Better than expected. Doesn't seem to have caused a political crisis. Though there's still time for that.
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The Lions of Olomouc: a CKIII Ironman AAR (Duchy of Moravia, 867)
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Returning to the true faith. Is he not getting any benefit from the Queen? The children remained true to the faith. My king, go and sin no more. Thank you
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I think that he doesn't get any benefit from Zivka because she's a ruler in a foreign country. Jager is currently under the control of Balaton.
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Book Four Chapter Thirty-Four
Thanks to @Midnite Duke, @KanadeSomeone and @Idhrendur for the comments!
Glad you approve, KS! And Idhrendur, that political crisis is forthcoming posthaste.
Speaking of which, now for the obvious WARNING: NSFW images herein.
THIRTY-FOUR
The Unbelieving Wife…
28 October 1203 – 15 December 1204
Written in 1379, the Kronika Tórbranta laconises:
‘Dňa 28. októbra 6712 RS. prišiel do Jágeru moravský kráľ. Na ulici purkmistrička si k nemu kľakla a ho pobozkala. 18. júla Jagerská purkmistrička porodila dcéru.’
[‘On the twenty-eighth of October in the year 6712, the Moravian king entered Jáger. The burgomistress knelt to him and kissed him in the street. On the eighteenth of July (that same year) the burgomistress of Jáger gave birth to a daughter.’]
Bishop Tórbrant makes a point of reciting the dates, nearly forty weeks apart, of Želimír Rychnovský’s arrival in Jáger and Živana Rychnovská-Lehnice’s giving birth. The insinuation is that Kráľ Želimír and Purkmistrička Živana were moved to, as Anglo-Icelandic singer-songwriter Páll Jákobsson McCartney put it at a much later date, ‘do it in the road’. This entry in the 1379 Kronika elegantly summarises the attitudes of Orthodox monks and chroniclers to the excesses of the Adamite years, both in Moravia and elsewhere. The disapproval of the chroniclers is expressed primarily in the expression of the bare (pun very much intended) facts without additional commentary.
~~~
‘My king,’ Živana chuckled as she lay sleepily beside her husband on the bed in her town home—after a nice, relaxing reprise of their earlier spirited rendezvous out-of-doors. ‘Did they hold a fire-dance after the coronation?’
‘There was.’
‘Oh ho!’ Živka chuckled, a mischievous flicker in her eyes. ‘Anyone there scratch your itch?’
‘There was one,’ the king owned… a little reluctantly. ‘Živka—how is it that you never go to the fires?’
Živana gave an earnest shrug, not denying what her husband charged. ‘One lover was always enough for me, Žeľko. And besides, looking after six whelps here, when was I to find the time to go?’ Her hand caressed his face and shoulders tenderly. ‘… How did you come by these bruises?’
‘A bishop did that,’ Želimír grimaced ruefully. ‘I may have to revert to the mainstream faith… for appearances’ sake, you understand, if nothing else.’
Živana shrugged. ‘It’s all one to me.’
Žeľko drank in Živka with his eyes. The two of them had married in an Orthodox ceremony, but now the Adamites recognised them only as ‘lovers’, and so they had lived for the past twelve years. Živana had that long held by the creed of the Gnostics, but she had a kind of studied contempt for theological discourse or for religious ceremonies of any sort—even those of the sect she’d adopted.
‘I admire you, you know that,’ Žeľko murmured to his wife.
A shy little smile flickered bemusedly across Živana’s face. ‘Why? All of a sudden…’
‘You never went to any of the fire-dances,’ Žeľko told her. ‘You stayed loyal and true to me… which is more than I can say of myself to you. The nobility of your soul—I don’t deserve it. But I do appreciate it.’
Živana may have lived nearly half of her life naked to the public eye, but she hadn’t quite lost the gift of her blush. She favoured Želimír with it now, warmly. Her smile deepened and she nestled her face into his shoulder. ‘I’m your woman, Žeľko—in here or out there. What more is there to say?’
~~~
The king did not return to Olomouc for the months which followed. Her ‘whelps’ were six so far: Vlasta, Radomír, Magdaléna, Slavomíra, Ctislava and Volimíra. But Živana conceived their seventh child soon after his arrival in Jáger, and he stayed by her side as her belly began to swell. Twelve years of having seen all of Živana’s body in all weather and in all places had not diminished its mystery to him, in that he still marvelled at the wonder of a woman bearing life. More concretely, he marvelled at how such a slender woman could carry and grow such round and heavy burdens within her womb, and then bear them forth into the world one after the other without a word of complaint.
‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ asked Želimír solicitously, less than two weeks out from her due day.
‘I want for little here,’ said the contented burgomistress, laying her hands on her immense round belly. ‘But if you’d like to read to me while I sit, I would be quite grateful to listen to you.’
Želimír went downstairs and looked through the volumes she’d collected. He found one volume on medicine, which he found most fascinating, and brought it back upstairs in the hope that his wife would appreciate it as well. But he hadn’t gotten far, before—
‘Oh, away with you!’ Živana cried in distress. ‘The Trotula, for God’s sake! All the things that could possibly go wrong for me with this one—you think I want to listen to that? Go and fetch one of the books that Burgomaster Odola left downstairs. I should find at least one of those should be soothing rather than disturbing!’
Želimír obediently went and picked out one of Odola’s books—a poem about some Geatish warrior or other—and went back upstairs to read to the mother of his child. But she waved off that one, too, saying that the mood had been spoilt. Crestfallen, Želimír left Živana alone. And the absentee Kráľ of Moravia soon found he had some rather more dire and urgent problems to attend to. The missive from Olomouc was borne in the hands of a rather hassled and fearful young herald, who handed it direct to the king. He broke open the seal and scanned it.
‘What is it, my man?’ asked Živana as she saw Želimír’s face darken.
‘Half the country is up in arms against me,’ the king ran a hand over his face. ‘I should have known it.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘The three kniežatá of the East are risen up. Now, the reason they give is the perennial legal one that the nobles have used since the days of Tomáš at least. But reading between the lines: they refuse to be ruled by a heretic for a king.’
Živana chuckled at that. ‘And you didn’t clarify that you were reverting to your “Right Opinion Church” before you left? Well, that wasn’t too smart, milý môj; I’m surprised. You’re usually a lot more careful about that sort of thing.’
As it turned out, the only ones who remained loyal to him in Moravia were his kin. His mother, Kráľovná Matka Kostislava, had naturally promised him her support. So too had his uncle Dani who ruled over the Bohemian lands. And lastly so had the Silesian vojvoda Svätopluk Rychnovský-Nisa. The others—Knieža Tichomil Mikulčický of Nitra, Knieža Siloš 2. Bijelahrvatskić of Užhorod, and Knieža Vyšeslav Koceľuk of Podkarpatská Rus’—had all risen up in revolt against a king whose Orthodoxy was worse than questionable. This split also seemed to reflect a general gauge of religious feeling as well: the western lands of Moravia, Bohemia and Silesia were much more nonchalant about entertaining heterodox visitors and beliefs; while the eastern lands of Slovakia and Transcarpathia were much more zealous for the True Faith. So it would continue for a long time after.
‘Will you aid me in defending my crown, Živka?’
‘Do you even have to ask?’ asked his wife with a grin. ‘The burghers of Jáger will fight loyally alongside you as though they were your own zbrojnošov—so say I, as long as I am mistress here! … If your kin within your kingdom were willing to come to your aid, as well, if I were you I might consider asking your kin outside your kingdom as well.’
‘A capital idea, dear,’ exclaimed her husband.
~~~
So indeed it turned out. Comte Humbert de Richeneau-Beaumont was the first to respond to the Moravian king’s summons, and doughtily promised a number of Frankish knights to the cause of preserving good order within Moravia. And then the two vojvodcovia of the independent realms directly to Moravia’s north—Radomíra Rychnovská-Žička of Milčané and Budziwuj Rychnovský-Lehnice of Dolné Slieszko—gleefully leapt into action against the rebels. Just to make certainty double, Kráľ Želimír also hired two free companies of soldiers: the Moravian Free Lances of Velehrad under the command of Kapitán Sokol; and the Croatian Wayfarers of Požega under the command of Kapitán Ognen.
The king waited until his queen was safely delivered of their seventh ‘whelp’, another girl whom they named Vlastimila. Then he himself went at the head of the stout contingent of burghers from Jáger—mostly footmen with various polearms, bows and crossbows. However, he knew for a fact that he wouldn’t reach Nitra before an engagement occurred.
The forces of the Rychnovských engaged the eastern rebels on the bend of a river just outside Trenčin. Thankfully Kapitán Sokol understood the dynamics of such rivers, and was able to field his forces to the proper effect… even though the Nitran rebel commander proved to be a particularly tough nut to crack. The battle raged for days, and the king heard after it was over that two of his guests in Olomouc, a young man named Dalimír and an older man named Bálin, had perished in the battle.
The Kráľ arrived at the head of his armies just as the main one being led by Captain Sokol was engaging a force of Transcarpathian irregulars just outside Hont. He had arrived just in time, it seemed. The burghers of Jáger took their positions on the Rychnovský-loyalist side just as the arrows were beginning to fly back and forth.
The battle of Hont was considerably less bloody than the one at Trenčin had been. It soon became apparent that the Carpathian Ruthenians were being headed up by an impetuous, beardless boy—barely a man, without any combat experience to speak of. If they had been up in the mountains and able to take up defensive positions, that would have been another tale. But the Ruthenians had wasted several perfectly good cavalry charges on the low flat terrain by the river, and they had already paid dearly for it. Sokol barked orders to his own detachments of riders to sortie at close range, to harry and disturb the Rus’ lines.
Daniel Rychnovský-Vyšehrad led a bold charge—an admirable one considering his age—along the right flank of the Ruthenian lines, but had to retreat. The mountain men had bloodied Daniel’s head for him, and he had to retreat behind the lines to have it tended to. But the loyalists struck back in full force. One of the mercenaries, a bold former bandit named Róbert, managed to claim the arm of one of his opponents. And the Adamite former court chaplain of Moravia, Saul, waded forth valiantly into battle in the nude, like a Spartan warrior of ancient days, and boldly slew one of the eastern knights.
With both main forces of the rebels having been turned back from the loyalists’ march, Želimír led his men back along the road north, to beset the town of Zvolen.
Two months into the siege, the loyalist camp was graced with the presence of a nude woman riding side-saddle into its very midst, oblivious to the snows and the December cold. She dismounted outside the commander’s tent, and strode boldly inside. There she found her man in deep discussion with his knight-commanders about how best to take the town.
Živana cleared her throat, catching her husband’s attention. She arranged her limbs into a suitable pose, and waited to be addressed.
‘Leave us,’ said Želimír to his commanders. ‘I believe the burgomistress and I have some business to discuss.’
‘That we do,’ Živana purred.
The knight-commanders filed out, casting looks alternately sharp and lustful at Živana’s porcelain skin. With a smirk she turned back to the king of Moravia.
‘Won’t you be a gallant and… warm this lady up?’ she pouted.
He did.
Seeing the King's temporary break into heresy was quite a funny break from all the seriousness
Glad you approve, KS! And Idhrendur, that political crisis is forthcoming posthaste.
Speaking of which, now for the obvious WARNING: NSFW images herein.
THIRTY-FOUR
The Unbelieving Wife…
28 October 1203 – 15 December 1204
Written in 1379, the Kronika Tórbranta laconises:
‘Dňa 28. októbra 6712 RS. prišiel do Jágeru moravský kráľ. Na ulici purkmistrička si k nemu kľakla a ho pobozkala. 18. júla Jagerská purkmistrička porodila dcéru.’
[‘On the twenty-eighth of October in the year 6712, the Moravian king entered Jáger. The burgomistress knelt to him and kissed him in the street. On the eighteenth of July (that same year) the burgomistress of Jáger gave birth to a daughter.’]
Bishop Tórbrant makes a point of reciting the dates, nearly forty weeks apart, of Želimír Rychnovský’s arrival in Jáger and Živana Rychnovská-Lehnice’s giving birth. The insinuation is that Kráľ Želimír and Purkmistrička Živana were moved to, as Anglo-Icelandic singer-songwriter Páll Jákobsson McCartney put it at a much later date, ‘do it in the road’. This entry in the 1379 Kronika elegantly summarises the attitudes of Orthodox monks and chroniclers to the excesses of the Adamite years, both in Moravia and elsewhere. The disapproval of the chroniclers is expressed primarily in the expression of the bare (pun very much intended) facts without additional commentary.
~~~
‘My king,’ Živana chuckled as she lay sleepily beside her husband on the bed in her town home—after a nice, relaxing reprise of their earlier spirited rendezvous out-of-doors. ‘Did they hold a fire-dance after the coronation?’
‘There was.’
‘Oh ho!’ Živka chuckled, a mischievous flicker in her eyes. ‘Anyone there scratch your itch?’
‘There was one,’ the king owned… a little reluctantly. ‘Živka—how is it that you never go to the fires?’
Živana gave an earnest shrug, not denying what her husband charged. ‘One lover was always enough for me, Žeľko. And besides, looking after six whelps here, when was I to find the time to go?’ Her hand caressed his face and shoulders tenderly. ‘… How did you come by these bruises?’
‘A bishop did that,’ Želimír grimaced ruefully. ‘I may have to revert to the mainstream faith… for appearances’ sake, you understand, if nothing else.’
Živana shrugged. ‘It’s all one to me.’
Žeľko drank in Živka with his eyes. The two of them had married in an Orthodox ceremony, but now the Adamites recognised them only as ‘lovers’, and so they had lived for the past twelve years. Živana had that long held by the creed of the Gnostics, but she had a kind of studied contempt for theological discourse or for religious ceremonies of any sort—even those of the sect she’d adopted.
‘I admire you, you know that,’ Žeľko murmured to his wife.
A shy little smile flickered bemusedly across Živana’s face. ‘Why? All of a sudden…’
‘You never went to any of the fire-dances,’ Žeľko told her. ‘You stayed loyal and true to me… which is more than I can say of myself to you. The nobility of your soul—I don’t deserve it. But I do appreciate it.’
Živana may have lived nearly half of her life naked to the public eye, but she hadn’t quite lost the gift of her blush. She favoured Želimír with it now, warmly. Her smile deepened and she nestled her face into his shoulder. ‘I’m your woman, Žeľko—in here or out there. What more is there to say?’
~~~
The king did not return to Olomouc for the months which followed. Her ‘whelps’ were six so far: Vlasta, Radomír, Magdaléna, Slavomíra, Ctislava and Volimíra. But Živana conceived their seventh child soon after his arrival in Jáger, and he stayed by her side as her belly began to swell. Twelve years of having seen all of Živana’s body in all weather and in all places had not diminished its mystery to him, in that he still marvelled at the wonder of a woman bearing life. More concretely, he marvelled at how such a slender woman could carry and grow such round and heavy burdens within her womb, and then bear them forth into the world one after the other without a word of complaint.
‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ asked Želimír solicitously, less than two weeks out from her due day.
‘I want for little here,’ said the contented burgomistress, laying her hands on her immense round belly. ‘But if you’d like to read to me while I sit, I would be quite grateful to listen to you.’
Želimír went downstairs and looked through the volumes she’d collected. He found one volume on medicine, which he found most fascinating, and brought it back upstairs in the hope that his wife would appreciate it as well. But he hadn’t gotten far, before—
‘Oh, away with you!’ Živana cried in distress. ‘The Trotula, for God’s sake! All the things that could possibly go wrong for me with this one—you think I want to listen to that? Go and fetch one of the books that Burgomaster Odola left downstairs. I should find at least one of those should be soothing rather than disturbing!’
Želimír obediently went and picked out one of Odola’s books—a poem about some Geatish warrior or other—and went back upstairs to read to the mother of his child. But she waved off that one, too, saying that the mood had been spoilt. Crestfallen, Želimír left Živana alone. And the absentee Kráľ of Moravia soon found he had some rather more dire and urgent problems to attend to. The missive from Olomouc was borne in the hands of a rather hassled and fearful young herald, who handed it direct to the king. He broke open the seal and scanned it.
‘What is it, my man?’ asked Živana as she saw Želimír’s face darken.
‘Half the country is up in arms against me,’ the king ran a hand over his face. ‘I should have known it.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘The three kniežatá of the East are risen up. Now, the reason they give is the perennial legal one that the nobles have used since the days of Tomáš at least. But reading between the lines: they refuse to be ruled by a heretic for a king.’
Živana chuckled at that. ‘And you didn’t clarify that you were reverting to your “Right Opinion Church” before you left? Well, that wasn’t too smart, milý môj; I’m surprised. You’re usually a lot more careful about that sort of thing.’
As it turned out, the only ones who remained loyal to him in Moravia were his kin. His mother, Kráľovná Matka Kostislava, had naturally promised him her support. So too had his uncle Dani who ruled over the Bohemian lands. And lastly so had the Silesian vojvoda Svätopluk Rychnovský-Nisa. The others—Knieža Tichomil Mikulčický of Nitra, Knieža Siloš 2. Bijelahrvatskić of Užhorod, and Knieža Vyšeslav Koceľuk of Podkarpatská Rus’—had all risen up in revolt against a king whose Orthodoxy was worse than questionable. This split also seemed to reflect a general gauge of religious feeling as well: the western lands of Moravia, Bohemia and Silesia were much more nonchalant about entertaining heterodox visitors and beliefs; while the eastern lands of Slovakia and Transcarpathia were much more zealous for the True Faith. So it would continue for a long time after.
‘Will you aid me in defending my crown, Živka?’
‘Do you even have to ask?’ asked his wife with a grin. ‘The burghers of Jáger will fight loyally alongside you as though they were your own zbrojnošov—so say I, as long as I am mistress here! … If your kin within your kingdom were willing to come to your aid, as well, if I were you I might consider asking your kin outside your kingdom as well.’
‘A capital idea, dear,’ exclaimed her husband.
~~~
So indeed it turned out. Comte Humbert de Richeneau-Beaumont was the first to respond to the Moravian king’s summons, and doughtily promised a number of Frankish knights to the cause of preserving good order within Moravia. And then the two vojvodcovia of the independent realms directly to Moravia’s north—Radomíra Rychnovská-Žička of Milčané and Budziwuj Rychnovský-Lehnice of Dolné Slieszko—gleefully leapt into action against the rebels. Just to make certainty double, Kráľ Želimír also hired two free companies of soldiers: the Moravian Free Lances of Velehrad under the command of Kapitán Sokol; and the Croatian Wayfarers of Požega under the command of Kapitán Ognen.
The king waited until his queen was safely delivered of their seventh ‘whelp’, another girl whom they named Vlastimila. Then he himself went at the head of the stout contingent of burghers from Jáger—mostly footmen with various polearms, bows and crossbows. However, he knew for a fact that he wouldn’t reach Nitra before an engagement occurred.
The forces of the Rychnovských engaged the eastern rebels on the bend of a river just outside Trenčin. Thankfully Kapitán Sokol understood the dynamics of such rivers, and was able to field his forces to the proper effect… even though the Nitran rebel commander proved to be a particularly tough nut to crack. The battle raged for days, and the king heard after it was over that two of his guests in Olomouc, a young man named Dalimír and an older man named Bálin, had perished in the battle.
The Kráľ arrived at the head of his armies just as the main one being led by Captain Sokol was engaging a force of Transcarpathian irregulars just outside Hont. He had arrived just in time, it seemed. The burghers of Jáger took their positions on the Rychnovský-loyalist side just as the arrows were beginning to fly back and forth.
The battle of Hont was considerably less bloody than the one at Trenčin had been. It soon became apparent that the Carpathian Ruthenians were being headed up by an impetuous, beardless boy—barely a man, without any combat experience to speak of. If they had been up in the mountains and able to take up defensive positions, that would have been another tale. But the Ruthenians had wasted several perfectly good cavalry charges on the low flat terrain by the river, and they had already paid dearly for it. Sokol barked orders to his own detachments of riders to sortie at close range, to harry and disturb the Rus’ lines.
Daniel Rychnovský-Vyšehrad led a bold charge—an admirable one considering his age—along the right flank of the Ruthenian lines, but had to retreat. The mountain men had bloodied Daniel’s head for him, and he had to retreat behind the lines to have it tended to. But the loyalists struck back in full force. One of the mercenaries, a bold former bandit named Róbert, managed to claim the arm of one of his opponents. And the Adamite former court chaplain of Moravia, Saul, waded forth valiantly into battle in the nude, like a Spartan warrior of ancient days, and boldly slew one of the eastern knights.
With both main forces of the rebels having been turned back from the loyalists’ march, Želimír led his men back along the road north, to beset the town of Zvolen.
Two months into the siege, the loyalist camp was graced with the presence of a nude woman riding side-saddle into its very midst, oblivious to the snows and the December cold. She dismounted outside the commander’s tent, and strode boldly inside. There she found her man in deep discussion with his knight-commanders about how best to take the town.
Živana cleared her throat, catching her husband’s attention. She arranged her limbs into a suitable pose, and waited to be addressed.
‘Leave us,’ said Želimír to his commanders. ‘I believe the burgomistress and I have some business to discuss.’
‘That we do,’ Živana purred.
The knight-commanders filed out, casting looks alternately sharp and lustful at Živana’s porcelain skin. With a smirk she turned back to the king of Moravia.
‘Won’t you be a gallant and… warm this lady up?’ she pouted.
He did.
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Difference from CK2, get half stats of spouse whether in realm or not. Is Balaton an independent nation and is Zivka a baroness? With seven whelps, Zivka itty bitties may no longer be itty, but still look fine to men confined to a siege camp. Mother and great-uncle are highly competent not nepotism appointees. Is Daniel ok and how old? Thank you
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Oh yep, there was the crisis. Now to bring it to a close and decide on what the aftermath will be.
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Well the bishop took a... direct route to confronting the King on his religious mistakes.
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To answer your question: yup.
In CK3, a ruler doesn't get spouse bonuses from a spouse who is a landholder in another top realm.
So yes, because Živka is a vassal inside Balaton, which is an independent country from Moravia, Žeľko doesn't get the stat boost from being married to her. But he does get the benefit of the itty bitties, lol.
And yes: sometimes it is a good idea to give council positions to family members, particularly the highly-competent ones! Daniel's probably in his 70s by now.
This crisis actually won't be resolved for over a hundred years. This civil war actually triggers a long series of Adamite Wars in the game...
It can be difficult to RP sudden conversions which are the result of political necessity. I was taking as my reference here the career of Saint Dúnstán of Canterbury, who dealt in a similarly perfunctory manner with the young king Éadwig, whom he discovered in bed with his wife and her mother instead of attending his own coronation.
Also, @filcat, I'm actually serious about there being a playlist.
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Book Four Chapter Thirty-Five
WARNING: One NSFW scene of marital relations ahead.
THIRTY-FIVE
… Is Sanctified…
22 August 1205 – 25 October 1206
The arrival of Živana Rychnovská-Lehnice, Purkmistrička of Jáger, in the Moravian army camp was at best a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it was a significant morale boost to the burghers from Jáger to have the Purkmistrička retake command of the troops from her own city. Also, Kráľ Želimír was happy—more than happy. The other princes, captains and commanders in the siege camp knew to give the king’s tent a wide berth at night, when the Purkmistrička arrived there, wearing nothing but a smile, to discuss strategy with the Kráľ… and then at once experiment with various ‘formations’, ‘manoeuvres’ and ‘flanking actions’ with him.
On the other hand, having a ‘child of Adam’, an unrepentant and open heretic, at the Kráľ’s right hand gave the Orthodox zbrojnošov some keen doubts as to whether they had joined the right side. Many Moravians and Bohemians had brothers, cousins, uncles fighting on the other side, and at the very least the banner that Tichomil Mikulčický had raised in defiance of the king had some justification. How could they be sure that they weren’t fighting in a cause that would damn them?
Tichomil Mikulčický had already gone to his rest, and his first cousin Dušan 2. had succeeded him as knieža. But the banner of rebellion had passed to Siloš 2. of Užhorod, who vaunted it heavenward with renewed enthusiasm. The True Faith was indeed at stake—the presence of the heretics in the enemy camp was proof enough of that!
Želimír, for his part, even though he had returned to the Church, wasn’t so certain that Živana was in fact all that heretical. Now that they had renewed their intimacy and regained the spirited libido of their younger days, Želimír found he was beginning to understand his lover, the Purkmistrička of Jáger, a little better. Above all things, Živka detested what she considered ‘hypocrisy’: whether that was wealthy priests who preached the virtue of poverty, or men who used God’s name to cloak their greed for influence and power. She mistrusted and hated the trappings that people hid their feelings behind, and longed for a deeper truth. Now Želimír could understand, at least a little bit, why she eschewed clothing (particularly showy and sumptuous fabrics), but also abstained from rich foods and kept herself aloof from other men besides him.
And it struck him once again just how lucky he was to have her near him.
But how best to express it? Even if Živka held herself to a higher standard than she clearly held him, the reproaches of Budimír over his adultery still rang in his ears. How could the Kráľ requite the Purkmistrička he had loved imperfectly, with anything the equal of the devotion she’d already given him? And how could he be believed?
The rebel army marched into Prerov and was only barely repulsed by the royal armies. As much to focus himself on the war and away from these despairing thoughts as anything else, the Kráľ took up sparring for practice with Kapitán Sokol in the middle of the siege camp that winter. Sokol managed to best him most of the time, but as the days went on, Želimír got better and better at fending off Sokol’s blows when they took to the ring. And then came a day when the Purkmistrička, curious at the proceedings, came to observe them as they fought.
Of course Želimír caught sight of his lover’s tantalising, pearly bare skin in his peripheral vision when the fight began in earnest. Controlling his breath and the raging of his blood to his cheeks and his loins, the Kráľ focussed the surge of his energy into his ankles and into his sword-wrist. He kept his form with poise and placed his feet with the surety of a pouncing wildcat—and soon, he had Sokol on the back foot for a change! Turning away from the tantalising vision of Živka and keeping his eye on the fight at hand, he unleashed a string of savage thrusts and sweeps that drove Sokol to the very edge of the ring, and then drove forward with two strong angular cuts that came very close to getting in under the Kapitán’s guard. Sokol was out of the ring. He had lost.
Owning his defeat with a gust of outblown breath and a wry smile, the mercenary captain touched the pommel of his weapon to his forehead in a sporting salute. The king returned the salute to his opponent, then went and knelt in front of his lover, his weapon across his knee.
‘You fought much better this time than before, from what I hear,’ Živka’s lips curled up in amusement.
‘Only because you were here to spur me on,’ the king replied gallantly. ‘Burgomistress Živana, would you do me the honour of accepting as tokens of my affection for you, whatever victories I might win, either here or upon the field of battle?’
Živana again blushed—again despite a life lived without natural shame—a deep crimson, and a shy little smile crossed her face. ‘But then—what will you do with your losses? Are those to be credited to my name as well?’ she asked, a little perversely.
‘To you goes my glory, and nothing of my failure,’ the king answered.
‘That’s no good,’ Živana tilted her head mischievously, ‘Not when what I want is all of you.’
The king was caught in a net of her words, and he knew it. Owning his defeat, he said: ‘Then all of me is what you will have!’
‘When you put it that way, I… might be convinced.’ Her smile deepened.
Not long after that sparring bout, as the warm winds of spring began to blow in earnest, the Kráľ gave a beautiful and rare flower to his Purkmistrička. She learned that she had conceived their eighth child, in the king’s tent in the siege camp. Again, for the eighth time, the Kráľ was struck with the wonder, the miracle of his wife’s body that, from the warmth of their shared lust, made her not only take fruit, but carry it so naturally and easily. And, glowing as she was with it, he knew again that no other woman could take her place. What had he been thinking to look at another, let alone touch?
There was another engagement with the men of Maramoroš near Púchov. The Kráľ went into battle in rather high dudgeon, because he had hoped to slay a wolf and bring back a pelt for his lover. Unfortunately, moving over twenty thousand men through a narrow mountain defile meant that there was little of any wild game to be had in that area, and he was forced to admit defeat in this instance, and return to Živka without a pelt. (Not that she minded this overly much—these were the sort of trappings she felt she could go without.)
Although the men of Maramoroš were accustomed to fighting in the mountains, and put up a doughty resistance to the Rychnovských, in the end they were unable to surmount the king’s superior numbers. One of the king’s men, Sermon, took some rather serious wounds—but whatever hurt the mountaineers of the east inflicted upon the king’s men, the king’s men returned it twofold. The enemy maršal, Feodor Koceľuk, did not escape the battle unscathed!
The next victory over the rebels was none of the king’s doing, but instead wholly of God’s. Dušan 2. Mikulčický had succumbed to the inflamed wounds he had taken in battle. The title to the Principality of Nitra therefore legally fell to Tichomil’s Germanised son Bertoľd, who was already a hostage in Olomouc. Nitra thus had little option but to surrender its forces and holdings to the king. All that was left was to take the fight to Užhorod and Maramoroš. Robbed of the largest mainstay of their forces, the men of the Moravian east had to beat a hasty retreat behind their own marches.
While they were on the march eastward, there arose a dispute of a personal nature between Purkmistrička Živka and Móric, the son of her neighbouring burgomaster Odola. Móric, who had apparently been frustrated in his advances on the Purkmistrička, had begun loudly proclaiming her to be ‘earth-bound’ and ‘lacking in the true sight’. The entire incident distressed Živana greatly. But the matter was resolved when the king stepped in and convinced Móric that even by his own lights, he was in the wrong: if a woman had rejected him, it was not because she was lacking in knowledge, and he should look for the fault within himself. It took some effort, but at the last he was able to get Móric to apologise to the fastidious Purkmistrička.
The incident with Móric had an impact on the king. Even though he knew the jealousy he felt to be wholly natural, he was still bothered by it. According to the lights of the Adamites, Živana would have been fully within her rights to take Móric to her bed, if she so desired. Želimír was happy that she hadn’t… but once again he felt guilty that he had once taken advantage of that particular Adamite doctrine, while Živana herself still refused to do so. What was he to do about it?
The men of Užhorod, as they continued the march east, had left a rearguard on the road nearby Abov. The king saw at once that the purpose of this rearguard was to prevent the royal armies from catching up to the main body of rebels. Siloš 2. had wantonly sacrificed the men and knights of Maramoroš to make good on an escape for himself. The callousness and the cowardice of Siloš’s manoeuvre enraged the king, and he vowed to pursue the knieža of Užhorod and bring him to a just punishment. The battle of Abov was concluded swiftly, and the king made sure that the survivors of the battle on the rebel side were treated well and permitted to leave without penalty. He would save his wrath for their commander.
Siloš wasn’t out of tricks, however.
September ended. October began. The king’s army drew nigh upon Zemplín, and settled down for the night in the camp. One of the men upon whom he had shown mercy at Abov asked to be given leave to speak to the king in private, that he might give some information that would be to his advantage in the upcoming battle. The head watchman allowed it, and put the captured enemy at liberty, thinking that as long as he didn’t try to escape the camp, he would pose no threat. But the enemy soldier of Užhorod had no plans to escape. His orders were of a different kind. He withdrew a hidden blade and went—not to the king’s tent, but instead to the Purkmistrička’s.
It was lucky for Živana that the king himself was up, awake and sleepless at the time. He was nearly to her chamber when he saw, in a sight that chilled his blood, the pardoned enemy soldier lifting the flap to her tent—and the gleam of a bared blade just visible from the reflected firelight from inside. Quickening in his stride, he approached Živka’s tent, just in time to see—
Purkmistrička Živana, nine months pregnant, days away from labour, was being assailed by his former prisoner. He had his hand around her throat and his knife ready to strike. The king flung himself across the tent to the far side, and dragged the villain bodily off of Živka, twisted the blade out of the man’s grasp, got hold of the hilt and sank it deep into the man’s chest.
It took the space of several breaths for everything that had just happened to register with the king. But he turned to his wife just afterward, having propped herself shakily up on one arm and now staring at the bloody spectacle before her. Želimír went to her and gently lifted her to her feet.
‘My love,’ she murmured breathlessly.
‘Yes?’
‘Please, take me away.’
Želimír led the shaken queen out of her tent and into his own. Once the flaps were securely down and both of them had sat down at the brazier, the Purkmistrička clutched at the king’s tunic.
‘Don’t leave me alone tonight, Žeľko,’ she begged. ‘Please.’
‘I won’t.’
‘And… touch me.’
‘Now? Even with… how far along you are? Is it safe?’
‘Right now? Nothing would reassure me more than to feel you touching me,’ Živana told him.
On the very eve of battle at Zemplín, the Kráľ and the Purkmistrička spent a long, sleepless night of passion, without the need even of the brazier to keep them warm. It took Želimír and Živka some time to find a suitable stelling, so that no harm would come to the woman or their baby. But once they got started, everything came sweet and natural. Živka relaxed and moaned as her lover skillfully touched her most tender spots. Želimír favoured Živana’s warm tingling nerves with brushes of fingers and tongue, and with gentle shallow strokes from behind, from the side, from underneath. Živka heard only her own gusty breath and her juices being smoothly stirred as she rode him from crest to crest of ecstasy.
The following morning, the Kráľ took his place beneath the royal banner, exhausted but at the same time exhilarated and fulfilled. Siloš’s plan to assassinate the heretic queen and demoralise the king had failed utterly—and Želimír was more determined now than ever to bring that rogue to justice.
And just in time, as well, because the enemy lines had formed up with Siloš 2. Bijelahrvatskić at their head.
Although the Užhorodians had the advantage of being on their home terrain, and although Siloš 2. was no slouch as a commander and thus able to pin down the king’s crossbowmen and light footmen, he still found himself outmanned and outmanouvred. He was forced to make a quick corridor for a ready and orderly retreat, but this came, once more, only at the cost of a large portion of his men. When he arrived in Užhorod, it would be only with a shadow of the force he had fielded against the king.
As the king surveyed the slopes of the hills outside Zemplín, which were now dotted with the bodies of the slain, with bodies both dead and wounded being carted off and sorted for either burial, healing or ransom, one of the aides-de-camp came up to the king with an urgent message.
‘Milord Kráľ,’ he said breathlessly, ‘your lady-consort… her water has broken. She has gone into labour!’
The king, concerned, made his way back to the camp. He ordered the commanders not to move against Siloš for now, but to pause in their advance until Živana was safely delivered. A midwife was found from among the local White Croats, and she was brought in to lighten the Purkmistrička. The Kráľ forbade all menfolk from approaching his tent, while only the midwife was permitted inside.
There came a cry at last from inside the tent. A big, noisy, healthy cry. And a laugh of exhausted relief which the Kráľ knew for Živana’s. Želimír breathed a sigh of relief. The midwife appeared at the flap of the teld and beckoned the Kráľ inside the tent. She had already returned the babe to its mother, and it was nursing greedily: A big, healthy, rosy-faced baby boy, with an infant’s fringe of bright copper hair!
‘Another boy!’ breathed the Kráľ gratefully. ‘He’s beautiful!’
‘At last,’ Živana answered with an exhausted smile. ‘I did desire to birthe a spare heir for you.’
‘What shall we name him?’ asked the king.
Živana regarded her husband with understanding eyes. ‘My love… I know how much effort and pains it cost you, truly, to go back to your former faith from the one I led you to. I know the heartburning it caused you. I never really gave one fig one way or the other about God—I figure it’s not like He cares much what we mortals are on about anyway—but I know how much it matters to you. For your sake, then, I want our boy to have a good Orthodox name.’
The king gently kissed the Purkmistrička’s hand. How much she loved him, that she would consider his conversion in naming their child!
‘Jerguš,’ assayed Živana, ‘after your Orthodox Holy Father, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus? No. No! Ján—after Saint John of Patmos!’
‘Ján,’ nodded Želimír. ‘It suits him. It’s a good, strong name. Ján he shall be.’
[What is now known to natural philosophy and to medicine was not then known to the men of the Middle Ages, but the circumstances around this pregnancy of Živka’s have led many to speculate along certain lines suggested by the eighteenth-century Luxembourgish naturalist Lamarck. Queen Živana spent all her time during that last pregnancy of hers in the company of her husband on campaign during that civil war. King Želimír impregnated her in a siege camp around Hont. And then she gave birth on the battlefield near Zemplín. Who is to say that this formidable, warlike child, who would go on to perform so many awesome feats of strength and bravery upon the field of battle, did not take something from these experiences—even within his mother’s womb?]
THIRTY-FIVE
… Is Sanctified…
22 August 1205 – 25 October 1206
The arrival of Živana Rychnovská-Lehnice, Purkmistrička of Jáger, in the Moravian army camp was at best a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it was a significant morale boost to the burghers from Jáger to have the Purkmistrička retake command of the troops from her own city. Also, Kráľ Želimír was happy—more than happy. The other princes, captains and commanders in the siege camp knew to give the king’s tent a wide berth at night, when the Purkmistrička arrived there, wearing nothing but a smile, to discuss strategy with the Kráľ… and then at once experiment with various ‘formations’, ‘manoeuvres’ and ‘flanking actions’ with him.
On the other hand, having a ‘child of Adam’, an unrepentant and open heretic, at the Kráľ’s right hand gave the Orthodox zbrojnošov some keen doubts as to whether they had joined the right side. Many Moravians and Bohemians had brothers, cousins, uncles fighting on the other side, and at the very least the banner that Tichomil Mikulčický had raised in defiance of the king had some justification. How could they be sure that they weren’t fighting in a cause that would damn them?
Tichomil Mikulčický had already gone to his rest, and his first cousin Dušan 2. had succeeded him as knieža. But the banner of rebellion had passed to Siloš 2. of Užhorod, who vaunted it heavenward with renewed enthusiasm. The True Faith was indeed at stake—the presence of the heretics in the enemy camp was proof enough of that!
Želimír, for his part, even though he had returned to the Church, wasn’t so certain that Živana was in fact all that heretical. Now that they had renewed their intimacy and regained the spirited libido of their younger days, Želimír found he was beginning to understand his lover, the Purkmistrička of Jáger, a little better. Above all things, Živka detested what she considered ‘hypocrisy’: whether that was wealthy priests who preached the virtue of poverty, or men who used God’s name to cloak their greed for influence and power. She mistrusted and hated the trappings that people hid their feelings behind, and longed for a deeper truth. Now Želimír could understand, at least a little bit, why she eschewed clothing (particularly showy and sumptuous fabrics), but also abstained from rich foods and kept herself aloof from other men besides him.
And it struck him once again just how lucky he was to have her near him.
But how best to express it? Even if Živka held herself to a higher standard than she clearly held him, the reproaches of Budimír over his adultery still rang in his ears. How could the Kráľ requite the Purkmistrička he had loved imperfectly, with anything the equal of the devotion she’d already given him? And how could he be believed?
The rebel army marched into Prerov and was only barely repulsed by the royal armies. As much to focus himself on the war and away from these despairing thoughts as anything else, the Kráľ took up sparring for practice with Kapitán Sokol in the middle of the siege camp that winter. Sokol managed to best him most of the time, but as the days went on, Želimír got better and better at fending off Sokol’s blows when they took to the ring. And then came a day when the Purkmistrička, curious at the proceedings, came to observe them as they fought.
Of course Želimír caught sight of his lover’s tantalising, pearly bare skin in his peripheral vision when the fight began in earnest. Controlling his breath and the raging of his blood to his cheeks and his loins, the Kráľ focussed the surge of his energy into his ankles and into his sword-wrist. He kept his form with poise and placed his feet with the surety of a pouncing wildcat—and soon, he had Sokol on the back foot for a change! Turning away from the tantalising vision of Živka and keeping his eye on the fight at hand, he unleashed a string of savage thrusts and sweeps that drove Sokol to the very edge of the ring, and then drove forward with two strong angular cuts that came very close to getting in under the Kapitán’s guard. Sokol was out of the ring. He had lost.
Owning his defeat with a gust of outblown breath and a wry smile, the mercenary captain touched the pommel of his weapon to his forehead in a sporting salute. The king returned the salute to his opponent, then went and knelt in front of his lover, his weapon across his knee.
‘You fought much better this time than before, from what I hear,’ Živka’s lips curled up in amusement.
‘Only because you were here to spur me on,’ the king replied gallantly. ‘Burgomistress Živana, would you do me the honour of accepting as tokens of my affection for you, whatever victories I might win, either here or upon the field of battle?’
Živana again blushed—again despite a life lived without natural shame—a deep crimson, and a shy little smile crossed her face. ‘But then—what will you do with your losses? Are those to be credited to my name as well?’ she asked, a little perversely.
‘To you goes my glory, and nothing of my failure,’ the king answered.
‘That’s no good,’ Živana tilted her head mischievously, ‘Not when what I want is all of you.’
The king was caught in a net of her words, and he knew it. Owning his defeat, he said: ‘Then all of me is what you will have!’
‘When you put it that way, I… might be convinced.’ Her smile deepened.
Not long after that sparring bout, as the warm winds of spring began to blow in earnest, the Kráľ gave a beautiful and rare flower to his Purkmistrička. She learned that she had conceived their eighth child, in the king’s tent in the siege camp. Again, for the eighth time, the Kráľ was struck with the wonder, the miracle of his wife’s body that, from the warmth of their shared lust, made her not only take fruit, but carry it so naturally and easily. And, glowing as she was with it, he knew again that no other woman could take her place. What had he been thinking to look at another, let alone touch?
There was another engagement with the men of Maramoroš near Púchov. The Kráľ went into battle in rather high dudgeon, because he had hoped to slay a wolf and bring back a pelt for his lover. Unfortunately, moving over twenty thousand men through a narrow mountain defile meant that there was little of any wild game to be had in that area, and he was forced to admit defeat in this instance, and return to Živka without a pelt. (Not that she minded this overly much—these were the sort of trappings she felt she could go without.)
Although the men of Maramoroš were accustomed to fighting in the mountains, and put up a doughty resistance to the Rychnovských, in the end they were unable to surmount the king’s superior numbers. One of the king’s men, Sermon, took some rather serious wounds—but whatever hurt the mountaineers of the east inflicted upon the king’s men, the king’s men returned it twofold. The enemy maršal, Feodor Koceľuk, did not escape the battle unscathed!
The next victory over the rebels was none of the king’s doing, but instead wholly of God’s. Dušan 2. Mikulčický had succumbed to the inflamed wounds he had taken in battle. The title to the Principality of Nitra therefore legally fell to Tichomil’s Germanised son Bertoľd, who was already a hostage in Olomouc. Nitra thus had little option but to surrender its forces and holdings to the king. All that was left was to take the fight to Užhorod and Maramoroš. Robbed of the largest mainstay of their forces, the men of the Moravian east had to beat a hasty retreat behind their own marches.
While they were on the march eastward, there arose a dispute of a personal nature between Purkmistrička Živka and Móric, the son of her neighbouring burgomaster Odola. Móric, who had apparently been frustrated in his advances on the Purkmistrička, had begun loudly proclaiming her to be ‘earth-bound’ and ‘lacking in the true sight’. The entire incident distressed Živana greatly. But the matter was resolved when the king stepped in and convinced Móric that even by his own lights, he was in the wrong: if a woman had rejected him, it was not because she was lacking in knowledge, and he should look for the fault within himself. It took some effort, but at the last he was able to get Móric to apologise to the fastidious Purkmistrička.
The incident with Móric had an impact on the king. Even though he knew the jealousy he felt to be wholly natural, he was still bothered by it. According to the lights of the Adamites, Živana would have been fully within her rights to take Móric to her bed, if she so desired. Želimír was happy that she hadn’t… but once again he felt guilty that he had once taken advantage of that particular Adamite doctrine, while Živana herself still refused to do so. What was he to do about it?
The men of Užhorod, as they continued the march east, had left a rearguard on the road nearby Abov. The king saw at once that the purpose of this rearguard was to prevent the royal armies from catching up to the main body of rebels. Siloš 2. had wantonly sacrificed the men and knights of Maramoroš to make good on an escape for himself. The callousness and the cowardice of Siloš’s manoeuvre enraged the king, and he vowed to pursue the knieža of Užhorod and bring him to a just punishment. The battle of Abov was concluded swiftly, and the king made sure that the survivors of the battle on the rebel side were treated well and permitted to leave without penalty. He would save his wrath for their commander.
Siloš wasn’t out of tricks, however.
September ended. October began. The king’s army drew nigh upon Zemplín, and settled down for the night in the camp. One of the men upon whom he had shown mercy at Abov asked to be given leave to speak to the king in private, that he might give some information that would be to his advantage in the upcoming battle. The head watchman allowed it, and put the captured enemy at liberty, thinking that as long as he didn’t try to escape the camp, he would pose no threat. But the enemy soldier of Užhorod had no plans to escape. His orders were of a different kind. He withdrew a hidden blade and went—not to the king’s tent, but instead to the Purkmistrička’s.
It was lucky for Živana that the king himself was up, awake and sleepless at the time. He was nearly to her chamber when he saw, in a sight that chilled his blood, the pardoned enemy soldier lifting the flap to her tent—and the gleam of a bared blade just visible from the reflected firelight from inside. Quickening in his stride, he approached Živka’s tent, just in time to see—
Purkmistrička Živana, nine months pregnant, days away from labour, was being assailed by his former prisoner. He had his hand around her throat and his knife ready to strike. The king flung himself across the tent to the far side, and dragged the villain bodily off of Živka, twisted the blade out of the man’s grasp, got hold of the hilt and sank it deep into the man’s chest.
It took the space of several breaths for everything that had just happened to register with the king. But he turned to his wife just afterward, having propped herself shakily up on one arm and now staring at the bloody spectacle before her. Želimír went to her and gently lifted her to her feet.
‘My love,’ she murmured breathlessly.
‘Yes?’
‘Please, take me away.’
Želimír led the shaken queen out of her tent and into his own. Once the flaps were securely down and both of them had sat down at the brazier, the Purkmistrička clutched at the king’s tunic.
‘Don’t leave me alone tonight, Žeľko,’ she begged. ‘Please.’
‘I won’t.’
‘And… touch me.’
‘Now? Even with… how far along you are? Is it safe?’
‘Right now? Nothing would reassure me more than to feel you touching me,’ Živana told him.
On the very eve of battle at Zemplín, the Kráľ and the Purkmistrička spent a long, sleepless night of passion, without the need even of the brazier to keep them warm. It took Želimír and Živka some time to find a suitable stelling, so that no harm would come to the woman or their baby. But once they got started, everything came sweet and natural. Živka relaxed and moaned as her lover skillfully touched her most tender spots. Želimír favoured Živana’s warm tingling nerves with brushes of fingers and tongue, and with gentle shallow strokes from behind, from the side, from underneath. Živka heard only her own gusty breath and her juices being smoothly stirred as she rode him from crest to crest of ecstasy.
The following morning, the Kráľ took his place beneath the royal banner, exhausted but at the same time exhilarated and fulfilled. Siloš’s plan to assassinate the heretic queen and demoralise the king had failed utterly—and Želimír was more determined now than ever to bring that rogue to justice.
And just in time, as well, because the enemy lines had formed up with Siloš 2. Bijelahrvatskić at their head.
Although the Užhorodians had the advantage of being on their home terrain, and although Siloš 2. was no slouch as a commander and thus able to pin down the king’s crossbowmen and light footmen, he still found himself outmanned and outmanouvred. He was forced to make a quick corridor for a ready and orderly retreat, but this came, once more, only at the cost of a large portion of his men. When he arrived in Užhorod, it would be only with a shadow of the force he had fielded against the king.
As the king surveyed the slopes of the hills outside Zemplín, which were now dotted with the bodies of the slain, with bodies both dead and wounded being carted off and sorted for either burial, healing or ransom, one of the aides-de-camp came up to the king with an urgent message.
‘Milord Kráľ,’ he said breathlessly, ‘your lady-consort… her water has broken. She has gone into labour!’
The king, concerned, made his way back to the camp. He ordered the commanders not to move against Siloš for now, but to pause in their advance until Živana was safely delivered. A midwife was found from among the local White Croats, and she was brought in to lighten the Purkmistrička. The Kráľ forbade all menfolk from approaching his tent, while only the midwife was permitted inside.
There came a cry at last from inside the tent. A big, noisy, healthy cry. And a laugh of exhausted relief which the Kráľ knew for Živana’s. Želimír breathed a sigh of relief. The midwife appeared at the flap of the teld and beckoned the Kráľ inside the tent. She had already returned the babe to its mother, and it was nursing greedily: A big, healthy, rosy-faced baby boy, with an infant’s fringe of bright copper hair!
‘Another boy!’ breathed the Kráľ gratefully. ‘He’s beautiful!’
‘At last,’ Živana answered with an exhausted smile. ‘I did desire to birthe a spare heir for you.’
‘What shall we name him?’ asked the king.
Živana regarded her husband with understanding eyes. ‘My love… I know how much effort and pains it cost you, truly, to go back to your former faith from the one I led you to. I know the heartburning it caused you. I never really gave one fig one way or the other about God—I figure it’s not like He cares much what we mortals are on about anyway—but I know how much it matters to you. For your sake, then, I want our boy to have a good Orthodox name.’
The king gently kissed the Purkmistrička’s hand. How much she loved him, that she would consider his conversion in naming their child!
‘Jerguš,’ assayed Živana, ‘after your Orthodox Holy Father, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus? No. No! Ján—after Saint John of Patmos!’
‘Ján,’ nodded Želimír. ‘It suits him. It’s a good, strong name. Ján he shall be.’
[What is now known to natural philosophy and to medicine was not then known to the men of the Middle Ages, but the circumstances around this pregnancy of Živka’s have led many to speculate along certain lines suggested by the eighteenth-century Luxembourgish naturalist Lamarck. Queen Živana spent all her time during that last pregnancy of hers in the company of her husband on campaign during that civil war. King Želimír impregnated her in a siege camp around Hont. And then she gave birth on the battlefield near Zemplín. Who is to say that this formidable, warlike child, who would go on to perform so many awesome feats of strength and bravery upon the field of battle, did not take something from these experiences—even within his mother’s womb?]
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Book Four Chapter Thirty-Six
I was worried that I might have to post another NSFW images warning here, but it looks like I managed to get all the screencaps I wanted in without any naughty bits. So cheers! Thankfully that previous episode will be the last one for a while to have any late-night HBO content.
THIRTY-SIX
… By the Husband
17 January 1207 – 15 December 1209
The king’s great-uncle Daniel unfortunately didn’t live long enough to see the realm set at peace before he went to his own peaceful rest. The knieža of the Česi was buried in state at Vyšehrad, and succeeded by his son Prisnec. Because Prisnec was the name of a former king of Moravia who had also held the title of knieža of the Česi, he was dubbed Knieža Prisnec 2. of that land.
Prisnec 2. turned out to be a rather irksome kinsman to the king. Although he had sworn loyalty to Želimír upon his accession, the king quickly learned that he had offered Drahomír Rychnovský his support if ever it came to a disputed succession. This seemed to be Prisnec 2.’s way of angling for his father’s old council position, petty as it was… and he possessed only a pale shadow of his father’s formidable abilities as šafár. But Želimír was desirous to forestall another rebellion, and so he allowed his devious cousin the council position, and sent a suitably costly present to keep him quiet and content.
There was little left of the rebellion in the east after Siloš 2. Bijelahrvatskić’s defeat at Zemplín, at which battle the infant Ján Rychnovský had been—auspiciously or ominously—born. The supplies and food stocks at Užhorod ran out by March, and Siloš was forced to surrender himself and his garrison at last, rather than succumb to hunger and plague. Siloš and his fellow-conspirator Vyšeslav Koceľuk were taken in chains back to Olomouc to join Bertoľd Mikulčický in the king’s donjon, and await their doom.
‘So, this is good-bye then,’ Živana mused sadly as she lay upon the king’s bedroll in his tent. ‘You must go back to Olomouc with them, mustn’t you?’
‘I have my duties as king,’ sighed Želimír.
‘And I have my duties as mešťanostka in Jáger,’ Živana replied, a deep sadness coming over her face. ‘It may be a long time before we see each other again.’
‘Živka…’ began the king. ‘I…’
The Purkmistrička put a finger over his lips. ‘Don’t, please. I know what you’re going to say. Don’t make me that promise—a promise I know you’ll keep anyway. Speaking it would only make it cheaper.’
‘I wish I could take you with me,’ said the king.
‘So do I,’ Živana murmured, hugging her man close. ‘I know how awful war is, but being at your side, on campaign with you… it’s been like a dream, almost a second honeymoon. And now… now we have Ján!’
‘And he’s going back to Jáger with you,’ Želimír observed—not without a faint trace of bitterness.
‘Of course he is,’ Živana laid a hand over her heart. ‘Boy needs his mother at this age.’
The king couldn’t argue with that. It was a truth as universal as humankind. But it still rankled with him, that his son would be raised in Jáger away from him. Even as he thought this, a certain mad notion flickered like a flash of lightning across his mind. And yet unlike lightning, its glow lingered.
‘I shall see you again,’ Živana told Želimír, her blue eyes sparkling sincerely, despite the threat of tears in them. ‘Count on it.’
‘I am counting on it.’
He saw Živka and the stout burghers of Jáger depart from Užhorod before he himself returned to his capital. His heart was heavy enough even as he watched half of it—the more virtuous, the more beautiful skyclad half—disappear from his sight.
En route back to Olomouc, the Kráľ of Moravia cracked the seal on a letter he had long put aside, but which now he desired to read. It was addressed from Svetislav Bălgărski-Dlăgopol—the king of the Vlachs. As Želimír scanned the letter, he found that it was addressed to him in a remarkably warm, conciliatory tone. Reading between the lines of the various inquiries about health and family, administrative and military challenges, he saw clearly that the king of the Vlachs desired to be on a more amicable footing with his neighbour-king.
However, in the midst of the letter, he found a section that stuck out to him:
‘I would not normally bother a highly-esteemed man, and one who has rediscovered for himself the prodigal joy of returning to our Saviour, with such idle trivia as this. But my Bulghar cousins to the East whisper darkly of a storm-cloud looming in the East. One after another, the clans of the Tatars are falling before an unstoppable horde of invincible horsemen. At their head is a certain former slave and expert hunter who goes by the adopted name of Temüüdžin—the “Steel Man”—and has adopted for himself the title of Čingis Khan—that is, the “Ruler of the Cosmos”. My dearest Želimír, can you hear of such madness without laughing? These superstitions of the heathen notwithstanding, I do think it may be in both of our interests, in the near future, to seek closer ties…’
Temüüdžin? Čingis Khan? For now, these names meant nothing to Želimír… but the offer of an alliance stuck out to him. The Bulgarian lords of the Vlachs had previously been friendly with Moravia under Kráľ Eustach, though the relationship had been, to put it mildly, a bit one-sided. Now, however… with the Vlachs largely at peace and with Eastern Rome more or less respecting their borders… The mad notion that had crackled like lightning through Kráľ Želimír now glowed again, this time a bit brighter. Kráľ Želimír put ink and quill to vellum, and feverishly wrote and sent off a long and equally-warm response back to the Bulgarian king.
The response came quicker than he had anticipated. Svetoslav had clearly looked forward to Želimír’s reply, and it seemed his tone was still every bit as solicitous. This time, Želimír took much greater care in composing the next stage of the correspondence.
If he was to seal this alliance firmly, he had to be sure of Svetoslav’s interest and goodwill. The Moravian king first wrote a flattering salutation to the Bulgarian king, and then proceeded with ‘capturing goodwill’ in a sense that clearly indicated his personal admiration and esteem for Svetoslav. The two Christian kings, he intimated, shared a common interest in upholding the faith of the Apostles, and ought to harbour for each other the same brotherly love and care that the first disciples of Christ did.
And here was the tricky part. If he moved too quickly into a petition for an alliance, it would come off too strong. Želimír was well aware that Svetoslav was rarely if ever motivated by altruistic concerns. Chances were that, despite his bravado and bluster about ‘heathen superstitions’, he really was quite terrified of this Temüüdžin in the East, and was desperately desirous of a defensive pact. Želimír understood, though, that if he moved too quickly and too readily in that direction, Svetoslav would suspect that the Moravians were trying to put one over on him, and back off. He needed to be circumspect in his petition. Perhaps even skip over that section altogether.
Instead, Želimír put in a narration of the feast that he had gotten to attend, that had been arranged by his mother Kostislava. (Kostislava was herself a distant kinswoman of Svetoslav—a fact that would not be lost on the Balgarski dynast.) He asked for the Bulgarian king’s own opinion on such festivities, and expressed a hope that he might one day deign to accept the hospitality of his Moravian brothers in the west. Then Želimír concluded with another expression of admiration and friendship.
Subtle. But not too subtle.
At last the correspondence returned to him, and it was all encouragement. This time Svetoslav expressed his desire for an alliance in explicit and unmistakeable terms. This letter reached Želimír just as his daughter Vlasta had reached her sixteenth birthday. And the king of the Vlachs happened to be, as per his second letter to Želimír, a recent widower.
Vlasta, who had grown into an ambitious woman with a keen martial mind, was more than happy to accept Svetoslav’s proposal when it came. She bade her father’s house farewell and rode off into the east—and in such wise the alliance between the Vlachs and the Moravians was sealed.
But Želimír was not done.
Encouraged by his exchange of letters with King Svetoslav Bălgărski-Dlăgopol, the Moravian king struck up a similar correspondence with Aleksandr Vogak, Veliky Knyaz of the Great Rus’, the seat of whose authority was located in Mozyř. Knyaz Aleksandr was likewise desirous of an alliance, and was willing to enter into a betrothal with another of Želimír’s daughters, Volimíra. At the same time, he sent Archbishop Budimír to Jáger. The alliance between Moravia and Great Rus’ would long outlive Želimír, Živana or any of their progeny. The friendship between the two kingdoms would last for over four hundred fifty years, outlasting even Rychnovský rule over Moravia: all the way from the year 1207, unbroken until the year 1659. For this feat, Želimír would come to be seen as a great diplomat.
Unfortunately, this alliance did not escape the attention of others in the neighbourhood. Even though Želimír had no ill intentions toward the Červeny, the villainous Knedz of the Červens, Jaroslav Balharski-Borsa, took the alliance of the three Orthodox kings as a threat to his realm. He sent a plush carpet from regions far as a gift to the king of Moravia—though the keen-eyed king quickly perceived that it muffled footfalls, and was almost certain to be meant to aid in assassination attempts. He ordered the carpet to be destroyed, and cut off all communication with the neighbouring Červeny.
But for now, the mad notion glowed ever brighter. Now it was a fully-formed ambition: to wrest Jáger away from Balaton, and to wrest his wife Živana away from the grasp of the Gnostics for good. And this alliance of three Orthodox kings—himself, Svetoslav Bălgărski-Dlăgopol, and Aleksandr Vogak—would be the ones to bring it about.
Of course, Archbishop Budimír had other ideas. He wanted Želimír to undertake a great holy war to reclaim all of eastern Pannonia for the True Faith… but for Želimír, this wasn’t so much about conquering territory as about converting one soul: the one single soul who truly mattered to him.
Thus Želimír sparked off the first of the Adamite Wars: all in the name of a woman.
Želimír successfully applied to the Œcumenical Patriarch Samouēl for funds in this quest. The Moravian Army, bypassing the prize of Jáger, quickly besieged the more strategic castle town of Heveš, while his Russian and Bulgaro-Vlach allies moved to seize passes and chokepoints further west. Slowly but surely the three kings cut off Heveš from reinforcements and took control of more and more Balatonian territory.
The one major engagement of the first Adamite War took place outside of Heveš. Knieža Jaromil of Balaton, in alliance with the also-Adamite King Archambaud of Savoy, massed a total of fifteen thousand men and sent them east in a last-ditch attempt to retrieve the castle in that town. In answer, the Moravian king rallied the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre, and marched alongside them and the armies of Knyaz Aleksandr into battle.
One of the riders of Moravia, a man named Miloboj Majcichovský, distinguished himself by his bravery in the battle of Heveš. Having spotted the unholy banner of the Adamites, he shouted aloud the names of God and His Holy Mother, levelled his lance and committed himself to an almighty charge against its bearer. The lance connected and unhorsed the standard-bearer, Hrdoslav, who never walked on both feet again after that charge.
Once the dust from that battle had cleared, Knieža Jaromil had no choice but to admit defeat, and to relinquish his claims upon Heveš and Jáger. Želimír went to Jáger himself, and presented himself at the gates of the town as the sovereign to whom they now owed allegiance. The town gates were thrown open to him, and the burgomistress of the town met him personally in the street.
They embraced. Živana knelt to him.
‘My lord. My king. My husband,’ she pronounced, savouring the sound of the words upon her tongue.
Želimír lifted her to her feet and kissed her. ‘My wife,’ he answered her.
Živana went with Želimír to the church, where an Orthodox priest took the former Adamite woman’s confession, and heard her recitation of the Symbol of Faith she knew when she was little. After donning a suitable shift and gown, the Purkmistrička threw a weeks-long feast in her husband Kráľ Želimír’s honour. Upon the conclusion of the feast, the two of them, as well as their whole brood of children including little Ján, departed Jáger for Olomouc.
THIRTY-SIX
… By the Husband
17 January 1207 – 15 December 1209
The king’s great-uncle Daniel unfortunately didn’t live long enough to see the realm set at peace before he went to his own peaceful rest. The knieža of the Česi was buried in state at Vyšehrad, and succeeded by his son Prisnec. Because Prisnec was the name of a former king of Moravia who had also held the title of knieža of the Česi, he was dubbed Knieža Prisnec 2. of that land.
Prisnec 2. turned out to be a rather irksome kinsman to the king. Although he had sworn loyalty to Želimír upon his accession, the king quickly learned that he had offered Drahomír Rychnovský his support if ever it came to a disputed succession. This seemed to be Prisnec 2.’s way of angling for his father’s old council position, petty as it was… and he possessed only a pale shadow of his father’s formidable abilities as šafár. But Želimír was desirous to forestall another rebellion, and so he allowed his devious cousin the council position, and sent a suitably costly present to keep him quiet and content.
There was little left of the rebellion in the east after Siloš 2. Bijelahrvatskić’s defeat at Zemplín, at which battle the infant Ján Rychnovský had been—auspiciously or ominously—born. The supplies and food stocks at Užhorod ran out by March, and Siloš was forced to surrender himself and his garrison at last, rather than succumb to hunger and plague. Siloš and his fellow-conspirator Vyšeslav Koceľuk were taken in chains back to Olomouc to join Bertoľd Mikulčický in the king’s donjon, and await their doom.
‘So, this is good-bye then,’ Živana mused sadly as she lay upon the king’s bedroll in his tent. ‘You must go back to Olomouc with them, mustn’t you?’
‘I have my duties as king,’ sighed Želimír.
‘And I have my duties as mešťanostka in Jáger,’ Živana replied, a deep sadness coming over her face. ‘It may be a long time before we see each other again.’
‘Živka…’ began the king. ‘I…’
The Purkmistrička put a finger over his lips. ‘Don’t, please. I know what you’re going to say. Don’t make me that promise—a promise I know you’ll keep anyway. Speaking it would only make it cheaper.’
‘I wish I could take you with me,’ said the king.
‘So do I,’ Živana murmured, hugging her man close. ‘I know how awful war is, but being at your side, on campaign with you… it’s been like a dream, almost a second honeymoon. And now… now we have Ján!’
‘And he’s going back to Jáger with you,’ Želimír observed—not without a faint trace of bitterness.
‘Of course he is,’ Živana laid a hand over her heart. ‘Boy needs his mother at this age.’
The king couldn’t argue with that. It was a truth as universal as humankind. But it still rankled with him, that his son would be raised in Jáger away from him. Even as he thought this, a certain mad notion flickered like a flash of lightning across his mind. And yet unlike lightning, its glow lingered.
‘I shall see you again,’ Živana told Želimír, her blue eyes sparkling sincerely, despite the threat of tears in them. ‘Count on it.’
‘I am counting on it.’
He saw Živka and the stout burghers of Jáger depart from Užhorod before he himself returned to his capital. His heart was heavy enough even as he watched half of it—the more virtuous, the more beautiful skyclad half—disappear from his sight.
En route back to Olomouc, the Kráľ of Moravia cracked the seal on a letter he had long put aside, but which now he desired to read. It was addressed from Svetislav Bălgărski-Dlăgopol—the king of the Vlachs. As Želimír scanned the letter, he found that it was addressed to him in a remarkably warm, conciliatory tone. Reading between the lines of the various inquiries about health and family, administrative and military challenges, he saw clearly that the king of the Vlachs desired to be on a more amicable footing with his neighbour-king.
However, in the midst of the letter, he found a section that stuck out to him:
‘I would not normally bother a highly-esteemed man, and one who has rediscovered for himself the prodigal joy of returning to our Saviour, with such idle trivia as this. But my Bulghar cousins to the East whisper darkly of a storm-cloud looming in the East. One after another, the clans of the Tatars are falling before an unstoppable horde of invincible horsemen. At their head is a certain former slave and expert hunter who goes by the adopted name of Temüüdžin—the “Steel Man”—and has adopted for himself the title of Čingis Khan—that is, the “Ruler of the Cosmos”. My dearest Želimír, can you hear of such madness without laughing? These superstitions of the heathen notwithstanding, I do think it may be in both of our interests, in the near future, to seek closer ties…’
Temüüdžin? Čingis Khan? For now, these names meant nothing to Želimír… but the offer of an alliance stuck out to him. The Bulgarian lords of the Vlachs had previously been friendly with Moravia under Kráľ Eustach, though the relationship had been, to put it mildly, a bit one-sided. Now, however… with the Vlachs largely at peace and with Eastern Rome more or less respecting their borders… The mad notion that had crackled like lightning through Kráľ Želimír now glowed again, this time a bit brighter. Kráľ Želimír put ink and quill to vellum, and feverishly wrote and sent off a long and equally-warm response back to the Bulgarian king.
The response came quicker than he had anticipated. Svetoslav had clearly looked forward to Želimír’s reply, and it seemed his tone was still every bit as solicitous. This time, Želimír took much greater care in composing the next stage of the correspondence.
If he was to seal this alliance firmly, he had to be sure of Svetoslav’s interest and goodwill. The Moravian king first wrote a flattering salutation to the Bulgarian king, and then proceeded with ‘capturing goodwill’ in a sense that clearly indicated his personal admiration and esteem for Svetoslav. The two Christian kings, he intimated, shared a common interest in upholding the faith of the Apostles, and ought to harbour for each other the same brotherly love and care that the first disciples of Christ did.
And here was the tricky part. If he moved too quickly into a petition for an alliance, it would come off too strong. Želimír was well aware that Svetoslav was rarely if ever motivated by altruistic concerns. Chances were that, despite his bravado and bluster about ‘heathen superstitions’, he really was quite terrified of this Temüüdžin in the East, and was desperately desirous of a defensive pact. Želimír understood, though, that if he moved too quickly and too readily in that direction, Svetoslav would suspect that the Moravians were trying to put one over on him, and back off. He needed to be circumspect in his petition. Perhaps even skip over that section altogether.
Instead, Želimír put in a narration of the feast that he had gotten to attend, that had been arranged by his mother Kostislava. (Kostislava was herself a distant kinswoman of Svetoslav—a fact that would not be lost on the Balgarski dynast.) He asked for the Bulgarian king’s own opinion on such festivities, and expressed a hope that he might one day deign to accept the hospitality of his Moravian brothers in the west. Then Želimír concluded with another expression of admiration and friendship.
Subtle. But not too subtle.
At last the correspondence returned to him, and it was all encouragement. This time Svetoslav expressed his desire for an alliance in explicit and unmistakeable terms. This letter reached Želimír just as his daughter Vlasta had reached her sixteenth birthday. And the king of the Vlachs happened to be, as per his second letter to Želimír, a recent widower.
Vlasta, who had grown into an ambitious woman with a keen martial mind, was more than happy to accept Svetoslav’s proposal when it came. She bade her father’s house farewell and rode off into the east—and in such wise the alliance between the Vlachs and the Moravians was sealed.
But Želimír was not done.
Encouraged by his exchange of letters with King Svetoslav Bălgărski-Dlăgopol, the Moravian king struck up a similar correspondence with Aleksandr Vogak, Veliky Knyaz of the Great Rus’, the seat of whose authority was located in Mozyř. Knyaz Aleksandr was likewise desirous of an alliance, and was willing to enter into a betrothal with another of Želimír’s daughters, Volimíra. At the same time, he sent Archbishop Budimír to Jáger. The alliance between Moravia and Great Rus’ would long outlive Želimír, Živana or any of their progeny. The friendship between the two kingdoms would last for over four hundred fifty years, outlasting even Rychnovský rule over Moravia: all the way from the year 1207, unbroken until the year 1659. For this feat, Želimír would come to be seen as a great diplomat.
Unfortunately, this alliance did not escape the attention of others in the neighbourhood. Even though Želimír had no ill intentions toward the Červeny, the villainous Knedz of the Červens, Jaroslav Balharski-Borsa, took the alliance of the three Orthodox kings as a threat to his realm. He sent a plush carpet from regions far as a gift to the king of Moravia—though the keen-eyed king quickly perceived that it muffled footfalls, and was almost certain to be meant to aid in assassination attempts. He ordered the carpet to be destroyed, and cut off all communication with the neighbouring Červeny.
But for now, the mad notion glowed ever brighter. Now it was a fully-formed ambition: to wrest Jáger away from Balaton, and to wrest his wife Živana away from the grasp of the Gnostics for good. And this alliance of three Orthodox kings—himself, Svetoslav Bălgărski-Dlăgopol, and Aleksandr Vogak—would be the ones to bring it about.
Of course, Archbishop Budimír had other ideas. He wanted Želimír to undertake a great holy war to reclaim all of eastern Pannonia for the True Faith… but for Želimír, this wasn’t so much about conquering territory as about converting one soul: the one single soul who truly mattered to him.
Thus Želimír sparked off the first of the Adamite Wars: all in the name of a woman.
Želimír successfully applied to the Œcumenical Patriarch Samouēl for funds in this quest. The Moravian Army, bypassing the prize of Jáger, quickly besieged the more strategic castle town of Heveš, while his Russian and Bulgaro-Vlach allies moved to seize passes and chokepoints further west. Slowly but surely the three kings cut off Heveš from reinforcements and took control of more and more Balatonian territory.
The one major engagement of the first Adamite War took place outside of Heveš. Knieža Jaromil of Balaton, in alliance with the also-Adamite King Archambaud of Savoy, massed a total of fifteen thousand men and sent them east in a last-ditch attempt to retrieve the castle in that town. In answer, the Moravian king rallied the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre, and marched alongside them and the armies of Knyaz Aleksandr into battle.
One of the riders of Moravia, a man named Miloboj Majcichovský, distinguished himself by his bravery in the battle of Heveš. Having spotted the unholy banner of the Adamites, he shouted aloud the names of God and His Holy Mother, levelled his lance and committed himself to an almighty charge against its bearer. The lance connected and unhorsed the standard-bearer, Hrdoslav, who never walked on both feet again after that charge.
Once the dust from that battle had cleared, Knieža Jaromil had no choice but to admit defeat, and to relinquish his claims upon Heveš and Jáger. Želimír went to Jáger himself, and presented himself at the gates of the town as the sovereign to whom they now owed allegiance. The town gates were thrown open to him, and the burgomistress of the town met him personally in the street.
They embraced. Živana knelt to him.
‘My lord. My king. My husband,’ she pronounced, savouring the sound of the words upon her tongue.
Želimír lifted her to her feet and kissed her. ‘My wife,’ he answered her.
Živana went with Želimír to the church, where an Orthodox priest took the former Adamite woman’s confession, and heard her recitation of the Symbol of Faith she knew when she was little. After donning a suitable shift and gown, the Purkmistrička threw a weeks-long feast in her husband Kráľ Želimír’s honour. Upon the conclusion of the feast, the two of them, as well as their whole brood of children including little Ján, departed Jáger for Olomouc.
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The King will need a large budgetary increase to clothe the Queen and her whelps. First offensive war in several generations, Zivka is the landlocked version of Helen. Thank you for the update.
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Book Four Chapter Thirty-Seven
First offensive war? Yes. Though was it worth it to convert a single person?
As always, thank you for reading!
Okay, this one gets one more WARNING for one NSFW image, though I think it should be the last one for a while anyway.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Atonement
28 December 1209 – 3 August 1212
Atonement
28 December 1209 – 3 August 1212
‘AAAAAaaahhh!’ Queen Vlasta of the Vlachs shrieked, dropping the dressing-knife she was wielding as the bird lunged forward with its long blue neck and nipped ferociously at the poor girl’s nose. Among the five peacocks that were on the high table, one of them clearly had not been grilled, stuffed and then redressed in their original plumage like the rest—but still had all of his feathers, all of his life and health, all of his strength, and more than his fair share of outrage. The berserk bird stood up and, shaking his long resplendent green tail after him, leapt up off the tray and began attacking the rest of the dinner arrangements and the guests as they appeared to him.
Up after him leapt Vlasta’s mother Živana, Kráľovná of Moravia, Pani of Heveš and Purkmistrička of Jáger—and went after the enraged fowl. She managed to shoo him off the table, after which a spirited chase began. The hoots and guffaws of delight and amusement followed her in the chase around the hall, and even the Moravian Kráľ (whose idea this prank had been in the first place) was stifling a snicker behind his hand.
‘This would be—much easier—if I weren’t in this dress,’ puffed the exasperated former nudist as she ran after the bird. The peacock himself answered her with a series of high shrieks as he pecked at the heels of the other assembled guests. The queen hurried after him, made two unsuccessful lunges at the bird about the wings, and eventually chased him out the door into the courtyard.
Kráľ Želimír’s feast celebrating his wife’s return to Olomouc and her conversion to the True Faith was a smashing success. All of the guests were thoroughly amused by the antics—with the possible exception of Queen Vlasta, who gingerly held her pecked nose and was said to have been shy even of stuffed capons for some time after that. Queen Živana’s cheeks were in high colour after the exercise, and she seemed exhilarated and in good spirits after her peacock chase in the hall.
~~~
Radomír, Želimír and Živana’s eldest son, had turned out a truly fine scholar—and no one was prouder of him than his grandmother Kostislava, who was herself of a scholarly bent. But something worried Želimír about his eldest son. He had a keen and exacting knowledge of the law, understood every nuance, could quote the Church Councils and canon law backwards and forwards from memory. But the king had observed his son once in town—in Jáger, shortly after the town had been placed under Moravian suzerainty.
‘Please, Pani, have mercy,’ the wretched, scraggle-bearded man had been grovelling on the floor in front of Želimír’s wife, Živana. ‘I know it was wrong to steal—but we were driven off of our croft when the armies of Jaromil marched through and destroyed everything! I had no money to buy food for myself, let alone my wife and four children!’
‘Mother—’ Radomír had interjected from Živana’s side, ‘—I must protest this man’s request for leniency. The law is clear. The man must make good his debt—either by paying a fine and making restitution to the merchant he stole from, or with the equivalent in labour, or with blood, drawn by strokes of the knout. I recommend all three in this case. In the wake of such a war as the one we just saw fought, there will always be lawless elements seeking to take advantage of efforts to rebuild, and misdirect them for their own gain. Such elements must be crushed, in order to reassure the lawful citizens of Jáger that their Purkmistrička still upholds God’s justice!’
Thankfully, Živana had reminded her son of his place and dealt with the convicted thief in a more merciful way. But Želimír was appalled at hearing this speech from his son. Although there was no doubt in the king’s mind that Radomír’s expansive knowledge of the law was correct in every particular, still, for him to press for its full execution upon this unfortunate’s head like this… How could his own loins have borne forth such a heartless and unfeeling boy? Želimír began to fear, very deeply, what it would mean for the Moravian realm if Radomír were the one to succeed him. And so Kráľ Želimír began making plans—for, not Radomír, but instead his younger son, the baby Ján, to be named heir.
Such a thing had not yet been done in the history of the Moravian kingdom, although since Kráľ Tomáš the sovereign’s right to hand-select a successor from within the line of succession had been asserted. But in this case Želimír thought it was necessary. Was it unbecoming a father to cast so dark a suspicion upon his own son? Perhaps. But the terror that took the heart of the Moravian king when he thought of such an inflexible, stony-hearted legalist as Radomír upon the throne was too much to bear. And so the Kráľ took it upon himself to educate the boy personally.
The three-year-old who had been conceived upon the battlefield was already a handful and a half to manage. There wasn’t a day when the rambunctious youngster wasn’t coming in from play without a new scratch or bruise. And somehow, Ján was getting into fights with much older boys—six, seven and eight—and coming off the better half the time.
Želimír fretted for his son. He had never been such an anarchic youth! Clearly Živana had let the boy run quite wild in Jáger for the first years of his life.
And unfortunately, these were not the only troubles that he faced within his family.
‘Milord,’ spoke Vlastibor, Purkmistra of Břeclav, ‘I have unwelcome news for you.’
The Kráľ sighed, but made a gesture for the burgomaster to go on.
‘You are aware that your lady mother Kostislava has been going about of late in the company of her bodyguard, Nitrabor.’
Želimír had indeed seen the one of whom Vlastibor spoke. A muscular, square-jawed, smooth-chinned specimen, the young man had been his mother’s constant and loyal shadow as her honour guard and enforcer, ever since his ascent to majority four years ago. The inkling of suspicion had been with the naturally-suspicious king for a long time, such that he anticipated exactly what the mayor would say next.
‘Out with it,’ Želimír growled.
‘Nitrabor has been… accompanying your mother, not only during the day, but at night. I’m afraid that I have both witnesses and proofs of their amorous encounters—and I say these things not to besmirch your mother’s honour but merely to place you on guard.’
Želimír could not bring himself to thank the mayor for saying aloud, and proving without a doubt, what he had already long suspected. ‘You are dismissed, Vlastibor.’
The mayor bowed and withdrew. Želimír called for two of his stoutest zbrojnošov.
‘Send for my mother. At once.’
Soon enough, the Queen Mother was standing in front of him, jutting out a defiant chin. Želimír tried several times to work his mouth, before he spoke.
‘Mother. For shame—!’
‘Shame? I don’t want to hear it,’ the old woman told him bluntly. ‘Especially not from an ungrateful son like you. You have the effrontery to send armed men to me, bring me here like some common criminal? Eight years ago you were cavorting around a fire, naked, and consorting in the open with a woman took your momentary fancy. A woman who was not the one that your father and I lawfully bound to you!’
‘What I did,’ Želimír spoke slowly, ‘was wrong. I am fully devoted to my wife now, and—’
‘And,’ Kostislava went on mercilessly, ‘what are you doing now, but dispossessing the deserving son—Radko, your firstborn son, your well-behaved son—in favour of that… that topsy-turvy, unruly ginger-haired brat of a second!’
The king banged his fist upon the seat of his throne, causing Kostislava to flinch. ‘That is none of your concern, mother. Last I checked, this realm and its disposition was my responsibility, not yours.’
Kostislava narrowed her eyes at her son. ‘And how I arrange my own estate, my vassals, my armigers, my household—is none of your business. What? Did you expect me to wear black the rest of my life? To leap into my dead husband’s grave but a week after he died, like Queen Blažena? A handsome young armiger offers me a few brief moments of warmth and consolation in my old age, and you expect me to turn him down?’
‘I expected you…’ the king said heavily, ‘to have at least a tad more discretion about your… cicisbeo. But now… here we are. My hand was forced by one of your vassals who, evidently, are none of my business.’
‘And what are you going to do about it?’ asked the Queen Mother tiredly, steeling herself.
Želimír buried his face in his hands. He had no desire to cause his own elderly mother further shame and mortification on account of her late-autumn love affair. But he had to do something. Deciding at last he said: ‘A fine. Half what an unmarried noblewoman taken in fornication would normally pay. And you’re free to go. And… if you must carry on with your Nitrabor, at least don’t let me hear about it.’
Kostislava nodded her understanding. A slap on the wrist. Evidently she had expected much worse. ‘Thank you, son.’
The king saw his mother off back to Znojmo and (most likely) back to Nitrabor’s bed. But his mother’s recriminations still rang in his ears. Did she truly see him as such an ingrate; such a hypocrite? Was that how most of his vassals would see his selection of Ján as his successor, when it came to be known?
‘Did I make the right decision?’ Želimír asked his wife.
‘I confess I wasn’t happy about it either, when you first told me,’ Živana owned honestly. ‘But… perhaps you’re right. A ruler with too little flexibility will snap, and one who’s without the honey of human mercy… well. I also fear Radomír has too little of either. But whether it’s the right decision or not, to make little Ján king instead? That is wholly up to you.’
That didn’t make Želimír feel much better.
~~~
Queen Mother Kostislava held a feast not a month later, and the first of her invitations went to her royal son. Despite their bitter disagreements of late, the two of them still deeply loved each other. And it was very possible that Kostislava was suffering from as much of a guilty conscience as her son was—if not more. And so she pulled out all the stops.
It became clear, over the course of the two weeks of the feast, amidst the ever-flowing wine and course after course of gamefowl, venison, roast pork, fresh-baked pastries, spiced fruits and other delectations, that apart from himself and Mayor Vlastibor, very few others seemed to be aware of Kostislava’s bedswerving with a much-younger lover. As far as Želimír could tell, his mother was herself being far more discreet than she had been. Perhaps he was being paranoid, but he obsessively scanned the room for smirks or whispers among the other guests each time he saw a lingering glance or a saucy smile pass between Kostislava and Nitrabor. But thankfully, not even the king’s aunt Pravomila seemed aware of her older sister’s night moves.
Želimír soon came to understand that he owed a deep debt of gratitude to Vlastibor. Although when in his cups, Vlastibor became a little too voluble about his own private life, so deep was his loyalty to his liege that he didn’t let slip one hint of what he’d divulged to Želimír. Clearly he felt that it was an issue best dealt with within the family. A wave of warmth toward the purkmistra swept over the king at this realisation, and he vowed to show Vlastibor his appreciation at a suitable later date.
~~~
As another of his daughters, Magdaléna, came of age, and as another of his daughters, Slavomíra, was betrothed to a young man of the Majcichovský family who had distinguished themselves in the recent Adamite War, Želimír found himself fretting more and more over the state of his soul. Although his mother had more than expressed her contrition for her harsh words to her son, those words still weighed upon him. He felt more than ever that he was a whited sepulchre; a hypocrite; a king whose job it was to judge others, but who was not fit to judge even his own mother. Perhaps, he began to think, a penitential journey might bring him some clarity or solace.
By this time, the Jerusalem Way was well-trodden with the footpaths forged by multiple generations of Moravian kings. It had become an established tradition by now for the Bohodars of the ruling family to make Antioch on the Orontes the favoured port of harbour for their pilgrimages. But for dynasts of other Christian names there was no such established rule. Želimír found his attention drawn to the end of the road… to Golgotha, to the rock of the Ascension, and to the Tomb of the Lord which was the site of the Brotherhood’s devotions. And so on the fifth of April, 6721, the King of Moravia set out southward from Olomouc through Balaton and Wallachia on the road to Jerusalem.
Upon the road he had several experiences. Travelling through Balaton, he found himself tempted by his former heresy, in the form of a gold-braided female preacher named Milomíra. Milomíra appeared to him completely in the nude, and attempted to lure him into a glade, shed his clothes and return him to the ‘innocence’ of his former sect. But Želimír instead engaged Milomíra in theological discussion and, being caught in a web of contradictions, the woman was instead converted back to the True Faith. Putting aside her immodesty, she did on the veil and entered an Orthodox cloister.
Satan, having been robbed of his quarry along the well-travelled paths of heresy and lust, opted instead to prevent the king’s pilgrimage by means of greed and anger. He sent his demons to a band of brothers living in Asia Minor, and they whispered in the ears of these men of the great treasure they would receive if they waylaid the king of Moravia and held him for ransom. The bandits went and lay in wait for Želimír when he would pass by.
Unfortunately, the bandits got more than they bargained for. Želimír was no stranger to war or to combat, having quelled a civil uprising and having rescued his wife from the clutches of the Adamites. Although he was not a particularly strong fighter, Želimír nevertheless chose his ground against the bandits, and drove the leader to a precipice, and hurled him down. The rest of the bandits scattered before him. The way was clear southward through Asia Minor and Syria to the Holy Land.
Želimír undertook the common pilgrimage route through al-Quds: first to the Temple Mount where Jesus preached; then to the Garden of Gethsemane where He supped His Last with His disciples; then along the Via Dolorosa along which He went to His Crucifixion; then to Golgotha and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which remained under the watchful eye of the Brotherhood; and finally to the Mount of Olives and the Church of the Ascension. Along each step of the way he asked the Lord for forgiveness of his sins, for guidance in raising his younger son Ján to adulthood, and for mercy and blessing upon all of his children and family—and especially for Živana, of whose love he still felt unworthy.
However, the trials that the Lord would send upon Želimír were not over—indeed, they were beginning in earnest.
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I fear that Radomir will fight his replacement as heir. What was the reason to replace him with a toddler (obviously Jan's adult stats were unknown)? Will Radomir at least get his mother's and grandmother's holdings? Congratulations on your award. Thank you for the update.
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Thank you, @Midnite Duke!
Honestly I was just RP'ing it here. I didn't think a king with the compassionate and generous traits would be too happy with an heir who had turned out callous. And given how little store our Želimír here set by tradition, it seemed believable that he would avail himself of the opportunity of hand-selecting and raising his own heir.
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Pheew, you really were being serious.
That's a cool list, lol. Cheers mate, and bon appétit!
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Book Four Chapter Thirty-Eight
THIRTY-EIGHT
The Outburst
2 October 1213 – 1 March 1218
The Outburst
2 October 1213 – 1 March 1218
‘It would be to the benefit of the realm, môj priateľ,’ said Rostislav Koceľuk, the king’s kancelár. Among the vassals of the realm, only Rostislav, Knieža of Podkarpatská, was granted the privilege of calling Želimír ‘friend’. ‘Our Ruthenian tongue is widely spoken in our mountains. Not to mention that it can be understood by the rulers of the Great and White Rus’.’
‘You have a good point, Roško,’ Želimír answered. ‘I marvel that my predecessors didn’t take the time to learn. Learning the Ruthenian language would also help me keep an eye on the Červeny—I know their king wishes nothing but harm upon me. Very well—if you can recommend me a tutor… on the quiet, then I will undertake to learn your lingo.’
Rostislav smiled and spread his hands. His long friendship with the Kráľ since childhood had shown him that the king would demand the best from himself while expecting the worst from others. His reaction to being asked to learn the Rusin tongue belonged to the same tendency.
As the king was meeting with his Rusin tutor to learn the language, two more of his daughters reached their majority—Slavomíra and Ctislava. The king, however, was more desirous of finding a suitable match for his younger son and heir. After much consideration, he approached a Bosnian burgomaster, Dobromir Jagodić, to make an offer for his niece Vyšemíra. Soon enough, they reached an agreement for Vyšemíra’s hand for young Ján. And Rostislav wasn’t the only one who was eager to expand the king’s horizons.
‘Môj milý,’ Živana told her husband, ‘I just read the most fascinating book. Personally, I think you’d enjoy it more than I would—and you might even get more out of it!’
‘What is the book, dearest?’
Happily, Živana handed him a thick leather-bound tome, which had clearly been read with attention by his wife. Želimír cracked open the cover and read the title on the inside page.
‘The Sunopsis Istoriōn by… Iōannēs Skulitzēs?’
‘Truly fascinating read. He goes into some stunning detail about the military adventures and court plots of the various Emperors in the Rome of the East, beginning with the death of Nikephoros I and going up to the reign of Emperor Staurikios. Your ancestor Eustach plays a rather significant rôle in this text.’
‘Oh?’ asked Želimír with a smile. ‘Sounds like it would have been of interest to my father—he was one for the family history.’
‘And of interest to you!’ Živana assured him warmly. ‘Byzantine diplomacy reached the peak of its sophistication and strategic importance during this time. You might learn a few things from this one. And from others like it!’
‘Really?’ asked Želimír, intrigued anew.
His wife merely smiled. She knew he would read, enjoy and be immersed as she had.
Between his Rusin lessons and the reading of the Byzantine histories, Kráľ Želimír would have done his scholarly ancestors proud. The king swiftly picked up the basics of the Carpatho-Russian tongue, built himself a functioning vocabulary, and even memorised several polite and charming phrases to use when Ruthenian guests and dignitaries stopped into his court. The Sunopsis Istoriōn of Skulitzēs proved a tad less useful to him. Although he found it enjoyable, and although he identified readily with the struggles of several of the ambassadors and dignitaries of the Eastern Roman court, he found that the book ultimately was more entertaining than enlightening.
He did have a chance to practise several points of hospitality, however. His mother invited him to return to Znojmo for the Paschal feast in the year 6725. He noted that Kostislava had truly outdone herself with the dishes… though he suspected an ulterior motive for the exquisite spread. Indeed, he quickly found that his mother hardly let an opportunity slip by her, for dropping hints in her son’s ear how well his elder son had turned out, how clever and erudite he was, and how much more suitable he would be as heir to the Moravian throne than the disorderly redheaded child who (in the Queen Mother’s view) could do nothing right. Želimír found his teeth grinding as he forced himself several times not to engage his mother in argument over the matter. It was no use anyway—the king wouldn’t change his mind.
And then his kinsman from the Opole, Vojvoda Vieroslav Rychnovský-Nisa of Horné Sliezsko, invited him to another grand feast the following Christmas. As it turned out, the king’s studies in diplomacy hadn’t entirely gone to waste. He found himself deep in conversation with his host, and quickly discovered that Vieroslav shared many of the same interests and concerns that he did. And when he left the feast in Horné Sliezsko, Želimír found he had earned something of an epicurean reputation.
However well his linguistic and diplomatic studies progressed, though, and however well his new reputation as a partygoer served him, the complications from the succession issue continued to plague the King. Radomír was not particularly happy about having been supplanted by his younger brother, but he was also not the sort to make a great fuss in his own cause. He proved in spite of that, however, to be a magnet for less scrupulous men than himself. His cause was backed up not only by his own, deeply partizan, grandmother, but also by men like Slavomír Detvanský (a cousin of Ostrivoj Detvanský and a distant relative of the late queen, Árpád Czenzi), who was the burgomaster of Ivančice in southern Moravia. (Between Znojmo and Ivančice, southern Moravia in general proved to be somewhat hostile to the selected heir apparent’s cause.)
Slavomír Detvanský, however, was motivated not so much out of love for the eldest prince, but out of a sense of his own ambition. He had a keen nose for faction, and he quickly moved to the side from which he stood to gain the greatest advantage. For this reason, he began making rather a nuisance of himself in the Zhromaždenie, appealing to the traditions of the Moravian lands and accusing the king of contorting them for his own gain.
These challenges grated on Želimír’s nerves. Not only did he have to contend with his own mother, but now also this stray Árpád by-blow who had somehow manoeuvred himself into the headship of a south Moravian town? But the challenges from Slavomír were of so overt and fractious a nature that the king felt he had little choice but to answer them. The king—who was always alert to any danger to his person or position, particularly after Bishop Budimír had bludgeoned the living daylights out of him in full view of his own court—had no desire to appear weak again in front of his own council, let alone the broader Zhromaždenie.
Želimír chose his opportunity and he chose his moment well.
At the next meeting of the Zhromaždenie, the Kráľ suspected that Detvanský would readily avail himself of the opportunity to grandstand on behalf of the elder prince. Indeed—
‘… which is why the succession issue must be returned to the customary laws of our people!’ Detvanský was arguing. ‘The confusion that this is creating among the people, the uncertainty, the fears of yet another civil war are—’
‘Ooh, fears of another civil war!’ Želimír curled his lip in a mocking sneer at the burgomaster. ‘It’s always some tale of woe with you, isn’t it? And what were you doing in the middle of the last one, Detvanský—running to sob behind your kinswomen’s skirts, or throw yourself wailing upon the graves of your betters like a bereaved old woman? Perhaps if you would take better care of the streets and walls of your own town and attend better to the garrison, you sentimental old fool, your men wouldn’t be so confused and uncertain!’
The burgomaster’s eyes grew round with shock and affront at the king’s sudden vitriol. He glanced around the other nobles and townsmen in the room, and saw very few others there who shared his own opinion—and fewer still who sympathised with him. His mouth worked agape for several moments, then closed. He sat down.
Želimír had won that argument. And now he knew how to keep this member of the southern clique under control.
But he felt wretched about having to put the man down so publicly. Želimír could tell that he had cut Detvanský deeply with his vituperation. And—even as grudging and suspicious as he was of the motives of others—the king hated himself to be the cause of pain or scandal to any soul.
Once the Zhromaždenie was dismissed from the audience chamber, the king cupped his head in his hands. What was he to do now? He was tempted to grab a fistful of silver from the treasury and fling it into the nearest church almsbox… and then he found he was tempted to escape into the wine cellar as his father had done in his dotage and numb his blasted feelings by drowning them in spirits. But he found that, in good conscience, he could do neither.
He would just have to grit his teeth and bear it.
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Thank you for updating. Any reasons for engaging Prince Jan to a niece of a mayor? Momma loves her eldest grandson. The succession will be discussed again and again, and if we do not have a civil war, it will be a great day.
Book Four Chapter Thirty-Nine
@filcat: Well, you were the one who recommended them! Taste recognise taste. But yes, I am enjoying!
@Midnite Duke: Cheers! Actually, not only the niece of a mayor but the granddaughter of a minor vassal family in my own realm. Also, has a nice inheritable trait.
THIRTY-NINE
Head for a Footstool
5 April 1218 – 5 January 1220
The crash resounded throughout the hall. Želimír sighed. He knew well before he rounded the corner and his eyes told him so, that it was Ján who had careened headlong into an armour stand. The kid couldn’t sit still—it seemed every time Želimír saw Ján, the young man was full-tilt on the run! Father reached down a hand to son, who took it and stood. Clearly Ján was none the worse for wear, though he was still eager to be on the move—out.
‘Ah, ah! No!’ the king arrested his son. ‘You knocked it over, come put it right.’
Ján rolled his eyes and groaned, but he came back and set the armour stand back where it was, and went and fetched the stray pieces to hand back to his father. As they were arranging the thing, Želimír asked his son:
‘And where were you bound in such a hurry?’
Ján shook his head. ‘The Koceľukovci are coming. I don’t mean to be here when all of them arrive—it will be no end of greetings and handshakes and visits.’
‘And what’s wrong with that?’ asked Želimír sharply. ‘The knieža of Podkarpatská is my friend. His kin are always welcome here. We should do our best to show them hospitality!’
Ján shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, as his father began to wonder seriously if he was that lacking in patience, or if he simply found visiting with people in general to be a chore. Želimír put a hand on his son’s shoulder.
‘Listen, Ján. You have a good heart. And I know you aren’t this hasty or ill at ease when it comes to dealing with animals—like dogs or sheep or horses. Why are you this keen to flee from the sight of men?’
Ján shrugged. ‘Animals make sense to me. Men don’t.’
Želimír shook his head sadly. ‘We don’t get the luxury of dealing only with animals, Ján. When you are king, you will have to deal with people.’
‘When I’m king, when I’m king!’ Ján cried aloud in frustration. ‘God forbid I should ever come to it, Father—not for many, many years yet!’
And Ján thus fled from his father.
Želimír’s hand went to his forehead and lingered there. These headaches had been getting more and more frequent lately. There were more and more sleepless nights. It wasn’t just worrying about Ján that was doing this to him. It was the realm, it was dealing with advisors, it was dealing with the zhromaždenie. And he couldn’t shake the feeling—the horrid, sick, helpless feeling—that someone within Olomouc, someone close to him, was plotting against him: plotting his demise. Of course, Ducovská, his spymistress, told him he was fretting over nothing… but then, if she were in on it…? He felt sometimes as though even the castle garrison and the servants were against him, whispering.
The two people he trusted implicitly and placed above suspicion—his faithful wife Živana and his friend Roško Koceľuk—also told him he was worried about nothing. But they didn’t know what he knew. Couldn’t feel what he felt, as though something was simply off. Roško, sensing that perhaps his friend needed a break from affairs, invited him to a feast in Maramoroš… but although the king enjoyed himself there, when he returned to Olomouc he was assaulted by the same sense that his life, and perhaps Ján’s as well, was in danger.
At last there came a long-awaited day. Želimír’s and Živana’s daughter Volimíra passed her fifteenth summer, and—she blossoming like a rose!—took her place as an adult among the courtiers with panache and charm aplenty. Volimíra was a striking beauty, even among the brood of her parents’ notably well-favoured children. And when the Veliky Knyaz of Great Rus’ came all the way from Mozyř to make good on his agreement with her father for her hand, Aleksandr Vogak found himself utterly charmed by the exquisite angel before him—not only with her looks, but with a modest, sweet-tempered and demure character that she had only to show in her sincerity to him to win him over utterly. (One would hardly at all think she had been raised by Adamites—but there it was.)
And her elder sister, the rather incalcitrant Slavomíra, was there at her side to send her off with all the well-wishes she could offer… although the elder sister was heavily pregnant. Within a little over four weeks of Volimíra’s departure for Mozyř, Slavomíra had given birth to a healthy, beautiful young daughter—who naturally was named for her grandmother. Ján, of course, was on hand the whole time, working hard to make his elder sister comfortable, and even offering her the use of his own room to care for and nurse the little girl.
But despite all this happy news, the king’s mood seemed only to turn sourer and sourer. He examined every single room from the door, and the door itself for hidden traps, before he entered it. To Živana’s and Roško’s increasing alarm, the Kráľ became more and more convinced that someone within the castle was out to do him harm. And he had even begun to speculate that it had something to do with his prisoner, the former rebel Hrabě Ladislav Kopčianský of Jihlava… that the Kopčianských was plotting to punish him for placing their relative in prison. And the headaches kept getting worse.
‘Your Majesty,’ Boleslav Zemplínský was saying, ‘surely we can come to some agreement? My son’s place is at my side! I am happy to pay for his freedom!’
‘Am I merely to take the word of a rebel?’ asked the king.
‘A rebel I am not!’ Boleslav straightened his back and looked the king in the eye. ‘I am merely a messenger of God’s justice. If the king of Wallachia were wise, he would treat his Slovak subjects with a bit more consideration.’
Želimír was doubtful of this pronouncement, but he said: ‘I appreciate that you come before me openly, without guile, and with an offer in hand. Very well. If you are willing to pay his release in good silver, then the doors of the castle donjon shall open to release your son to you.’
Boleslav Zemplínský bowed gratefully as Roško led him from the hall. But then the king turned to his wife and muttered: ‘Do you see? Even a man like Zemplínský comes in the open, himself, to speak for his son. Why do the relatives of Ladislav not come to claim him, likewise—unless they’re hoping to keep him here, eh? Use him as part of their plot?’
Živana regarded her husband with pity and bewilderment at his paranoid fixation, but said nothing.
Shortly thereafter matters came, quite literally, to a head. Želimír, having spent a wakeful and restless night, was in a dreadful mood. And the inside of his head was a thick, impenetrable fog of roiling pain.
‘Begging your Majesty’s pardon,’ the messenger was saying, ‘but the roads southward into Balaton have been plagued by robbers of late. We in Jihlava want for nothing, of course, owing to your illustrious rule and munificent justice, but in the forested border country, naturally, things are rather different. If you could but spare merely three detachments from your garrison here in Olomouc—’
The pain in Kráľ Želimír’s head was unbearable. He couldn’t see or think straight. But through the midst of the agony between his ears, he caught note of the name of ‘Jihlava’. That was Kopčianský’s town. Through the migraine, one single thread of thought came through clearly, and the king found himself able to do nothing else but follow it out.
‘I’m sure,’ he spoke through an unsightly grimace, ‘that you Jihlava men would like nothing better than to… temporarily remove some of the garrison here. Just enough to sneak some assassins of your own in, am I right? Of course I am. I know what you’re on about—and it isn’t robbers or anything else. You’re here to seek vengeance for your Hrabě. You want my head. Well, too bad for you—your plan failed. And I’ll be damned if I don’t take yours first. Guards!’
Frightened out of their wits by this dread pronouncement from their liege, two of the court attendants stepped forward.
‘Take this witless blatherer away and cut off his head. And bring it back here when you are done. I want it for a footstool. Let all the Kopčianských hear of this and know that I am onto them!’
The attendants hesitated. Never before had they heard a king of Moravia give such an order.
‘Now,’ the Kráľ commanded them.
The grisly deed was done. But the effect was not, perhaps, what Želimír had desired. For now his court stood by and wondered, if perhaps their liege was going down the path of Radomír hrozný.
@Midnite Duke: Cheers! Actually, not only the niece of a mayor but the granddaughter of a minor vassal family in my own realm. Also, has a nice inheritable trait.
THIRTY-NINE
Head for a Footstool
5 April 1218 – 5 January 1220
The crash resounded throughout the hall. Želimír sighed. He knew well before he rounded the corner and his eyes told him so, that it was Ján who had careened headlong into an armour stand. The kid couldn’t sit still—it seemed every time Želimír saw Ján, the young man was full-tilt on the run! Father reached down a hand to son, who took it and stood. Clearly Ján was none the worse for wear, though he was still eager to be on the move—out.
‘Ah, ah! No!’ the king arrested his son. ‘You knocked it over, come put it right.’
Ján rolled his eyes and groaned, but he came back and set the armour stand back where it was, and went and fetched the stray pieces to hand back to his father. As they were arranging the thing, Želimír asked his son:
‘And where were you bound in such a hurry?’
Ján shook his head. ‘The Koceľukovci are coming. I don’t mean to be here when all of them arrive—it will be no end of greetings and handshakes and visits.’
‘And what’s wrong with that?’ asked Želimír sharply. ‘The knieža of Podkarpatská is my friend. His kin are always welcome here. We should do our best to show them hospitality!’
Ján shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, as his father began to wonder seriously if he was that lacking in patience, or if he simply found visiting with people in general to be a chore. Želimír put a hand on his son’s shoulder.
‘Listen, Ján. You have a good heart. And I know you aren’t this hasty or ill at ease when it comes to dealing with animals—like dogs or sheep or horses. Why are you this keen to flee from the sight of men?’
Ján shrugged. ‘Animals make sense to me. Men don’t.’
Želimír shook his head sadly. ‘We don’t get the luxury of dealing only with animals, Ján. When you are king, you will have to deal with people.’
‘When I’m king, when I’m king!’ Ján cried aloud in frustration. ‘God forbid I should ever come to it, Father—not for many, many years yet!’
And Ján thus fled from his father.
Želimír’s hand went to his forehead and lingered there. These headaches had been getting more and more frequent lately. There were more and more sleepless nights. It wasn’t just worrying about Ján that was doing this to him. It was the realm, it was dealing with advisors, it was dealing with the zhromaždenie. And he couldn’t shake the feeling—the horrid, sick, helpless feeling—that someone within Olomouc, someone close to him, was plotting against him: plotting his demise. Of course, Ducovská, his spymistress, told him he was fretting over nothing… but then, if she were in on it…? He felt sometimes as though even the castle garrison and the servants were against him, whispering.
The two people he trusted implicitly and placed above suspicion—his faithful wife Živana and his friend Roško Koceľuk—also told him he was worried about nothing. But they didn’t know what he knew. Couldn’t feel what he felt, as though something was simply off. Roško, sensing that perhaps his friend needed a break from affairs, invited him to a feast in Maramoroš… but although the king enjoyed himself there, when he returned to Olomouc he was assaulted by the same sense that his life, and perhaps Ján’s as well, was in danger.
At last there came a long-awaited day. Želimír’s and Živana’s daughter Volimíra passed her fifteenth summer, and—she blossoming like a rose!—took her place as an adult among the courtiers with panache and charm aplenty. Volimíra was a striking beauty, even among the brood of her parents’ notably well-favoured children. And when the Veliky Knyaz of Great Rus’ came all the way from Mozyř to make good on his agreement with her father for her hand, Aleksandr Vogak found himself utterly charmed by the exquisite angel before him—not only with her looks, but with a modest, sweet-tempered and demure character that she had only to show in her sincerity to him to win him over utterly. (One would hardly at all think she had been raised by Adamites—but there it was.)
And her elder sister, the rather incalcitrant Slavomíra, was there at her side to send her off with all the well-wishes she could offer… although the elder sister was heavily pregnant. Within a little over four weeks of Volimíra’s departure for Mozyř, Slavomíra had given birth to a healthy, beautiful young daughter—who naturally was named for her grandmother. Ján, of course, was on hand the whole time, working hard to make his elder sister comfortable, and even offering her the use of his own room to care for and nurse the little girl.
But despite all this happy news, the king’s mood seemed only to turn sourer and sourer. He examined every single room from the door, and the door itself for hidden traps, before he entered it. To Živana’s and Roško’s increasing alarm, the Kráľ became more and more convinced that someone within the castle was out to do him harm. And he had even begun to speculate that it had something to do with his prisoner, the former rebel Hrabě Ladislav Kopčianský of Jihlava… that the Kopčianských was plotting to punish him for placing their relative in prison. And the headaches kept getting worse.
‘Your Majesty,’ Boleslav Zemplínský was saying, ‘surely we can come to some agreement? My son’s place is at my side! I am happy to pay for his freedom!’
‘Am I merely to take the word of a rebel?’ asked the king.
‘A rebel I am not!’ Boleslav straightened his back and looked the king in the eye. ‘I am merely a messenger of God’s justice. If the king of Wallachia were wise, he would treat his Slovak subjects with a bit more consideration.’
Želimír was doubtful of this pronouncement, but he said: ‘I appreciate that you come before me openly, without guile, and with an offer in hand. Very well. If you are willing to pay his release in good silver, then the doors of the castle donjon shall open to release your son to you.’
Boleslav Zemplínský bowed gratefully as Roško led him from the hall. But then the king turned to his wife and muttered: ‘Do you see? Even a man like Zemplínský comes in the open, himself, to speak for his son. Why do the relatives of Ladislav not come to claim him, likewise—unless they’re hoping to keep him here, eh? Use him as part of their plot?’
Živana regarded her husband with pity and bewilderment at his paranoid fixation, but said nothing.
Shortly thereafter matters came, quite literally, to a head. Želimír, having spent a wakeful and restless night, was in a dreadful mood. And the inside of his head was a thick, impenetrable fog of roiling pain.
‘Begging your Majesty’s pardon,’ the messenger was saying, ‘but the roads southward into Balaton have been plagued by robbers of late. We in Jihlava want for nothing, of course, owing to your illustrious rule and munificent justice, but in the forested border country, naturally, things are rather different. If you could but spare merely three detachments from your garrison here in Olomouc—’
The pain in Kráľ Želimír’s head was unbearable. He couldn’t see or think straight. But through the midst of the agony between his ears, he caught note of the name of ‘Jihlava’. That was Kopčianský’s town. Through the migraine, one single thread of thought came through clearly, and the king found himself able to do nothing else but follow it out.
‘I’m sure,’ he spoke through an unsightly grimace, ‘that you Jihlava men would like nothing better than to… temporarily remove some of the garrison here. Just enough to sneak some assassins of your own in, am I right? Of course I am. I know what you’re on about—and it isn’t robbers or anything else. You’re here to seek vengeance for your Hrabě. You want my head. Well, too bad for you—your plan failed. And I’ll be damned if I don’t take yours first. Guards!’
Frightened out of their wits by this dread pronouncement from their liege, two of the court attendants stepped forward.
‘Take this witless blatherer away and cut off his head. And bring it back here when you are done. I want it for a footstool. Let all the Kopčianských hear of this and know that I am onto them!’
The attendants hesitated. Never before had they heard a king of Moravia give such an order.
‘Now,’ the Kráľ commanded them.
The grisly deed was done. But the effect was not, perhaps, what Želimír had desired. For now his court stood by and wondered, if perhaps their liege was going down the path of Radomír hrozný.
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Book Four Chapter Forty
FORTY
As the Light Leaves Me
20 January 1220 – 3 September 1220
As the Light Leaves Me
20 January 1220 – 3 September 1220
‘Quickly,’ said Rostislav Koceľuk. ‘We don’t have much time.’
‘Why are you doing this for me?’ asked Ladislav Kopčianský, hardly daring to believe his luck. ‘I’m the king’s prisoner—and I thought you were the king’s friend.’
‘I am the king’s friend,’ Roško answered the Hrabě of Jihlava. ‘But the king is not in full possession of his own wits. He’s convinced he is the target of a plot against his life—and he is equally convinced that somehow, that plot is centred around you.’
‘I?’ Ladislav scoffed. ‘A prisoner in his donjon?’
The key rattled in the lock. Ladislav’s saviour smiled wanly. ‘It makes as little sense to me as it does to you. But the head of one of your zbrojnošov is now festooning the king’s audience-chamber in a rather grisly fashion—and he arrived three weeks ago, merely to discuss some routine matters of patrolling the southern march with Balaton. That is how serious this delusion of his is.’
Ladislav said nothing, but allowed himself to be led out of his cell, and clad in the spare garment of a priest, while the guards were still between their shifts.
‘I owe you my thanks, then, Koceľuk.’
‘Ňe nado,’ said Roško. ‘It’s as much the soul of my liege and friend that I’m saving now, as your life. As long as you’re in the donjon, you’re an occasion to him for a most grievous sin.’
‘I understand,’ Ladislav told Rostislav earnestly. ‘In that case, please be assured of my well-wishes for the king, that he is soon delivered from this ailment of the mind.’
‘My prayers will always be joined with yours,’ Rostislav shook his head sadly, as he saw the Kráľ’s prisoner out into the night.
~~~
‘I knew it,’ the king smiled mirthlessly when he heard of Ladislav’s escape. ‘He is a traitor. He had the means of escape the whole time, but once I killed the linchpin of his plan, he took to his heels. There can be no doubt that the Kopčianských want my head.’
Rostislav and Živana shared a dark glance. There was, of course, a much more likely explanation for Ladislav’s flight—one which both of them knew. But Želimír simply could not hear of it. The king paced behind his desk. Živana assayed another attempt to reason with her husband.
‘Môj milý… my Žeľko… please see sense! What reason could Ladislav have to want to harm you? You are the one who betrothed little Ján to his granddaughter, Vyšemíra Kubínská, so—’
‘Vyšemíra…?’ the king’s face flickered. At first, Živana thought she’d gotten through to him. But then—
‘He wouldn’t dare—! No… would he? Would he make such blasphemous and infamous use of an innocent girl, even his own granddaughter, in his plans to kill me? And… would he use her to go after Ján?’ Želimír wondered aloud. ‘Sickening. But then… I’m dealing with a very sick man. Just to be sure, then… just to be sure, I need to…’
Živana’s heart, and her hopes, fell. The Kráľ dismissed both her and Raško from his chamber.
The Kráľ proceeded to hatch the same sinful plan that his best friend and his wife had tried to get him to avoid. He began to plot murder against an eleven-year-old girl living in Bosnia. All in the name—or so the madness within his mass of headaches told him—of preserving the life of his precious younger son.
~~~
The initial stages of his plan did not go well.
The attempts of the Moravian king to place his agents in key positions around the domicile of the Bosnian burgomaster were unfortunately a bit too obvious, and Vyšemíra naturally took care to avoid the newcomers with the strange northern accents, feeling instinctively that they were up to no good.
The Kráľ, in better times when his mind was less taxed and better able to withstand its own suspicions, might have been convinced at this point that plotting against the life of an eleven-year-old girl was probably not the best idea in the first place, and that nothing good could come of it. But unfortunately, these setbacks did not deter him from his aim. Indeed, the precautions that the girl set up for herself served—just like her grandfather’s escape from his donjon—only to convince the Kráľ further of her guilty nature and ill will. Would any innocent be so careful? In Želimír’s mind, the Kopčianský complot was the central fact—and all other facts served to enforce it.
Želimír began to commission maps of the area around Gradiška, in an attempt to plan out routes of escape from the town. In particular, he wanted to know places besides the main bridge where the Sava could be forded from the south. He hired a local Bosnian hunter to give him this intelligence, and pored obsessively over the maps when he was alone.
The plan was beginning to come together. He knew he couldn’t rely upon the agents in place within the burgomaster’s residence to carry the deed out themselves, but they could admit several local people under cover of darkness to enter Vyšemíra’s chambers by night when she was asleep. In that way he could head off Ladislav Kopčianský’s dastardly plans against his family.
Roško and Živana despaired as they saw the man they loved and respected slip further and further into the maze of his paranoid delusions. The flesh began to wither upon his bones from lack of sleep and proper nutrition. And his already-frayed nerves seemed to grow more and more brittle. Within the king’s mind, perhaps, some inkling that what he was doing was wrong began to seep through, and more than once the better angels of his nature called upon him to abandon this damnable enterprise.
But between his angels and his demons, it seemed at first, the demons won out. The planning of the nighttime assault on the Gradiška mayoral residence continued unabated.
However, one morning came when no mutters and no sounds of pacing came from the King’s study.
Kráľ Želimír’s heart had given out the night before. No one else but the night watchmen had been awake, and no one had been able to come to his aid. The king had died at the relatively young age of fifty-one years. And however intensely he was mourned by Queen Živana and Rostislav Koceľuk, at least, he had come to be feared more than loved by the rest of his realm.
As per the late Kráľ’s wishes, the realm was now in the hands of a (most unwilling) thirteen-year-old boy, and unfortunately the issue of the succession was not entirely settled. Ján, unlike his father, went dutifully to the funeral and paid all the respects at Velehrad that were due to him. But few were the men who did not notice how loosely and ill the vestments of office fit upon the new, barely-teenage king.
As the celebration of the Nativity of the Mother of God dawned upon the year 6730, not one soul then present in Velehrad Cathedral could possibly have known that as they were witnessing the coronation of Ján Rychnovský, they were looking upon the single most fearsome, most celebrated and most glorious king that the realm of Veľká Morava would have.
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EUROPE AT THE END OF THE REIGN OF ŽELIMÍR RYCHNOVSKÝ
Now we start seeing the big power players that will last into the EU4 years. The Červen Cities have reorganised themselves as Galicia-Volhynia (which starts off being a major antagonist in EU4). Ruthenia is still strong and growing large. White Rus' is kind of underpowered at this point but they will be making their appearance. And northern Italy actually manages to continue to be a presence in my game. The Balkans / Pannonia / the Carpathians are a huge freaking power vacuum right now. That won't last.
And how does Western Europe look? Well, right now it's not dominated so much by the Big Grey Blob as by the Big Blue Blob. West Francia somehow manages to take control of most of the northern half of the old Carolingian Empire, with the exceptions of Frisia, Luxembourg and a tiny rump of what was once the kingdom of Lothair. Ah well, can't get everything. England is still a huge mess.
Now we start seeing the big power players that will last into the EU4 years. The Červen Cities have reorganised themselves as Galicia-Volhynia (which starts off being a major antagonist in EU4). Ruthenia is still strong and growing large. White Rus' is kind of underpowered at this point but they will be making their appearance. And northern Italy actually manages to continue to be a presence in my game. The Balkans / Pannonia / the Carpathians are a huge freaking power vacuum right now. That won't last.
And how does Western Europe look? Well, right now it's not dominated so much by the Big Grey Blob as by the Big Blue Blob. West Francia somehow manages to take control of most of the northern half of the old Carolingian Empire, with the exceptions of Frisia, Luxembourg and a tiny rump of what was once the kingdom of Lothair. Ah well, can't get everything. England is still a huge mess.
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