Adhémar rose to the throne of Aquitaine a different sort of man than his predecessors - generous in some ways, but with a deep cynicism as regards the church and a tendency to scheme and deceive those he saw as enemies. Indeed, one of his first acts as king was to quietly arrange for the death of Count Uc of Farama, with whom he had quarreled all his life. Uc perished that spring after sipping poison wine, with none the wiser.
That summer, Adhémar celebrated the birth of Leon, his second son. While his first son, Adhémar, showed no signs of extraordinary intellect, Leon was born with eyes as bright as his father's.
That fall, word came of shocking news from the Holy Land. Adhémar's uncle, King Aymeric of Jerusalem, had struck down the coast of Arabia from Aqabah, and in a single fell swoop, ejected the Saracens from Mecca and Medina, making that land his. Adhémar quickly called a grand tourney to celebrate his uncle's stunning victory in the name of God.
The first few years of Adhémar's reign were peaceful, though in the fall of 1013 the King was wounded by a boar during a grand hunt he'd called for in Toulouse. As he recovered from his injury, he imprisoned Countess Maria of Saintonge after catching her plotting a murder, then revoked her county, forestalling its passage out of Aquitaine with the expected inheritance of a French duke.
That summer, Adhémar received word of another oddity: The Third Cadaver Synod. The corpse of Pope Martin II was exhumed on the order of his successor, Pope Clement IV, and placed on trial, accused of simony, raping nuns during the Siege of Jerusalem, using the Lateran as a brothel, and of being a monophysite. The corpse was found guilty and anathemized, then beheaded and set on fire, the ashes scattered from the port of Ostia. Adhémar just buried his face in his hands and prayed this wouldn't become a trend.
Tiring of hearing word of Moorish raids on the Way of St. James, Adhémar interceded with Pope Clement IV through 1016, pleading with him to declare a Crusade against the Umayyads of al-Andalus. Hearing no word of reply, Adhémar sent another missive in 1017 - and Clement responded, declaring the Second Crusade to sweep the Moors from Iberia. Immediately, Adhémar mustered the armies of Aquitaine to war.
As the spring of 1018 wound onward, Adhémar's host crushed an army of more than 20,000 Moors outside the gates of Albarracin after storming those cities. Bolstered by Papal mercenaries and hired swords under Adhémar's own pay, Aquitaine's men won a pitched battle there, then pursued the Moors to Tarragona, routing their host beneath the walls of that city in the southernmost of Aquitaine's holdings. Pursuing the main Moorish host through the Ebro Valley, Adhémar's men scattered them to the four winds, indiscriminately storming keep after keep. In the space of a year, the Moorish host had been obliterated and much of their northernmost march seized, with Papal, Leonese and Templar armies besieging many key cities along the southern coast. Seeing his realm laid prostrate at Christendom's feet, the Emir Sa'adaddin waved the white flag.
As the new year dawned, Pope Clement IV crowned Adhémar the rightful King of Andalusia. With a vast realm to oversee, much of it Muslim, Adhémar turned to native Andalusians to administer much of the actual land, drawing men from the Mozarabic community. But only so many Mozarabs could be found, and Adhémar found himself eventually turning to Occitans and even a few Muslims to administer these lands. Even an Avar adventurer, Barjik Yantsukh, was named a Count, given rule in Alcantara, and another Avar granted holdings in the Algarve. The most important lord in the newly-conquered lands was Pol of Marsan, Duke of Cordoba and Seville; a chaste man of scholarly bent, he was granted the title with the understanding that, upon his death, the lands would return to Adhémar's hands, to be granted to one of his sons.
With Andalusia under Aquitanian control, Aquitaine stood at the height of its power to date, and Adhémar turned to considering whether it might be possible to bring Italy under his control. But no ties to the Italian crown ran in his family, and the Pope refused to grant him a claim. Adhémar's sole option was to turn to skullduggery.
Adhémar invited Prince Robert of Holland to his court, the young man set to inherit nothing and wed to Princess Lodovica of Italy. His scheme to kill Robert proved unnecessary, however; the Prince was in line to become Bishop of Rosebeke, and with the preceding bishop dying of an infected wound in early 1020, Robert rose to the cloth, and Lodovica was set to enter a cloister. Quickly, however, Adhémar moved to wed her to his widower brother, Raimond-Berenguié. Never one to be patient, Adhémar continually urged his brother to consummate the marriage as soon as possible. Two and a half years later, in the summer of 1022, word came that Lodovica was with Raimond-Berenguié's child. Days before Yuletide, a healthy baby boy, Boson, was born.
Shortly after Boson's birth, however, Princess Lodovica - taking a carriage to Narbonne for a spring trip - was killed when highwaymen ambushed her carriage. In public, Adhémar mourned the Princess's passing, but pernicious rumours persisted that the throne had masterminded her demise, and some came to speak of the king as a murderer. Dismissing these rumours as sheer nonsense, Adhemar set to watching with great interest the return of the Lombards to the Italian throne, even as he put artisans to work in Urgell, constructing a grand new basilica.
In Italy, the Lombard usurper - Atto of the Paldolings - found himself at war with Adhémar's kinsman, Duke Andre of Alger, who pressed his claim to the Italian seat. Seeking to wring advantage from the situation before Atto could conclude his war with Andre, Adhémar declared war for the claim of the infant Boson, the child not yet having seen his first year.
In late July of 1024, Adhémar concluded his war for Italy, placing the infant Boson on the throne. This placed Adhémar third in the line of succession, behind his brother and his brother's first son. However, Raimond-Berenguié's first son - of the same name - perished later that year after being lost in the woods on a hiking expedition. His body was found by Duke Pol of Seville, the boy having drowned in a river. Yet soon enough, as Adhémar moved to fight alongside Boson to keep the boy on the throne against two minor rebellions, an assassination attempt was made on Raimond-Berenguié, the prince narrowly avoiding being bitten by a serpent in his chambers. The killer was not found, and no further assassination attempts were made on the Prince that year.
However, one /was/ made on Boson. The boy was found dead in his sleep in September of 1025, barely two years of age. Rumour had it that the lad had been smothered, but no proof was forthcoming. Raimond-Berenguié quickly ascended to the throne, by now consulting his own spies for protection, beginning to suspect his brother of trying to kill him.
His consultation proved useless: While out on campaign against the rebel dukes, Raimond-Berenguié was bitten by a snake, perishing frothing at the mouth and cursing Adhémar's name - though no solid connection was ever made between the serpent and the Aquitanian king. Hastily, Adhémar - his armies in the field nearby - made his way to Pavia, where he was crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy as King of Italy. Today, of course, historians generally believe that Adhémar orchestrated the birth and death of his nephew and the subsequent murders of his brother, his other nephew and his sister-in-law, butchering an entire line of his family in a cold-blooded move to place himself on the throne of Italy.
Adhémar, the blood of his brother and nephews not yet dry, quickly put down two rebellions among the Italian nobility, then realized he had more vassals on his hands than he knew what to do with, and three crowns - a realm sure to split upon occasion of his death. Despite Adhémar's administrative challenges, talk rose among the nobles of Europe of the shocking fall of Italy into the hands of Aquitaine. With Andalusia and Italy in hand, some spoke of Adhémar - driver of the Moors from Europe, and the most powerful monarch on the continent - as a revival of Augustus himself.
And indeed, Adhémar journeyed to Rome on Yuletide of 1026. There, in a great ceremony reminiscent of a Roman triumph, Adhémar was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Benedict V. The coronation happened not only in the context of Adhémar's machinations to seize Italy, but also in view of the dire state of the Eastern Roman Empire: Badly weakened, and fallen into the hands of a woman, Simonis II, who was viewed in the west as unsuitable to be sovereign over the Romans, and a heretic besides. The coronation of Adhémar as Emperor fractured relations with the Greeks but created a new Roman successor state in southwestern Europe itself - a state Adhémar and Benedict christened the Holy Roman Empire, reborn by the Grace of God.
As part of the deal, meanwhile, the Papacy was granted a stretch of land in central Italy, forming a new, strengthened Papal State.
As the next two years turned, Adhémar and his queen, Beatrix, were blessed with the births of his sixth and seventh sons - but troubled by news that their firstborn and heir, Adhémar the Younger, had been afflicted by the Great Pox, and wrestled with a deep depression. The young man boarded a ship to try and find himself. Eventually, Adhémar the Younger's illnesses caught up with him, and he perished at 19, leaving his brother Leon as heir apparent.
In the summer of 1029, Adhémar reduced the crown of Andalusia on his coat of arms, decreeing that Andalusia would be henceforth a crownland of Aquitaine. The nobles of Andalusia seethed at the decision but most stayed their hands. Later that year, seeing that King Uways of Leon had been excommunicated and adopted the culture of the hated Bedouins, Adhémar pressed the claim of his kinsman Bermudo, brother of that king, and marched his levies to a thoroughly-beseiged Leon. By 1030, Bermudo sat ensconced in Leon as a vassal of the Empire.
Just a month later, however, a dangerous peasant revolt began to mount in Andalusia. Upwards of ten thousand Muslims massed under the banner of the rebel Abdul and laid siege to La Mancha. By the end of the year, Aquitaine had marched a host to La Mancha to do battle with the revolt, scattering the men to the four winds. Abdul was forced to repent his beliefs at swordpoint, then banished from the Holy Roman Empire.
In 1031, desirous on keeping the crowns of Aquitaine and Italy together, Adhémar moved to increase crown authority in Italy, preparing to declare the law of that land to be primogeniture.
Five peaceful years followed, and Adhémar spent his days focused on good stewardship of the realm. His efforts bore fruit in 1036, when a land-clearing program opened up enough good soil along the coast for the Emperor to found a new port. As the year turned to 1037, and with construction under way, Adhémar finally sent word that the crowns of Aquitaine and Italy would both pass to Leon upon the occasion of his death. Leon was named Adhémar's regent and co-ruler, while the Italian and Lombard nobles grumbled about this state of affairs.
