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The Baptized Sultans




“The enemies of Sicily called our kings baptized sultans. We in turn baptized them in blood.” -Simon the Saracen


Prologue and Background Part 1: Normans in Italy:


The fate of dynasties, and the nations that birth them, can often turn on a single event, an unlucky death, or a miraculous victory. These events shape history in often the most unexpected of ways. So it was with the Norman Kingdom of Sicily. We’ll explore a divergence from one of those unlucky events in this TL. Specifically, we’ll explore the survival of all of King Roger II’s sons past him, rather than the survival of one lethargic and unprepared son. But first, some background on the Normans in Sicily.

According to legend, the Normans first arrived in substantial numbers in Sicily in 1016, when Norman pilgrim knights visited the shrine to Saint Michael the Archangel at Monte Gargano. According to the story, the Lombard patriot Melus gave a dramatic speech convincing the pilgrims to send for more soldiers to help throw off the Byzantine yoke in Southern Italy. However, a greater motivation may have been gold and land for second and third sons, as Norman tradition mandated that a father’s lands and money be divided equally among his sons, but allowed the eldest to pick first, often leading to the younger sons getting nothing. This led to a large amount of idle, landless knights and other warriors that caused a great deal of trouble in Normandy.

So when Melus called for soldiers to fight the Greek Byzantines, many Normans answered the call, including brothers from the family of Drengot, who will become important in a few years. The Normans and Lombards fought the Byzantines in several engagements, which were indecisive, but less of a defeat than the Lombards alone had experienced. At the Battle of Cannae in 1018, the elite Varangian Guard engaged the allied forces, and utterly smashed the Lombards and Normans, sending Melus fleeing into the Papal States and eventually the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, where he died a broken man. The Normans lost a tenth of their forces as well as their captain, and promptly elected Ranulf Drengot as their commander.

With the revolt temporarily crushed, the Normans drifted around and served as mercenaries to anyone who would pay them, including Lombard princes under Byzantine rule. Eventually they helped Sergius IV, Prince of Naples to regain his throne and gained the County of Aversa for their trouble. Eventually, Ranulf Drengot sent for reinforcements from Normandy, and the many sons of Tancred of Hautville answered the call.

Throughout the next three decades, the Normans fought against Lombards and Byzantines, until the ever-present Lombard rebellion became more of a Norman one, and they seized much of Southern Italy from their would-be allies. The Hautville brothers William Iron-Arm, Drogo, and Humphrey were elected as captains of the Normans, until finally their younger brother Robert Guiscard was elected captain and count in 1057. Of note is that the Normans became as hated by the Lombards as the Greeks once were, the Pope even called for an army to oust the Normans from Italy!

With momentum and a charismatic and cunning leader on their side however, the Normans were not ousted. Indeed, the new reforming Pope, at odds with the Holy Roman Emperor, declared Robert Guiscard “by the Grace of God and St Peter duke of Apulia and Calabria and, if either aid me, future lord of Sicily”. Regardless, over the next two decades, the Normans seized Calabria from the Byzantines, and in 1071, ousted the Byzantines from their last stronghold in southern Italy.

Guiscard’s adventures to conquer Sicily and even the entire Byzantine Empire were much less successful, and he died in 1085 at the age of seventy, seeking again to conquer Constantinople. At his death, the entire Norman domain was divided between his lackluster legitimate son Roger Borsa, his illegitimate, but skilled son Bohemond, and his youngest brother Roger.

Roger, who gradually conquered Sicily and Malta, managed to play off his nephews against each other, protecting Borsa from the ambitions of Bohemond, and in turn demanding more and more of Borsa’s inheritance for his own son. Eventually, Bohemond left Sicily for the First Crusade, and founded the Principality of Antioch in the Levant.

Roger, now Count Roger of Sicily, continued to gradually extend his power over the rest of the Normans, and eventually fathered two legitimate sons, Roger and Simon. He then promptly died at the age of seventy in 1101, much like his brother Guiscard. He left his domains to his son Simon, but Simon died at a young age in 1105, leaving his domains to his brother, who would be known as Roger II, a man who would shatter the political landscape of Italy forever.
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