PC/AHC: Normans unite Italy

[SealTheRealDeal]

Out of all the posts I've seen discussing ways to (re)unite Italy sooner I've seen a conspicuous absence of unemployed Norman knights maneuvering their way into power in the north as they did in the south. Southern Italy had previously been divided in a manner comprable to the north, and it was the Normans who united it into the large and centralized Kingdom of Sicily.

Any reason why there isn't more discussion of a Norman unification of Italy?

 

[writofcertiorari]

Yeah, the Pope and HRE would be a problem. Especially if unification means something comparable to the historical Italian unification of the 1800s.

 

[Thoresby]

Any reason why there isn't more discussion of a Norman unification of Italy?

You've covered the two big ones, the Pope and the Emperor and the political structure was less favourable.

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

The Emperor was the legitimate ruler of said lands in Italy ultra Spoleto... Why would the Normans in Sicily wish to take this title? The Papacy had the authority to crown Kings of Italy and the tradition had been to crown after confirmation, that king elected in Germany. Norman Sicily, would need to garner some sort of claim to the Empire to receive the title and convince the Papacy to appoint them as king of Italy; in which case the Papacy is causing mayhem as this would be a monumental breach of tradition. There is a reason that Innocent III gifted Italy and Empire to the Welfs instead of the Capets in the crisis with the Hohenstaufen.

 

[gurgu]

they couldn't because italy at that time was considered only the northen half of the peninsula( from rome to the alps) and technically the HRE emperor inherits the iron crown of the italian kingdom, this means that in order to be king of italy you have either to become emperor or make a peace deal were the emperor cedes the iron crown
if you consider the hohenstaufen as normans ( technycally they had a marriage if i resemble ) they were close to unite italy, just make them impose control over the northern cities and not have them die without heirs

 

[FranzAncheNo]

What do you mean with "unite Italy"?
Let me be clear: the Italian Peninsula is a lot of land, but United Italy can be any reasonable amount of this land.
If Spoleto is never included in the HRE and follows a path similar to the one of Benevento and if the Donation of Pepin leaves out of Rome's power more of OTL's Marche (And assuming that this doesn't butterfly away anything.) you may get a very big Norman kingdom by the mid XII century.
If the ruling dynasty of the said kingdom gets very, very, very influential and even more successful in Tuscan and Roman affairs you can say that you have a United Italy, even though I don't think it would be called so unless a decent amount of Lombardy (Northern Italy back then.) gets included in it.
And of course Normans have to always roll twenties for at least three centuries to do so and keep for longer than a decade such possessions.

 

[Koprulu Mustafa Pasha]

Maybe if the Normans intermarried like the Habsburgs did and by a certain point inherit large parts of the North?

 

[CHKeeley]

The political structure in the North besides is far less susceptible to the type of conquests that the Normans excelled in when taking southern Italy. The Normans would essentially sack or demand submission of individual cities and villages, each lord trying to carve out their own fief from the land. Also, the multi-polar power structure which included Byzantine Greeks, Lombards, Arabs, etc. lended itself greatly to a speedy Norman expansion. The North on the other hand is for the most part politically unified and far less affected by conflict than the south. Even during periods like the Guelph-Ghibellines, the warring states of northern Italy would surely coalesce to fight a common foe (not to mention the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor joining in.) Overall, the Norman expansion in southern Italy relied heavily upon the superiority of their cavalry against traditionally unmounted foes, political and cultural strife, and lack of centralization. They basically lose all of these advantages when they start climbing the peninsula.