1: From the Smallest of Things... (1185)
Chapter 1: From the smallest of things...
Sparsa le trecce morbide
Sull’affannoso petto,
Lenta le palme, e rorida
Di morte il bianco aspetto,
Giace la pia, col tremolo
Sguardo cercando il Ciel.
Cessa il compianto: unanime
S’innalza una preghiera:
Calata in su la gelida fronte,
Una man leggiera
Sulla pupilla cerulea
Stende l’ultimo vel
Alessandro Capponi, La Morte di Costanza, Milano, 1823 (1)
It had been an uncomfortably hot and humid day and her carriage was moving painfully slowly in the flatlands at the feet of the Mount Gargano, thought a quite annoyed Lady Constance d’Hauteville as she finished reciting her evening orisons, annoyed at the many mosquitoes circling her (2); apparently, the sudden summer rains that had poured down the day before had ruined the road and that necessitated very slow and careful progress for Constance and the party of clerical and secular officers and knights who accompanied her in this pilgrimage.
She could be very well leaving her home country never to return to it, married off because of diplomatic reasons she could didn’t completely understand, but that seemed very clear to people such as Archbishop Walter (3), to a German prince instead of continuing her life of piety and meditation at the abbey near Monreale where she had grown up, but she was still of the blood of the great King Roger.
She had been adamant with her nephew the king: before the marriage with Henry Hohenstaufen she wanted to make a Pilgrimage to Mons Sancti Angeli and visit the cave where the messenger of the Lord had manifested itself, so that she could pray for forgiveness and deliverance from the vote that she had made, in her heart at least, to live as a nun. It couldn’t be too soon before she set her foot on that hallowed ground and left this desolate swampland.
The following days where even more distressing, as Constance was taken by bouts of fever that left her drenched in cold sweat and utterly dejected. Still, she insisted that the journey must reach its conclusion, supported in this by physicians, who argued that the thinner air on top of the mountain would dispel an illness without doubt brought about by the corrupted air of the lowlands.
The Sanctuary of Saint Michael Archangel as it appears today
Yet neither this, nor the vaunted thaumaturgical powers of the Sanctuary could save the princess from the peculiarly virulent strain of malaria that had infected her and the princess herself, feeling that death was upon her, after summoning her last forces for a night of prayer in the cave that forms the center of the Sanctuary and that, according to tradition, had not been consecrated by human hand, but by the presence of the Archangel Michael himself, took the monastic votes and vests. What would have been negated to her by raison d’état had she lived was granted her on the very doorstep of death and, after receiving her last rites, Constance closed her eyes to this world at the ninth hour of the tenth day of August, in the year of the Lord 1185.
Thessalonike, 26 August 1185
(As a soundtrack you could listen to
Count Tancred of Lecce was feeling uneasy.
He had never been an overly pious or gentle man, but what he had witnessed, no, what he had enabled and caused, over the last days, after the city’s fall had left him with a very bitter taste about his conquest. True, the city had resisted and was inhabited by schismatics, but this had been more than a normal sack, this had been an almost complete defilement and massacre of the city’s population. Was it right to avenge in this way the killings of three years before? Could God forgive the killing of little children, the rape of their mothers and sisters, the torture of their fathers, all this because the cause of the victors was righteous? (4) His brooding thoughts were interrupted by an aide, who brought him an envelope, sealed with the royal sigil and coming straight from the court chancellery in Palermo.
The letter had been written by the king in his own hand and it confirmed the voices that had come on Venetian merchant galleys coming from Brindisi: Lady Constance had suddenly fallen ill and died on the Gargano just before leaving the Kingdom to meet her groom. The death had been received very poorly by the Germans, and apparently voices were already being spread that it had been “unnatural” and Matthew Ajello was being implicated in it, as long time oppose of the marriage and supporter of Tancred’s own dynastic claims. In short, relations with the Imperial House of Hohenstaufen were again worryingly tensing up and, far from a friend against the usurper Andronikos Komnenos, it was very possible that the Emperor could turn hostile and even attempt to assert his rights on the Realm.
Given the situation, William had decided, in his royal prerogative of making war and peace, to retreat from the Constantinopolitan expedition, so that the army and fleet could be ready to defend Sicily and dissuade Frederick and Henry from any untoward moves.
Tancred had never seen much of Constance, therefore he didn’t feel particularly saddened by her death, especially since it opened the road to the throne for himself and his sons, but, at the same time, he couldn’t help feeling taken aback by the orders to retreat: the weak and divided Greeks didn’t seem to pose any real challenge and he felt confident that soon he could have been in Constantinople itself, where he certainly would have become the real power behind the throne of the Sicilian-backed pretender, Alexios Komnenos the Pinkernes (5).
Now all this had become impossible, and just because his king was worrying about an invasion that would certainly incur in the wrath of the Curia of Rome and that few would support, without any real claim besides “ancient imperial rights” that had never been enforced South of the Patrimonium Sancti Petri. The wounded, but not defeated Greek enemy worried him too: now they were weak, but if he left the campaign they could finally get their act together and become a threat again. A strong Constantinople would always have her eyes on the fertile plains of Apulia…
But Tancred didn’t dare to openly defy his king and so, after having had a short war council with Count Baldwin and Count Richard of Acerra to organize the retreat towards Durazzo and the transportation of the considerable loot acquired over the campaign, he embarked, with a small part of the army on the galleys and transports of the fleet. That part of the force was under his direct command and William had given him a certain leeway to use the fleet to “deter pursuit, harass the usurpers ports and isles and disperse or destroy his ships”: Tancred, in agreement with the capable commander Margaritus of Brindisi (6) and the Pinkernes had hatched a plan that would give the Realm and himself some lasting gain from the aborted expedition, a plan partially inspired by Isaakios Komnenos successful rebellion in Cyprus.
The island of Crete, lying in a perfect position in the center of the eastern Mediterranean was a tempting target, one that earlier “visits” upon his coasts by Margarito had proven to have little in the way of defenses, especially with the bulk of the Greek fleet retreated to the Sea of Marmara in protection of the City of Cities. And in fact, faced by a fleet of at least eighty galleys and an army which included about one thousand knights (a fifth of the original force, since most others had retreated to Durazzo and from them were in the process of going back to their Apulian or Sicilian estates), the local garrison could do little and, in the space of less than a month, all the cities, villages and castles on the island had been subdued, with most of them surrendering without a fight, fearing sack and destruction. The fleet had also secured the two small islands of Kythera and Antikythera, lying between Crete and the Peloponnese. On the 11th September Alexios Komnenos was acclaimed Basileus in Chania and three days after he conceded the pronoia of the island to Tancred, while preparations were made for a marriage between him and the elder daughter of the Count of Lecce, Costanza.
Tancredi didn’t lose time in paying his homage and offering the island to his liege William II, who, after being soothed about the perceived insubordination by a shrewd Tancred, who convinced him of the danger that the island would have posed to commerce and to a possible crusading expedition in support of the beleaguered Kingdom of Jerusalem, had it remained in hostile hands, created him Duke of Candia, while Kythera and Antikythera were added to Margarito’s Palatine County. A final diplomatic move by Tancred for the year 1185 was the invitation to both the Venetians and the Genoese to open fondaci in the islands' ports, where they were both offered extensive tax and jurisdictional privileges. This proved to be very important to keep reasonably good relations with both Republics, happy to have a friendly and relatively staging ground for their commercial operations in the East now that Constantinople was proving so hostile to Latin merchants, under Basileus Andronikus, whose grip on power seemed to be growing ever tighter, if rumors of the assassination of Isaak Angelos were to be believed (7).
Author's Notes:
(0) Well, sorry for abandoning the Hohenstaufen TL. I am feeling bad about it, but there were unsolvable contradictions with it, I shouldn't even have started that probably... Besides, I wanted a more "sicilian" feel, and for that I need the isand to stay as the core of the realm for longer, hopefully with its muslim population not deported, although that's not that easy to achieve.
This one has a POD that should enable the Normans a relatively smooth period of rule in the crucial timeframe around the turn of the century. The objective is not an earlier Italian unification, rather an exploration of how the Norman realm could have evoved, had it lasted longer without the union with the HRE. This will aim at plausibility, but some might characterize it as a "wank", since things are likely to go better than OTL for the Sicilians, which will evolve similarly to Aragon in terms of a "Mediterranean empire". Again, sorry for the blunder with the Hohenstaufen TL, it won't happen again with this one.
(1) This comes from romantic poet and “father” father of the Italian novel Alessandro Manzoni’s play Adelchi: “Tresses strewn/on the heaving bosom/slackened palms/and death-pearled her white form/ the pious lies with trembling/gaze searching for Heaven./The lamentation ceases/unanimous rises a prayer:/coming down on the ice-cold/brow a light hand/ on the cerulean pupil/ the last veil spreads.” The meaning seems fitting to the scene, so I decided to use it, with a pun in the ITTL name of the author that I hope Italian-speaking readers will appreciate.
(2) This is the POD, Constance d’Hauteville decides to do a pilgrimage to Monte Sant’Angelo before her marriage to the future Henry VI, catches malaria in the swamplands between what in OTL would be Santa Margherita di Savoia and Manfredonia and dies soon after, avoiding the personal union with the HRE that characterized Sicilian history in OTL’s XIII century.
(3) This Archbishop Walter, head of the pro-imperial faction in Palermo, is better known as Walter Offamill, and widely reputed to have English origins (Of a Mill…). This has been debunked by more modern scholarship, which sees his surname as a corruption of his court title of “Protofamiliaris” or “First in the Royal Council/familia regis”
(4) By all accounts the sack of Thessalonika in August 1185 was particularly brutal, with a death toll of probably more than 7000. It is often seen as a retaliation to the massacres of the Latins in 1182 and a premonition of things to come in Constantinople in 1204. Obviously the thoughts of Tancred are here just for flavor, maybe they are too modern, in any case they have little bearing on the rest of the story.
(5) Alexios was a son of Johannes Doukas Komnenos, rumored to be a natural child of Basileus Manuel, which appears at least partially confirmed by the honours of Sebastos and Pinkernes (cup bearer) that had been bestowed unto him during his reign, as well as the fact that Andronikos persecuted him, forcing him to flee the Basileia and take refuge in Sicily.
(6) Margaritus of Brindisi, known as the “Arch-pirate” for his predatory action in the Aegean and off the Levantine and Egyptian coasts was a brilliant, if somewhat unruly, naval commander, most likely of greek origins, since his name should be a latinisation of Megareites, meaning “from Megara” the small island close to Athens. He had extensive properties in Brindisi and messina and had just been made Count Palatine of Cephalonia and Zante after capturing the Ionian islands earlier in 1185.
(7) IOTL The assassination attempt failed and backfired spectacularly, leading to Andronikos being cut to pieces by an angry mob and Angelos becoming emperor. ITTL different circumstances arising from the Norman retreat make it so that the attack is better planned and succeeds. The urban mob will also be grateful to Andronikos for the Norman’s retreat, even if he had no part in it, but will it last, with the loss of both Cyprus and Crete to pretenders? The Anatolian Dynatoi, meanwhile, are not going to be idle either…
Sparsa le trecce morbide
Sull’affannoso petto,
Lenta le palme, e rorida
Di morte il bianco aspetto,
Giace la pia, col tremolo
Sguardo cercando il Ciel.
Cessa il compianto: unanime
S’innalza una preghiera:
Calata in su la gelida fronte,
Una man leggiera
Sulla pupilla cerulea
Stende l’ultimo vel
Alessandro Capponi, La Morte di Costanza, Milano, 1823 (1)
It had been an uncomfortably hot and humid day and her carriage was moving painfully slowly in the flatlands at the feet of the Mount Gargano, thought a quite annoyed Lady Constance d’Hauteville as she finished reciting her evening orisons, annoyed at the many mosquitoes circling her (2); apparently, the sudden summer rains that had poured down the day before had ruined the road and that necessitated very slow and careful progress for Constance and the party of clerical and secular officers and knights who accompanied her in this pilgrimage.
She could be very well leaving her home country never to return to it, married off because of diplomatic reasons she could didn’t completely understand, but that seemed very clear to people such as Archbishop Walter (3), to a German prince instead of continuing her life of piety and meditation at the abbey near Monreale where she had grown up, but she was still of the blood of the great King Roger.
She had been adamant with her nephew the king: before the marriage with Henry Hohenstaufen she wanted to make a Pilgrimage to Mons Sancti Angeli and visit the cave where the messenger of the Lord had manifested itself, so that she could pray for forgiveness and deliverance from the vote that she had made, in her heart at least, to live as a nun. It couldn’t be too soon before she set her foot on that hallowed ground and left this desolate swampland.
The following days where even more distressing, as Constance was taken by bouts of fever that left her drenched in cold sweat and utterly dejected. Still, she insisted that the journey must reach its conclusion, supported in this by physicians, who argued that the thinner air on top of the mountain would dispel an illness without doubt brought about by the corrupted air of the lowlands.
The Sanctuary of Saint Michael Archangel as it appears today
Yet neither this, nor the vaunted thaumaturgical powers of the Sanctuary could save the princess from the peculiarly virulent strain of malaria that had infected her and the princess herself, feeling that death was upon her, after summoning her last forces for a night of prayer in the cave that forms the center of the Sanctuary and that, according to tradition, had not been consecrated by human hand, but by the presence of the Archangel Michael himself, took the monastic votes and vests. What would have been negated to her by raison d’état had she lived was granted her on the very doorstep of death and, after receiving her last rites, Constance closed her eyes to this world at the ninth hour of the tenth day of August, in the year of the Lord 1185.
Thessalonike, 26 August 1185
(As a soundtrack you could listen to
Count Tancred of Lecce was feeling uneasy.
He had never been an overly pious or gentle man, but what he had witnessed, no, what he had enabled and caused, over the last days, after the city’s fall had left him with a very bitter taste about his conquest. True, the city had resisted and was inhabited by schismatics, but this had been more than a normal sack, this had been an almost complete defilement and massacre of the city’s population. Was it right to avenge in this way the killings of three years before? Could God forgive the killing of little children, the rape of their mothers and sisters, the torture of their fathers, all this because the cause of the victors was righteous? (4) His brooding thoughts were interrupted by an aide, who brought him an envelope, sealed with the royal sigil and coming straight from the court chancellery in Palermo.
The letter had been written by the king in his own hand and it confirmed the voices that had come on Venetian merchant galleys coming from Brindisi: Lady Constance had suddenly fallen ill and died on the Gargano just before leaving the Kingdom to meet her groom. The death had been received very poorly by the Germans, and apparently voices were already being spread that it had been “unnatural” and Matthew Ajello was being implicated in it, as long time oppose of the marriage and supporter of Tancred’s own dynastic claims. In short, relations with the Imperial House of Hohenstaufen were again worryingly tensing up and, far from a friend against the usurper Andronikos Komnenos, it was very possible that the Emperor could turn hostile and even attempt to assert his rights on the Realm.
Given the situation, William had decided, in his royal prerogative of making war and peace, to retreat from the Constantinopolitan expedition, so that the army and fleet could be ready to defend Sicily and dissuade Frederick and Henry from any untoward moves.
Tancred had never seen much of Constance, therefore he didn’t feel particularly saddened by her death, especially since it opened the road to the throne for himself and his sons, but, at the same time, he couldn’t help feeling taken aback by the orders to retreat: the weak and divided Greeks didn’t seem to pose any real challenge and he felt confident that soon he could have been in Constantinople itself, where he certainly would have become the real power behind the throne of the Sicilian-backed pretender, Alexios Komnenos the Pinkernes (5).
Now all this had become impossible, and just because his king was worrying about an invasion that would certainly incur in the wrath of the Curia of Rome and that few would support, without any real claim besides “ancient imperial rights” that had never been enforced South of the Patrimonium Sancti Petri. The wounded, but not defeated Greek enemy worried him too: now they were weak, but if he left the campaign they could finally get their act together and become a threat again. A strong Constantinople would always have her eyes on the fertile plains of Apulia…
But Tancred didn’t dare to openly defy his king and so, after having had a short war council with Count Baldwin and Count Richard of Acerra to organize the retreat towards Durazzo and the transportation of the considerable loot acquired over the campaign, he embarked, with a small part of the army on the galleys and transports of the fleet. That part of the force was under his direct command and William had given him a certain leeway to use the fleet to “deter pursuit, harass the usurpers ports and isles and disperse or destroy his ships”: Tancred, in agreement with the capable commander Margaritus of Brindisi (6) and the Pinkernes had hatched a plan that would give the Realm and himself some lasting gain from the aborted expedition, a plan partially inspired by Isaakios Komnenos successful rebellion in Cyprus.
The island of Crete, lying in a perfect position in the center of the eastern Mediterranean was a tempting target, one that earlier “visits” upon his coasts by Margarito had proven to have little in the way of defenses, especially with the bulk of the Greek fleet retreated to the Sea of Marmara in protection of the City of Cities. And in fact, faced by a fleet of at least eighty galleys and an army which included about one thousand knights (a fifth of the original force, since most others had retreated to Durazzo and from them were in the process of going back to their Apulian or Sicilian estates), the local garrison could do little and, in the space of less than a month, all the cities, villages and castles on the island had been subdued, with most of them surrendering without a fight, fearing sack and destruction. The fleet had also secured the two small islands of Kythera and Antikythera, lying between Crete and the Peloponnese. On the 11th September Alexios Komnenos was acclaimed Basileus in Chania and three days after he conceded the pronoia of the island to Tancred, while preparations were made for a marriage between him and the elder daughter of the Count of Lecce, Costanza.
Tancredi didn’t lose time in paying his homage and offering the island to his liege William II, who, after being soothed about the perceived insubordination by a shrewd Tancred, who convinced him of the danger that the island would have posed to commerce and to a possible crusading expedition in support of the beleaguered Kingdom of Jerusalem, had it remained in hostile hands, created him Duke of Candia, while Kythera and Antikythera were added to Margarito’s Palatine County. A final diplomatic move by Tancred for the year 1185 was the invitation to both the Venetians and the Genoese to open fondaci in the islands' ports, where they were both offered extensive tax and jurisdictional privileges. This proved to be very important to keep reasonably good relations with both Republics, happy to have a friendly and relatively staging ground for their commercial operations in the East now that Constantinople was proving so hostile to Latin merchants, under Basileus Andronikus, whose grip on power seemed to be growing ever tighter, if rumors of the assassination of Isaak Angelos were to be believed (7).
Author's Notes:
(0) Well, sorry for abandoning the Hohenstaufen TL. I am feeling bad about it, but there were unsolvable contradictions with it, I shouldn't even have started that probably... Besides, I wanted a more "sicilian" feel, and for that I need the isand to stay as the core of the realm for longer, hopefully with its muslim population not deported, although that's not that easy to achieve.
This one has a POD that should enable the Normans a relatively smooth period of rule in the crucial timeframe around the turn of the century. The objective is not an earlier Italian unification, rather an exploration of how the Norman realm could have evoved, had it lasted longer without the union with the HRE. This will aim at plausibility, but some might characterize it as a "wank", since things are likely to go better than OTL for the Sicilians, which will evolve similarly to Aragon in terms of a "Mediterranean empire". Again, sorry for the blunder with the Hohenstaufen TL, it won't happen again with this one.
(1) This comes from romantic poet and “father” father of the Italian novel Alessandro Manzoni’s play Adelchi: “Tresses strewn/on the heaving bosom/slackened palms/and death-pearled her white form/ the pious lies with trembling/gaze searching for Heaven./The lamentation ceases/unanimous rises a prayer:/coming down on the ice-cold/brow a light hand/ on the cerulean pupil/ the last veil spreads.” The meaning seems fitting to the scene, so I decided to use it, with a pun in the ITTL name of the author that I hope Italian-speaking readers will appreciate.
(2) This is the POD, Constance d’Hauteville decides to do a pilgrimage to Monte Sant’Angelo before her marriage to the future Henry VI, catches malaria in the swamplands between what in OTL would be Santa Margherita di Savoia and Manfredonia and dies soon after, avoiding the personal union with the HRE that characterized Sicilian history in OTL’s XIII century.
(3) This Archbishop Walter, head of the pro-imperial faction in Palermo, is better known as Walter Offamill, and widely reputed to have English origins (Of a Mill…). This has been debunked by more modern scholarship, which sees his surname as a corruption of his court title of “Protofamiliaris” or “First in the Royal Council/familia regis”
(4) By all accounts the sack of Thessalonika in August 1185 was particularly brutal, with a death toll of probably more than 7000. It is often seen as a retaliation to the massacres of the Latins in 1182 and a premonition of things to come in Constantinople in 1204. Obviously the thoughts of Tancred are here just for flavor, maybe they are too modern, in any case they have little bearing on the rest of the story.
(5) Alexios was a son of Johannes Doukas Komnenos, rumored to be a natural child of Basileus Manuel, which appears at least partially confirmed by the honours of Sebastos and Pinkernes (cup bearer) that had been bestowed unto him during his reign, as well as the fact that Andronikos persecuted him, forcing him to flee the Basileia and take refuge in Sicily.
(6) Margaritus of Brindisi, known as the “Arch-pirate” for his predatory action in the Aegean and off the Levantine and Egyptian coasts was a brilliant, if somewhat unruly, naval commander, most likely of greek origins, since his name should be a latinisation of Megareites, meaning “from Megara” the small island close to Athens. He had extensive properties in Brindisi and messina and had just been made Count Palatine of Cephalonia and Zante after capturing the Ionian islands earlier in 1185.
(7) IOTL The assassination attempt failed and backfired spectacularly, leading to Andronikos being cut to pieces by an angry mob and Angelos becoming emperor. ITTL different circumstances arising from the Norman retreat make it so that the attack is better planned and succeeds. The urban mob will also be grateful to Andronikos for the Norman’s retreat, even if he had no part in it, but will it last, with the loss of both Cyprus and Crete to pretenders? The Anatolian Dynatoi, meanwhile, are not going to be idle either…
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