that his son would inherit it when he died, which he feared, quite rightly,

• 18:20Eleanor Janega?

  as it turned out, might happen while he was away on crusade, like his father before him. All of this was, to put it mildly, a bit of a strain on the patience of the various noble families of the Holy Roman Empire. The prince electors were worried about what would become of them if the emperorship became fixed to a particular family. Besides which, the Holy Shalfen’s predilection for expansion and conquest was all well and good if it was happening in Cilicia or Sicily, but what if the emperor set his sights closer to home? It’s always easier to admire imperial ambition when it’s pointed at someone else.

• 19:05Eleanor Janega?

  If Henry wanted to aggrandize himself, he was going to need to start making friends. Fast. And, as usual, one of the prince electors stood out as an obvious choice for political friendship: the ruler of Bohemia. So a new and politically expedient relationship was formed. Thus, if the emperor was in Sicily, so too was Konrad, each man bolstering the other’s reputation and proving himself to be an international force with powerful friends. The trouble was that while Konrad knew imperial friendship could help him press his claims,

• 19:48Eleanor Janega?

  powerful friends could not protect him from germs. Konrad succumbed to some sort of pestilence in the imperial military camp outside Naples in 1191. A prestigious death, it certainly was, but it was a death nonetheless. With Konrad dead, you might think we are about to get to the triumphal rise of Otakar, given that he was the man who had beaten Konrad back on the battlefield. However, things did not work out that way. This story has a firm tendency of not doing the simple thing.

• 20:27Eleanor Janega?

  Instead, in 1191, into the gap of ducal power arose Venceslas II, Duke of Bohemia. Not the later King Venceslas II, because medieval numbering is a practical joke played on future podcasters. This Venceslas was the brother of the ill-fated Sobieslav II. His rise to the throne had come about as a result of yet more wheeling and dealing on Konrad’s part. When Konrad had taken the Bohemian throne, someone had to rule Moravia, and Venceslas fit the bill. In fact, he had already done the job before Konrad had, and Konrad had kept him out of the role in order to take the title.

• 21:12Eleanor Janega?

  Venceslas then seemed bidable and like an all-around safe bet. He had some land back, and he clearly wasn’t the sort to go pressing claims, unlike the thirsty young Otakar.

• 21:28Eleanor Janega?

  This benign attitude would be the undoing of Václavus. He might have been willing to wait his turn politely until the right person died and he was granted some land, but the Otakar was impatient. The newly minted Václavus was deposed in fewer than three months. Bamboozled, he fled, attempting to find support at the imperial court. He was instead found on the road and imprisoned by the Margrave of Lusacia. He would never be released and died after 1192.

• 22:07Eleanor Janega?

  As career pivots go, this was not a success. However, it was not as if Bohemian succession had been a smooth process up to this point. And Emperor Henry VI seems to have chalked it all up to a typical case of "chemyslids will be chemyslids." He affirmed Otakar as duke in 1192, and Otakar, celebrated by immediately betraying him.

• 22:35Eleanor Janega?

  The German princes had grown tired of Henry's antics. If the Czechs didn't like their knights being sent off to die in Italy at the whims of the emperor, German speakers weren't hugely keen on it either. They wanted to reign in Henry, and some were prepared to look towards the rival House of Wealth. At the very least, they wanted an emperor who treated Germany as more than a convenient wallet with a few castles thrown in.

• 23:04Eleanor Janega?

  From Henry's point of view, what added insult to injury was that when Otakar had been affirmed as duke, he and his brother Vladislav Henry, who had been made Margrave of Moravia when Otakar took the Bohemian crown, had promised that they would kick some of that sweet Bohemian silver Henry's way once they'd secured their thrones.

• 23:26Eleanor Janega?

  Wars in Sicily do not pay for themselves, you know? And from the imperial point of view, Bohemia was supposed to be a cash cow.

• 23:35Eleanor Janega?

  So, in June 1193, both Otakar and Vladislav Henry were deposed by a decision made at the Imperial Diet of Worms. Instead, their cousin Henry Brzezislaw, the Bishop of Prague—remember him? The cleric with princely status, yeah—he was made the duke. This was wild, even in the context of what is already admittedly a twisty tale. Bishops were not ordinarily meant to control Bohemia. That kind of thing might fly in Cologne, Mainzer, Trier, but Bohemia was emphatically not usually the home of bishop rulers.

• 24:15Eleanor Janega?

  To make sure that nothing dodgy—or, okay, look, dodgier—happened, Vladislav Henry was called to Prague Castle, where Henry Brzezislaw could keep an eye on him.

• 24:26Eleanor Janega?

  However, by 1197, both Henry VI and Henry Brzezislaw were dead.

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• 26:06Speaker 02

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• 27:02Eleanor Janega?

  This meant that a new duke could be elected, free from overbearing imperial oversight. On the 22nd of June 1197, the Bohemians then immediately elected Vladislav Henry. Otakar was in attendance at the election, but let's just say that to say he was pissed off is an understatement. Indeed, rather a lot of nobles were somewhat peeved, to say the least. Soon, the brothers who had formerly supported each other were amassing armies, and on the 6th of December, the two camps were facing off on the battlefield and on the brink of war.

• 27:44Eleanor Janega?

  It is worth stressing that this was not a metaphorical brink. It was the real brink, with swords and spears.

• 27:53Eleanor Janega?

  However, somehow, the brothers managed to do that rare thing and engaged in something called, I think you pronounce it diplomacy? Diplomacy? I know, who would have thought it?

• 28:06Eleanor Janega?

  Instead of fighting it out, they came to a settlement. Vladislav Henry would take back Moravia, and, as Margrave, the area would be more or less autonomous. He could have lands and a title, and he wouldn't need to worry about his brother breathing down his neck. After all, had Otakar not already agreed to something like that five years before,

• 28:31Eleanor Janega?

  Otakar would then take back the Bohemian throne and rule from Prague.

• 28:37Eleanor Janega?

  In general, most of the Bohemians were on board. They didn't really feel like dealing with another pitched battle. The chemyslids had been at each other's throats for a quarter of a century at this point, and the kingdom—which was still technically a duchy, though everyone was dreaming bigger—needed a break.

• 28:59Eleanor Janega?

  The only trouble with this was that the emperor technically had not signed off on the whole deal. More to the point, it was rather difficult to get an emperor to sign off on anything at the time because the Germans were at each other's throats every bit as badly as the Czechs.

• 29:20Eleanor Janega?

  This is one of the few confronting lessons of the period. Whatever mess you're in, the Holy Roman Empire could usually throw a larger one.

• 29:30Eleanor Janega?

  In the German lands, there were now two rival claimants to the imperial throne: the Hohenschopfen candidate Philip of Swabia and the Völfe challenger Otto IV of Brunswick. They had much stupider things to do than pay attention to who had claimed the throne of one of the richest imperial lands, apparently. And so Otakar went ahead and had himself crowned king in 1198.

• 29:55Eleanor Janega?

  He did this with the backing of Philip of Swabia, making sure that no one could act surprised when he showed up with a shiny new crown. Philip of Swabia decided to support this move. He needed help if he was going to oust Otto IV, and the Czechs were rich, after all. The financial support was probably worth allowing everyone to acknowledge where said financial support came from.

• 30:21Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, halftime recap. Otakar has gone from spare son to war leader, from duke to deposed duke, and now to king. His brother Vladislav Henry has Moravia. Philip of Swabia, the Hohenschopfen claimant, is backing Otakar. Otto IV, the Völfe claimant, is backed by others, including the Pope. Bohemia has a crown again, but it's not yet the hereditary security that Otakar really wants. In other words, he has a very fancy golden hat, but he still needs the paperwork.

• 31:04Eleanor Janega?

  Otakar immediately celebrated becoming king by divorcing his wife. See, he had been married to Adelaide of Misen since 1178, when he didn't have a title to his name and was just one of several warring Czechs. The couple seemed to have been a love match, and they'd married without their parents' consent or even attendance. And this is likely because the happy couple welcomed a baby son Vladislav relatively soon after their marriage. They would have more children, but it seems the chaos of life without a set title or home eventually took its toll.

• 31:45Eleanor Janega?

  Adelaide was frequently at her brother's court in Misen, while Otakar was gallivanting about. And the two simply drifted apart. Look, it's hard to sustain domestic bliss when your address is wherever the army currently is.

• 32:07Eleanor Janega?

  Now that he was a genuine king, Ottokar needed to go shopping for a new queen with a more royal pedigree. And he settled on Constance of Hungary, a daughter of King Bella III. He announced that Adelaide and he were always too closely related to be married. You know, never mind the children and the 20 years of marriage already under their belt. Having pulled off one quick breakup, Ottokar struck again. He had noticed that his former patron, Philip of Swabia, was falling out of favor in his quest for the imperial crown. Otto IV was finding more and more supporters.

• 32:50Eleanor Janega?

  Principal among them Pope Innocent III, one of the most powerful popes ever to play the game. Innocent was concerned about how much land the Hohenstolffens held. They'd managed to get hold of Sicily, meaning the papal lands were now sandwiched between their lands in northern Italy and the Sicilian base. Innocent wanted to put a stop to any squeezing of the Church's lands and declared for Otto. Ottokar, having just pushed through a pretty dodgy divorce and a questionable kingship, did not want the Pope eyeing up Prague too closely. So he too declared for the Weals.

• 33:32Eleanor Janega?

  The thing about this about-face is that Philip did not take it lying down. As far as he was concerned, he was the rightful king of the Romans and future emperor. And if you questioned that, he had every right to declare you deposed. More to the point, if he did that, he had every right to name a new ruler of Bohemia in your place. Soon, Diepol III, one of Ottokar's chemisly cousins, was named in his place. Added to this, while Ottokar may have moved on in his love life, his ex-wife emphatically had not.

• 34:12Eleanor Janega?

  Ottokar may have wanted a newer wife with more political credentials, but unfortunately for him, Adelaide was no pushover. And she could play the politics game as well as any young Hungarian princess. As soon as Ottokar made his move against her in 1199, she began litigating the divorce, eventually all the way up to Innocent III, the very man Ottokar was trying to win over by supporting Otto. And turns out she had a pretty good case. This pincer movement from the imperial and domestic spheres brought Ottokar back to the bargaining table and back to Philip the Hohenstolfin.

• 34:54Eleanor Janega?

  It also brought Adelaide back to Bohemia in 1205. From there, an uneasy truce was brokered. And Ottokar and Adelaide worked together for a time to marry their children off to strategic courts such as Denmark. However, eventually Constance had a new son. And with most of Ottokar and Adelaide's sons dead, the old queen was forced back out of the kingdom and into retirement in a nunnery. Having said that, for a minute there, she played in absolute blinder.

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• 37:08Eleanor Janega?

  Ottokar might have reestablished equilibrium on the domestic front, but he was soon overtaken by larger imperial politics yet again. In 1206, Otto and Philip had come to actual blows in their war for the throne. Otto was wounded on the battlefield on the 27th of July, and Pope Innocent was getting thoroughly fed up with the whole affair. He pushed the two men towards negotiations, with Philip offering Otto a marriage to his daughter and a huge dowry if Otto would just give up his quest for the imperial throne. Otto refused, and the whole thing might have blown up again, but

• 37:49Eleanor Janega?

  Philip was conveniently murdered on the 21st of June 1208. Otto got to marry Philip's daughter Beatrix anyway and was elected the King of the Romans at Frankfurt on the 11th of November 1208. He was later crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome in 1209. And he celebrated it by immediately, you guessed it, picking a fight with Pope Innocent III. At this stage, anyone backing Otto must have begun to feel the first cold trickle of buyer's remorse. Innocent assumed that his patronage of Otto would mean

• 38:31Eleanor Janega?

  that Otto would protect papal lands and interests in Italy. Indeed, Innocent extracted promises from Otto that income from vacant bishoprics, which had been paid towards the emperor, would now go to the Church and that the Church would oversee episcopal appointments within the German lands instead of the emperor doing it. The investiture contest never stops, you see. Otto also promised to restore lands that Matilda of Tuscany had bequeathed to the Church and not to start any fights with the young Frederick, King of Sicily. Otto began to do exactly the opposite of all this pretty much immediately.

• 39:13Eleanor Janega?

  He chased papal troops out of Matilda's former lands and demanded that young Frederick do homage to him for lands in Apulia and Calabria. When Frederick refused, Otto declared the lands forfeit. Innocent was enraged and excommunicated Otto on the 18th of November 1210. If you were keeping track, that was just over a year after Otto's imperial coronation. It was not a long honeymoon. Otto pushed into southern Italy, and Innocent responded by backing the young Frederick of Sicily, his ward,

• 39:54Eleanor Janega?

  as an alternative king of the Romans at the Diet of Nuremberg in 1211. Otto was dragged from southern Italy back to the German lands, where he found that the elector princes had been very serious when they had voted for Frederick. They took a super dim view of all the Italian adventuring when they were facing threats on the home front, including pressure from Ottokar's son-in-law, King Vladimir II of Denmark, who was married to Ottokar's daughter Margaret, better known in Denmark as Queen Dagmar. When Otto's wife Beatrix, Philip's daughter, died in the summer of 1212, ye realized that he had very few friends left.

• 40:38Eleanor Janega?

  On the 5th of December 1212, the prince electors made it clear that this was the end of the road for Otto and confirmed Frederick again. Chief among Frederick's supporters was Ottokar, and for good reason. To bring the self-proclaimed King of Bohemia firmly into the fold, Frederick had already issued, on the 26th of September 1212, the so-called Golden Bull of Sicily. It declared that not only was Ottokar the King of Bohemia, but the title was now officially hereditary, meaning Bohemia was a kingdom, not merely a duchy.

• 41:22Eleanor Janega?

  And Ottokar's descendants would not have to worry quite so much about infighting with their cousins over who ruled. Even better, the Bull confirmed Bohemia's exceptional status within the Holy Roman Empire. All of that meddling that Henry and Otto had done, creating anti-dukes and rival claimants, much harder now. The emperor was to recognize the ruler accepted by the Bohemian nobility, and the royal title was tied to Ottokar's line. If you were King of Bohemia, your heir now had a serious legal platform, not just a hopeful army and an anxious horse.

• 42:04Eleanor Janega?

  The kings of Bohemia were also allowed special privileges amongst the prince electors. They had a kingdom to be running. I could not be expected to show up at every imperial diet that was called. So they were now allowed to skip meetings that were not close to the Bohemian border. So Nuremberg, fine. Worms, way over there by Frankfurt, no thanks. Medieval travel policy: no unnecessary meetings, especially if there were no autobonds under construction. Even further, the King of Bohemia was declared the premier lay prince elector. And yeah, okay, this was mostly a flex.

• 42:47Eleanor Janega?

  But it was a flex all the same. The emperor also acknowledged that any investiture of a Bohemian ruler would happen in line with the approval of the Bohemian nobility, a nod to the electoral roots of the Bohemian ducal system. There was some quid pro quo, however. The Bohemian kings had to promise that any emperor-elect traveling to Rome for coronation, as Frederick soon hoped to do, would be given a retinue of 300 Bohemian knights for the journey.

• 43:24Eleanor Janega?

  So, are you still with me? Here's my final hydration break before we enter the final act and hopefully avoid extra time and penalties. Al-takar has backed Philip, abandoned Philip, returned to Philip, survived the auto-disaster, and finally backed Frederick II. In return, Frederick has given him the Golden Bowl of Sicily. That confirms Al-takar as hereditary king of Bohemia and makes Bohemia far harder for emperors to meddle with. So, the big transformation is this: Al-takar has converted 25 years of family chaos into legal status.

• 44:09Eleanor Janega?

  The man did not just win a crown, he got the paperwork to prove it. Bohemia's exceptional status, always tacit, was now explicit. The Bohemian king was an emperor-maker par excellence, the ruler whose support needed to be sought first and foremost if one was making a play for the imperial throne. Al-takar had done what no duke or king before him had managed to do since the Autonians had forced the Czech lands under their control during the reign of Saint Václav. He had recovered their status and prestige and assured a degree of security of which

• 44:52Eleanor Janega?

  many other imperial regions could only dream. All this ushered in a boom for Bohemia. Here now was a stable kingdom, no longer so vulnerable to the caprices of the imperial crown, of which there were many. As Frederick II aged, he increasingly fought with the papacy and was excommunicated and brought back into the fold more than once. Why bother with all of that when you could just move next door to Bohemia, where there was a proper and established monarchy and, with luck, slightly fewer papal thunderbolts?

• 45:33Eleanor Janega?

  Thus, during Al-takar's reign, German speakers from surrounding territories became part of the Wider Ostseitlungen into Bohemia. They often settled just inside the borders, where they could benefit from the protections of the Bohemian crown, while remaining only a few days' walk from other German-speaking communities. These new settlements meant that established Bohemian towns were soon filling up, and new towns and cities began to appear in the thick Bohemian forest. The kingdom was growing at an impressive pace. I'm telling you, nothing says a successful medieval state like new markets, new charters, any sudden demand for more bakers.

• 46:18Eleanor Janega?

  In order to cement and capitalize on all this new power and prestige, Al-takar went about doing what monarchs do best: shopping for beneficial marriages for his children. In particular, he managed to pull off a very prestigious engagement for his young daughter, Princess Agnes. After an earlier childhood betrothal to a Cilician prince had come to nothing, Agnes was promised, while still a child, to the Emperor Frederick II's son, Henry, the young king of the Romans and king of Germany. This was as good as it gets in terms of arranged marriages. Henry would likely one day become the Holy Roman Emperor, and Agnes could function as

• 47:02Eleanor Janega?

  a voice for the Czechs, ensuring that the needs of the kingdom were seen to. It was not romantic, exactly, but it was dynasty networking of the highest order. You know, I'm kind of married it for a sight, but with irresistible dowries. In these circumstances, it was usual for young princesses to be set off to be raised at the court of their betrothed. The trouble here was that, when talking about the Emperor Frederick II, it wasn't exactly clear where that was. Frederick himself kept his court in Palermo, whereas the young Henry was in Germany, often

• 47:44Eleanor Janega?

  associated with Cologne and proving to anyone who cared to ask that he was very German indeed, thank you very much. It would be odd to send Agnes to Sicily, and unseemly for her to be unsupervised at her fiancé's court. So, instead, she was sent to the court of Duke Leopold VI of Austria, Ababenberg. Exactly why this happened is a bit unclear. Perhaps the thinking was that the Austrians would be better stewards by dint of being German speakers. Perhaps some other complex political wrangling was happening behind the scenes that's now been lost to us.

• 48:25Eleanor Janega?

  One way or another, the decision proved to be a disaster. Duke Leopold knew how good this match was, and he had a daughter of his own, Margaret, whom he would much rather see on the imperial throne. Eventually, Agnes's engagement was scuppered, and in 1225, the 21-year-old Margaret married the 14-year-old Henry. Leopold, in short, had been asked to mine someone else's golden ticket, and he quietly swapped it for his own. Al-takar was furious. He went to war against the Austrians and pressed for a new match for Agnes, this time

• 49:06Eleanor Janega?

  with Henry III of England, son of King John and young plantaogenit king across the channel. This was a political coup on Al-takar's part. Frederick II and Henry III of England were major players in the same European diplomatic chessboard, and a plantaogenit match would remind Frederick exactly who was paying the bills in the empire and what promises he had made to Bohemia. It was a marriage proposal with a subtext written in very large letters. Frederick was forced to think fast. He vetoed the match to Henry III and instead put himself forward as a potential husband

• 49:48Eleanor Janega?

  for the now teenage Agnes. This is all a bit weird from our standpoint, but at the time, it made sense. Frederick knew the Bohemians were a serious force to be reckoned with, and he wanted to keep that power in-house. What better way to do that than by locking Agnes down himself? The trouble was that the princess herself was absolutely not on board. At this point, Agnes put her foot down. Yes, she was a Bohemian princess, but it turns out she was also deeply religious. Despite what her father wanted, she wanted to devote herself to the church.

• 50:29Eleanor Janega?

  She would go on to found religious institutions in Prague, join the poor clares, and subsequently becoming a saint, another glittering holy jewel in the Schemisal line, joining her saintly predecessors Ludmilla and Václav. It's quite something when the most decisive person in a diplomatic crisis is the teenage girl everyone is trying to marry off. Al-takar had to content himself with this decision, and he put his efforts into ensuring that his other plans for family security went forward. Chief among his concerns was seeing his son Václav safely on the Bohemian throne.

• 51:08Eleanor Janega?

  On the 6th of February 1228, he saw his son crowned as co-ruler, a move that was fairly common in situations where succession felt dicey. Given that Bohemia was a newly hereditary kingdom and that the family had only just stopped fighting each other over the throne, this was deemed prudent. Especially so because on the 15th of December 1230, Al-takar died. Al-takar had an incredible innings for a medieval ruler. He lived for about 75 years and had dragged what had formerly been a divided duchy to the fore of imperial politics.

• 51:52Eleanor Janega?

  He left behind not a dukedom, but a kingdom, which was handed smoothly to his son, King Václav I. After all that, a boring succession wasn't a failure of drama. It was the point. And this easy transition would be key, as Václav faced down new pressures from an emboldened Austria, which attempted to seize lands from neighbors, and then the shock of Mongol raids in 1241. The kingdom Al-takar left behind was not free from danger, but it was far better equipped to survive it.

• 52:34Eleanor Janega?

  Schemisal Al-takar's accomplishments are impressive in and of themselves. In the context, they're even more overwhelming. It is impossible to tell this story without also bringing in imperial politics. Explaining Al-takar means introducing a cast of characters and a political landscape that can be overwhelming, even to those of us recounting it 800 years after the fact. Indeed, this is why rulers like Al-takar are often overlooked. Telling his story is complex, and it requires the same sort of patience that he displayed on the throne just to understand it.

• 53:16Eleanor Janega?

  But therein lies his genius. Living through this chaos and using it to create a centralized political entity was an incredible feat. We could learn a lot from his patience in our own turbulent times. History often celebrates conquerors who redraw maps with cavalry and fire. Al-takar's achievement was quieter, and in some ways, more impressive. He inherited chaos and built a framework that outlived him.

• 53:50Eleanor Janega?

  That is less dramatic than a battlefield legend, but it's also much rarer. Thank you for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit. If you were interested in some of the topics I mentioned in this episode, you might want to go back and check out our past episodes on the Investiture Contest, the Holy Roman Empire, Matilda of Tuscany, and of course, Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent film with our own Matt Lewis about the rise of the Plantaogenits,

• 54:32Eleanor Janega?

  as well as ad-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com/subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts. Until all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.

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