Hello everybody, Zioneer here. I've got a TL for you all that I think you'd like. As you can see, it's called "Children of the Guiscard", and is at it's core, about the survival of a Norman-ruled (or at least self-ruled) Sicily. It'll be heavily inspired by the excellent Age of Miracles TL by Basileus444. With that being said, here goes.
"I suppose that we all are children of the Guiscard in our own way."- Roger IV of Sicily.
1130: On Feburary 13, Pope Honorius II dies. The next day, the cardinals decide that they will entrust the election to a commission of eight men, led by papal chancellor Haimeric, who had his candidate Cardinal Gregory Papareschi hastily elected as Pope Innocent II. He is consecrated on February 14, the day after Honorius' death. On the same day, the other cardinals announce that Innocent had not been canonically elected and chose Cardinal Pietro Pierleoni, a Roman whose family were the enemy of Haimeric's supporters the Frangipani. Pietro is elected as Anacletus II.[1]
Duke Roger of Sicily, Calabria, and Apulia supports Anacletus, and with covert Norman backing and Anacletus’s own popularity and excellent reputation, Innocent is thrown out of Rome.
Innocent and his supporters flee to Pisa in a bid to sail to the port of Genoa then France to gain the support of notable figures like Bernard of Clairvaux, but on the way to Genoa, Innocent falls ill and dies. Anacletus II is now the undisputed moral head of Catholic Christendom.[2]
Anacletus quickly reassures the reformists within the Catholic Church that he will undertake a reformist program, and to prove it, he bars his powerful brother Giordano from his papal chambers and symbolically from Rome itself. However, as Giordano simply builds a manor directly outside Rome and Anacletus travels to his brother’s manor often, this has little effect beyond satisfying the reformists.
Anacletus then decrees a reform to clerical families; he proclaims that those directly related to an ordained priest within one generation cannot become priests themselves.
Pleased by the actions of Anacletus, the reformists decline to set up a new papal contender, though Bernard of Clairvaux quietly funds an anti-Pierleoni movement in Rome, not trusting the powerful family to stay as meek and humble as they seem.
The new Pope proceeds to reward faithful Duke Roger with a crown. Henceforth, Roger is to be known as Roger II of Sicily[3].
Immediately after the coronation, a collection of Norman nobles rebel against Roger’s rule, fearing that he will centralize his power at the expense of their feudal rights. The ringleaders of the rebellion are Count Ranulf Drengot of Alife, Count Robert of Capua and Aversa, the Lombard Count Grimoald of Bari, and the leaders of the city of Almalfi. Defeating Roger at Melfi and Bari, Ranulf secures the leadership of the rebellion.
1131: The rebellion continues, but with military defeats, Roger tries a different tactic: excommunication. With Pope Anacletus firmly under his grip, Roger convinces the Holy Father to excommunicate the rebels. Papal messengers are sent throughout the domains of Ranulf, Robert, and Grimoald, and the subjects of all three are told that they are free to leave the service of their masters. Count Robert’s subjects rebel most readily, as he is a weak ruler, and Ranulf is forced to spend a month cutting down a papal-inspired counter-rebellion in Aversa.
Roger cannot advance as much as he would like, however, due to the determined resistance of Grimoald, who revives a sense of nationalism among the Lombards of southern Italy. Roger, never a skilled general, is defeated again at Bari, the citizens of which support Grimoald readily despite the papal excommunication. Roger is driven back down to Calabria, the “toe” of Italy.
By mid-May, Ranulf crushes the counter-rebellion occupying his attention, and after combining his army with Grimoald’s, advances on Roger’s position at Reggio, where he is met by a last-ditch attempt by King Roger to stop the rebellion. As the Battle of Reggio begins, Ranulf has the larger army, and is a far better general, but he is lacking many of his most skilled soldiers, who were killed or wounded in the suppression of the counter-rebellion.
The battle is short, but has a surprising conclusion: Ranulf defeats Roger, but Grimoald the Lombard is killed by Roger’s Saracen bodyguards and Ranulf’s depleted army is barely able to force Roger back to Palermo. Roger decides to spend the rest of the year recuperating his forces and allowing the farmers among them to plant more food for the year’s harvests. Roger spends his own time meeting with the Hungarian king Bela II, known as “The Blind”, hoping to enlist Hungarian aid to take back the rest of southern Italy.
Bela, a young man at 22, and Roger, a somewhat older monarch at 36, strike up a strong friendship, the blind Hungarian figuratively looking up to the man known to his enemies as the “baptized sultan”. Both had been rejected as monarchs by a large portion of their nobility, and both struggled with certain duties of a king; Blind Bela at royal administration, and Roger at military matters. The two even faced rebellions, Bela waging war against Boris Kalamenos, a bastard son of his uncle Coloman, who had served as king before Bela. All in all, their meeting is a rousing success, Bela and Roger promising help to the other in their respective rebellions. Bela even pledges a force of a thousand Magyars[4] and Croats immediately to Roger, and the two seal the deal with a marriage alliance; when she is of age, Bela’s infant daughter Elizabeth will be wed to Roger’s son of thirteen years, also named Roger.
Meanwhile, the anti-Roger rebellion falls to in-fighting as Ranulf and Robert of Aversa fall to squabbling over the spoils of war. Ranulf desires the late Grimoald’s city of Bari, but Robert desires the prosperous port city as much as Ranulf does. Wise enough to realize that coming to actual blows will allow Roger to shatter the divided rebellion, Ranulf hammers out a deal with Robert; they will station their troops in the city on differing days. For now, the two rebels are satisfied, though with the heavy hand of two masters, the Bariots grow unhappy.
To the northwest at Rome, Bernard of Clairvaux’s strategy finally pays off, as Pope Anacletus is forced out of Rome by a popular revolt. The revolutionaries demand further reforms before allowing him back in, but Anacletus refuses.
1132: In January, one of Robert of Aversa’s troops takes a Bariot girl for his bride without asking the family. This would not normally be of note, but this same family had been smuggled a secret cache of weaponry by Roger’s spies. The men of the family kill the soldier, then distribute the weapons among the people of Bari, leading into a revolt against Robert of Aversa, coordinated by Roger. Soon, Ranulf must come to the incompetent Robert’s aid, and this time, he is in no mode for compromise. Ranulf has seen his ambitions thwarted time and time again for Robert's sake, and this will be the last time.
He has his troops seize Robert, and after making the Count his prisoner, Ranulf forces his ally to legally sign over all his lands. Once the Count is done, Ranulf quietly executes him. The rebel lord is now master of mainland Norman Italy, but at a cost. With the defection of a few of Rainulf’s scouts, Roger knows exactly how tenuous Ranulf’s position is. The Sicilian king re-enters Southern Italy by March, and has reconquered Calabria by May, looking poised to reclaim Apulia as well.
Attempting to salvage this disaster and knowing full well that he will not be given mercy by a furious Norman king, Ranulf calls upon the giant waiting in the wings; The Holy Roman Emperor, Lothair III. He swears to be a vassal duke[4] to Lothair if the Emperor helps him defeat Roger, and pay vassal dues. Desiring to bring all of Sicily back under his control, Lothair accepts, and by mid-June, a massive German army led by the Emperor himself arrives in Norman-controlled southern Italy. It is welcomed by many Lombards and Greeks living in the peninsula, seeing a far-away emperor an easier yoke than their nearby king.
Facing the Imperial behemoth, Roger changes his tactics. His scouts have brought him reports that the German troops are unused to the hot Sicilian summer, and have developed an overbearing attitude towards the mainly Sicilian rebels. Thus, the Sicilian rebels have refused to march with the Germans, and stay far behind their allies.
Roger, knowing that the rebels alone hold knowledge of the geography of southern Italy, sends out Saracen raiders to harass the Imperial supply lines and bring the spoils back to mainland towns whose loyalties could waver. The Arabs, utterly loyal to their multicultural master, do their jobs well, plundering the German supply line and distributing it among various towns. Largely unaware of this distribution, the Germans seize the foodstuffs of the suspiciously well-stocked towns, and act tyrannically towards the Sicilians, their tempers frayed by the hot climate of the peninsula. Predictably by the autumn, the Sicilians rebel against the Germans they welcomed not long before. 1132 ends in blood and rebellion, just as the year preceding it.
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Notes:
[1] Copy-pasted (except the last sentence) from Wikipedia.
[2] First PoD, and most major one.
[3] For some reason, Roger II’s father, Roger the Great Count, is counted in the OTL regnal numbers as Roger I, despite not holding a crown.
[4] Lothair isn't stupid enough to allow Ranulf to be a king.