A Holy Roman Emporer who was the grandson of Barbarossa. Frederick was supposed to have been a fairly ugly man--short, fat, bald, and nearsighted. He was also supposed to have been a rather intelligent and inquisitive fellow.
Frederick was not a good man. On his wedding night, he wooed his bride's sister. He drove his son to suicide. He was said to have been extremely sexually corrupt. When he was young, he swore he would someday go Crusading in the Holy Land, however he was somewhat of a coward, and therefore put it off and off until the Pope excommunicated him. Finally, in 1228, he got his men together and left for Palestine. To the surprise of all, he brought a Muslim interpreter who knew Arabic, and he actually offered some modicum of respect to the Islamic customs.
When he got to the Holy Land, he quickly surveyed the place and decided that fighting another set of wars would be pointless. Instead, he engaged in a series of clever and cunning negotiations which resulted in the Christians getting control of Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem. Furthermore, the two sides agreed to a ceasefire for ten years.
This freaked all of the Christian Knights out. They hated him for acquiring Jerusalem without a fight, and they hated him because they didn't get to kill any Muslims. His own people threw pig entrails, slop, and rotten fruit at him. He had gotten everything the Christians had wanted, had succeeded where the other Crusades had failed, and not a single man had died in the process. And they threw pig entrails at him. |
